The high summer of Donald Trump

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":5.85,"text":"This time last year, Kamala Harris was cruising towards the White House. (“Enthusiasm is off the charts”, as one headline declared.) Except, to anyone with a political antenna, she wasn’t. Her poll lead was modest, considering that polls tend to overstate Democratic support. She was still the shakiest of public performers. Her running mate Tim Walz dealt in a Regular Guy schtick that was going to wear thin in time. And lo, the pair lost a few months later. Their defeat was said to herald a “vibe shift” — a wider change in public sentiment — towards the right."}],[{"start":45.4,"text":"Sensing when something is too good to be true is a life skill. Well, the antenna is twitching again. Since Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill passed, and the EU signed up to his tariffs, even people I would not have expected have saluted his command of the domestic and world scene. “Like him or not, we have to admit . . . ” is the gist of these conversations. There is some truth here. There is also much that reeks of last August."}],[{"start":76.59,"text":"In all likelihood, this summer is Trump’s peak. Life for the US president goes downhill from here."}],[{"start":83.43,"text":"For one thing, inflation is going to rise. To an extent, it already has. If prices haven’t gone up faster and earlier, that is because some businesses stocked up on inventory from abroad before the tariffs set in. Others chose to absorb the increase in costs for a while rather than pass it on to customers."}],[{"start":105.11000000000001,"text":"Neither of these cushions will be there for long. Nor is there much hope of offsetting the new costs of production with cheaper labour, at least if Trump’s immigration curbs bite. Other things being equal, tariffs on this scale should lead to higher prices over time. Trump can claim to be a world-historical figure in the proper sense of that misused term, in that he has overturned the prevailing thought of the age. That does not mean classical economics has suddenly ceased to apply in practice."}],[{"start":137.19,"text":"One lesson stands out from world politics over recent years: however price-sensitive you think voters are, they are more price-sensitive than that. Yes, Trump supporters are loyal. But a principle is not a principle until it costs you money."}],[{"start":156.34,"text":"Even if prices don’t rise much, there is another reason to believe that things are as good as they will ever be for the president."}],[{"start":165.72,"text":"To a large extent, politics is “thermostatic”. The public’s tastes and values tend to move in the opposite direction to those of the ruling party. When woke culminated in the toppled statues and vilified cops of summer 2020, it was the fourth year of the Trump administration. The backlash — which saw corporate DEI policies pared back and various quasi-academic charlatans go out of intellectual fashion — began under the Democrat Joe Biden. Want to win the culture war? Lose elections."}],[{"start":202.81,"text":"It follows that public sentiment is about to edge left again, especially if Trump overdoes the deportations and the crusade against universities. It is not that Christian nationalists are going to convert to the teachings of Michel Foucault. Rather, voters in the middle who gave Trump a reluctant go might decide, “This is too much”, and tilt the other way. If so, expect it to determine not just how they vote in the midterm elections next year, but what kind of corporate advertising gets them nodding and what kind of satire gets them chuckling. The right’s moment of cultural leadership, in which Sydney Sweeney can make a conservative-coded advertisement for some jeans, and perhaps some genes, is likely fleeting."}],[{"start":252.81,"text":"Lots of mature democracies have a thermostat. But America’s seems to be especially effective, which is why a party seldom wins the White House three times in a row. This is not fickleness. It is societal self-correction and all the more impressive if, as I suspect, people aren’t conscious of doing it."}],[{"start":275.25,"text":"There are other reasons to suspect that we are in the early stages of a vibe shift against the vibe shift. The Jeffrey Epstein fuss of recent weeks. The signs of age in a president nearing 80. The electoral timetable that requires Republicans with ambitions for 2028 to start making moves next year. Authority forgets a dying king, and all that."}],[{"start":302.73,"text":"Also, there is not that much ground for liberals to make up. Too much was read into last November as a cultural breakthrough for the right. Trump won because inflation was high and the Democrats put up a candidate in Harris who struggled to form lucid sentences without a script. Change even one of those two variables, and the outcome probably changes too. Even with both in place, the result was about as tight as most US presidential contests in recent decades."}],[{"start":335.28000000000003,"text":"Genuine “change” elections, when a nation self-consciously commits to a very different course for a lasting period, are rare by definition."}],[{"start":347.37,"text":"In the US, the only definite examples in the past 100 years are Franklin Roosevelt’s win in 1932 and Ronald Reagan’s in 1980. Even if you argue for another (1968, say) that is a tiny number of turning points. Last year was nothing of the sort. Not when the winner ended up with 312 electoral college votes out of 538 and just under half of all votes cast. Those who got their hopes up about Harris have overcorrected in seeing Trump as indestructible. The real lesson is different. In a nation that has been 50-50 all century, the mistake is to ever believe that someone is in the ascendant."}],[{"start":403.15000000000003,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftmailbox.cn/album/a_1754525210_8501.mp3"}