In his Osawatomie speech, former President Roosevelt condemned ``a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.’’ Progressivism meant then the same thing it means today: an attack on the concentration of political power in a small number of people with great wealth.

When Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1936 for a second term as President, Franklin D. Roosevelt folded the progressive tradition (and soon the Progressive Party itself) into the Democrats’ New Deal. FDR complained that ``economic royalists’’ were carving new dynasties: ``The privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself.’’

So it’s not a stretch to hear a present day Democrat, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), charge that ``[President Trump] put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies. Putting our soldiers’ lives on the line for private profit is a gross dereliction of his constitutional duty.’’

James Talarico, who is running this year to become the first Texas Democrat elected to the Senate in Texas since 1988, wrote in a fundraising appeal to supporters, ``We are taking on a handful of billionaires who could funnel up to $200 million into the race to defeat us.’’ A billion dollars is an unimaginable level of wealth for most people: a million dollars one thousand times.

Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running for re-election in Georgia, offered this description at a rally: ``This is a government of, by and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country. They are the elites they pretend to hate.’’

Forbes magazine reports that 2025 -- the first year of President Trump’s second term -- was the ``most lucrative year of his life.’’ Trump ended the year worth a record $7.3 billion, up from $4.3 billion in 2024. The magazine claims, ``No president in U.S. history has used his position of power to profit as immensely as Trump.’’

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) posted on social media that using President Maduro’s ouster to control Venezuelan oil will ``pad the pockets of Trump family and Big Oil companies and delay transition to cleaner energy. Bottom line – using our troops for a private oil grab is corruption at epic scale!’’

Writing in The 19^th News, Grace Panetta evokes a name that is certain to repel voters. She reports that both the Republican and Democratic Senate candidates in Ohio ``have run television ads attacking each other by singling out campaign donations from those in [Jeffrey] Epstein’s orbit.’’ In Dissent, Lindsay Beyerstein makes the flat-out populist case: ``The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world. It’s that there is a billionaire class.’’ Unimaginable wealth produces the world of unimaginable privilege that one can see in the Epstein case: ``The moral of the Epstein files is that nobody should be that rich.’’

It’s a reversal of the famous rule attributed to the French novelist Honoré de Balzac: ``Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.’’ The Epstein version is, ``Behind every great crime there is a great fortune.’’

Nearly 100 years later, President Barack Obama went to Osawatomie and gave his own ``New Nationalism’’ speech. Obama condemned ``the breathtaking greed of a few’’ during the George W. Bush years: ``Those at the very top grew wealthier than ever before from their incomes and their investments. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t. . . . It combined he breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the system.’’

President Obama argued that inequality distorts our democracy. ``It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions.’’ The New York Times recently reported that ``about $1 billion in anonymous money is sloshing through the political landscape in 2026, a staggering sum and yet almost certainly a low-end estimate, given how difficult this money is to trace.’’

Defenders of the current economic system say, ``Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, their jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else.’’ And if it doesn’t trickle down? ``Well, that’s the price of liberty.’’

President Obama observed that ``trickle down’’ is a simple theory . . . one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA.’’ Obama went on to say, ``It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.’’

In his Osawatomie speech, President Obama said that Theodore Roosevelt pleaded for a new nationalism, ``an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.’’ Obama went on, ``For this, Theodore Roosevelt was called a radical. He was called a socialist, even a communist.’’

Imagine that.

Ossoff has suddenly become the focus of attention and speculation among Democrats looking for a new leader the party can rally around in the next presidential election. A leader from a new generation of Democrats who is not part of the tired old Democratic establishment that had its last hurrah in 2020 with the election of Joe Biden. A Democrat who can restore the party’s core values – and the country’s hope -- after the devastation wrought by Donald Trump.

A lot of Democrats are speculating about how the party can reclaim its traditional working class base – the white blue-collar voters who used to be the core of the Democratic Party under Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. Today, those voters are usually described as white non-college-educated Americans who have become core supporters of Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican Party. Those voters tend to be repelled by the ``woke’’ social and cultural values (``diversity, equity and inclusion’’) that attract the educated elite but President Trump is determined to stamp out.

