The poll numbers were everywhere on Thursday and could not have improved Donald Trump’s mood. If the November midterms were taking place this year, rather than next, a staggering 55 per cent of respondents claimed they would elect a Democrat to Congress, with just 41 per cent opting for a Republican. Independents also leaned heavily towards the opposition party.
The returns in the PBS/Marist poll marked the best performance on that forum for the Democrats since the first year of Trump’s first term in office: November 2017. Those results presaged a midterm sweep the following year, when the Dems improved their standing in the House by some 40 seats. In all, the Democrats now enjoy a 14-point notional midterm lead among the registered voters polled. What they did to achieve this sudden resurgence was, literally, nothing. The Democrats’ most potent month occurred through their absenteeism from the Capitol because of the government shutdown.
The snap analyses all drew an obvious conclusion: despite the tariff maelstrom, despite the swaggering foreign diplomacy pronouncements and the acclaim for the fragile brokering of an Israel-Gaza peace deal; despite securing the border and deporting the immigrants and reassuring Americans that the new golden age has, in fact, arrived, the price of coffee is still too damn high and the people remain unhappy. And therefore, Trump II was, in these dank days of early winter, beginning to look a lot like Trump I. Even the New England Patriots are back to winning again – although Bill Belichick is not. On Friday, the White House was preparing to greet Zohran Mamdani, mayor-elect of New York City and a youthful, vibrant personification of the fact that Trump’s native city is possessed of an ideology and spirit that he has never been able to tap into.
“I don’t want to speak for the president or get ahead of this meeting,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attempting to sound an upbeat note in anticipating the Mamdani meeting at her weekly Thursday lunchtime briefing.
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“I will just add that it speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House because that’s who the Democrat party elected as the mayor to the largest city in the country. I think it is very telling but it also speaks to the fact that president Trump is willing to meet with anyone and talk to anyone and try to do what is right for the American people whether they live in red or blue states.”
As an exercise in human behaviour, the White House meeting between two sons of New York (although Trump would point out that Mamdani is Ugandan-born) promised to be fascinating. For all of Trump’s hostility, he is susceptible to charm and Mamdani’s twinkly sincerity has made even New York’s most seasoned and cynical dopey about him.
All this and Trump had to put his John Hancock on the Bill to release the Epstein files on Wednesday evening. The president’s climbdown on the festering, stubborn issue that has trailed him all year marked the most significant retreat of his second term in president. His late and complete reversal on Epstein, when he ordered Republican lawmakers to vote for the release, was quickly interpreted as a rather sad effort to save face: it was clear they were going to do so anyhow. All summer, Trump had loudly and repeatedly declared the entire Epstein story a “Democrat hoax” and encouraged his Maga faithful to settle for the fact that there was nothing there. He might as well have told the Christian evangelical right that there was no point in going to church. On some issues, they will not listen to Trump because they can’t understand what he is saying.
And the administration’s decision, late last week, to quietly withdraw tariffs on grocery items such as coffee, tea, bananas and spices might also be interpreted as a tacit admission that price hikes provoked by the policy were becoming a problem. But the list was finite and included high-quality meat imports, fruits such as pineapples and guavas, spices such as like saffron and cumin along with nuts, grains and vanilla beans.
The reason the cost of eggs became the symbol for the inflation crisis during election year was not because the making of souffle had become the great national obsession. It was because as an everyday product, a dozen eggs travelled through all demographics, from trailer parks to the lifestyle kitchen videos offered by everyone from Stanley Tucci to Reese Witherspoon. Trump won’t lose the White House in 2028 because he failed to make the macadamia nut great again. It will be because the aggregate cost of all other essential items, from clothing to schooling to car insurance, along with rent and mortgage costs, remain a problem that the political class has failed to deal with. And the latest polling numbers do not reflect the furore that will break out if and when the healthcare premiums spike across the country. New figures show unemployment has edged up to 4.4 per cent: low but nonetheless the highest in almost four years. A Fox News poll reported that 76 per cent of people believe the economy to be “not so good/poor”. Over the past few days, both vice-president JD Vance and Treasury secretary Scott Bessent have appealed for time to allow the administration’s economic policies to kick in.
But the headlines about polls and stubborn inflation reflect a conversation heard in countless presidential cycles dating back through the centuries. It presumes that the rest of Trump’s second term will follow the traditional path; midterm elections and the gradual phasing-out of a second-term president who is, by definition, something of a sideshow.
The warnings from opinion columnists and Democratic lawmakers about an authoritarian impulse within the administration had been slightly subdued throughout the government shutdown. But when president Trump issued a brief thought on social media on Thursday, anxiety over what the future holds sharpened again. Buoyed by what has been a phenomenally positive few weeks, six Democratic politicians with military backgrounds featured in a video message addressed to all military members warning that the Republican administration is pitting US forces against American citizens along with the refrain: “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.”
On Thursday, Trump responded with: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”, leading to one of the more extraordinary questions asked about a president in the press briefing room on Thursday:
“Just to be clear; does the president want to execute members of Congress?”
“No,” Leavitt said. “Let’s be clear about what the president is responding to. Many in this room want to talk about the president’s response but not what brought him to that response,” she said, stating that the Democrat’s video message encouraged military members “to defy the president’s lawful orders. The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command and if that chain of command is broken it can lead to people getting killed, it can lead to chaos.”
On Capitol Hill, Republicans canvassed for their opinion on the president’s alarming remarks sought to distance themselves. “It was over the top,” muttered Lindsey Graham. “It was inappropriate”, said Don Bacon, the Nebraska congressman and a former brigadier general – who announced this summer that he will not be seeking re-election.
Those comments represent the mildest possible rebuke from two GOP stalwarts who are canny readers of the political tea leaves. Not quite Mutiny on the Bounty but not so long ago, they would not have dared say anything.
For the first time, Trump is hearing murmurs of dissent from within his party.
Maybe Friday’s visit from Mamdani could cheer him up.