Democrats looking for a working class hero were briefly attracted to Graham Platner, a military veteran and oyster farmer who was running for senator from Maine. Platner was even endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described democratic socialist and the patron saint of old school Democrats. Platner was forced to withdraw from the Senate race after sexual assault allegations, which he denied. Platner’s behavior may have been a little too stereotypically male ``working class’’ to make him a heroic figure in the new Democratic Party.

Democrats are looking for the Great Anti-Trump the party can rally around in 2028. Politics in the U.S. has always revolved around big personalities – Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama. Joe Biden? Feh. Sen. Ossoff? Maybe, if he gets re-elected in Georgia. That’s really what the midterm election is all about – finding a leader who can capture Democratic hearts for the next presidential election.

All the polls show Ossoff leading in Georgia. In Georgia, Lord have mercy! I can hear echoes of Aunt Pittypat from Gone With the Wind shrieking her reaction to news of Yankees marching to burn down Atlanta: ``Democrats in Georgia! How did they ever get in?’’ Actually, there’s a reason: Atlanta. Great urban centers and their suburbs in every state all over the country attract racial minorities as well as young, well educated residents who are likely to be Democrats.

Politicos all over the country are waiting expectantly for a Democratic hero to emerge. It often happens with a memorable speech, like the keynote speech Barack Obama gave at the 2004 Democratic National Convention: ``There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America. There’s the United States of America.’’

Right now, Sen. Ossoff has become famous not because of soaring rhetoric, but because of an insinuating remark Ossoff made in a campaign speech in Georgia. ``[President Trump] golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie to their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.’’ The Internet immediately exploded with interest in Natalie Harp and her relationship with President Trump. Could she be another Monica Lewinsky?

The Pew Research Center reports that today, ``digital devices [smartphones, computers and tablets] are by far the most common way Americans get news.’’

The result has been a lot of baseless speculation about Harp’s position in the White House and her relationship with President Trump. (Social media, where there are no editors or fact checkers, is rife with baseless speculation.)

It has also made Sen. Ossoff the man of the moment for anti-Trump Democrats. Some White House staffers have launched attacks on Sen. Ossoff for criticizing Natalie Harp’s apparently close relationship with President Trump. Ossoff’s response? ``It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week.’’

Right now, Democrats are in the market for a presidential candidate who shows fight, and Ossoff sound eager to fill the need. He said recently on the campaign trail in Georgia, ``I don’t think anything illustrates the times more aptly than the draft-dodging, crook President who has plunged our nation recklessly into a war he knows not how to end or to win.’’

Ossoff was accompanied by a prominent supporter, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Az.), a former astronaut who got into his own feud with the White House last year by advising military service members to disobey unlawful orders. Kelly is also a potential 2028 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Right now, there’s a civil war going on in Democratic primaries between progressive and centrist Democrats. Sen. Ossoff’s response? ``I don’t spend much time thinking about factional Democratic politics. . . . The divide exists more for those people and groups for whom the Democratic primary is the horizon of politics.’’

The divide will also be for Sen. Ossoff if he decides to jump into the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. The Democratic National Committee recently approved the party’s 2028 presidential primary calendar, and it could work out well for Sen. Ossoff if he decides to enter the race. The first primary will be in South Carolina, Georgia’s neighboring state. South Carolina’s Democratic voters are overwhelmingly black, and Ossoff has built strong ties with black voters in Georgia.

Here’s what Sen. Ossoff said in Atlanta a week ago:

``Here we are in Fulton County, where the president sent his spies and his agents to seize your ballots. And why Georgia? Why this obsession with Fulton County? It’s the same reason he’s obsessed with Philly. It’s the same reason he’s obsessed with Detroit. It’s because of the fact that black voters were instrumental to his defeat offends him even more than the defeat itself.’’

The final state on the Democrats’ early primary calendar is Virginia, another southern state with a strong black vote. Virginia also has a lot of highly educated Democrats in the Washington D.C. suburbs. It’s the only southern state that has never once voted for Donald Trump.

The early primary where Ossoff could have a problem might be Michigan, where Democrats have just nominated Dr. Abdul El-Sayed as their Senate candidate, an Arab American highly critical of Israel. Sen. Ossoff is Jewish, and Democrats are increasingly divided over U.S. support for Israel. Ossoff is the descendant of Holocaust survivors and has an ``ironclad’’ commitment to Israel’s survival as a Jewish state. But he has, on occasion, joined other Democratic senators (including Bernie Sanders) in voting against U.S. military aid and arms sales to Israel.

Ossoff is the only Democratic senator running for re-election in a state carried by Donald Trump in 2024.

He may be defining the 2028 race for Democrats by denouncing ``kleptocracy’’ -- rule by President Trump’s billionaire supporters who are indifferent to the suffering of ordinary Americans trying to make ends meet in a challenging economy. It’s pure economic populism – the issue that has defined the Democratic Party since the 1930s.

Sen. Ossoff recently denounced Trump as ``a failed president and a national disgrace.’’ In a February campaign speech, Sen. Ossoff said, ``This is a government of, by and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country.’’

And get this: if Ossoff runs and wins the presidency in 2028, at age 41 he will be the youngest person ever elected President. The current holder of that title, John F. Kennedy, was elected at age 43. Ossoff would succeed Donald Trump, who, at age 82 in 2028, would be the oldest person ever to serve as president.

Sen. Ossoff could even use his name as a campaign slogan to drive home the contrast with President Trump: ``He’ll work his Ossoff for you!’’

President Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term (see the 22^nd Amendment), so that is expected to open the race up in both parties. With Trump, however, you can never be too sure what he will do. He has already started publicly ``joking’’ about seeking a third term.

Every presidential race is dominated by what I call ``the missing imperative’’ -- the quality voters want that’s missing in the incumbent President, especially after two terms in office. Following President Eisenhower in 1960 – who left office at age 70 and had experienced several health crises -- voters were looking for youth, dynamism, and vigor. They elected John F. Kennedy at age 43, the youngest President ever elected.

During the turmoil of the 1960s, the missing imperative was ``order.’’ Richard M. Nixon was a former Congressman, Senator, Vice President and presidential candidate. ABC News ran a documentary called ``The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon’’ in November 1962, shortly after Nixon lost the race for governor of California and announced that his political career was over. (``You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.’’) Nixon was resurrected to run for President in 1968 because, with his extensive experience in government, voters saw Nixon as a candidate who could hold the country together.

We elected Nixon and got Watergate. After that bitter experience, voters wanted morality. They found it in Jimmy Carter, a preacher who promised ``I will never lie to you.’’ But Carter was often denounced as ``wishy washy’’ and ineffectual -- not enough of a leader. Americans went looking for a strong leader with deep political convictions. They found one in Ronald Reagan. Reagan was so popular he got his vice president elected directly after him, something that had happened only once before, when Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson in 1836.

After a President has served for two terms, Vice Presidents typically run for their party’s next presidential nomination and get it (presidential nominations are controlled by party loyalists and party loyalists reward party loyalty). After winning the nomination, vice presidents then lose the election because voters typically want ``change’’ after eight years (Vice Presidents Nixon lost in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984, Al Gore in 2000, Kamala Harris in 2024). That does not bode well for Vice President J.D. Vance in 2028.

The New York Times recently ran a story about how Vance has taken to insulting critics on the left and right with ``Insults, Expletives and Fat Shaming.’’ Vance appears to be, consciously or subconsciously, imitating his boss’s style of politics, calling his critics ``losers’’ and ``scumbags’’ who write ``smug, self-assured bullshit.’’ (The term ``scumbag’’ is a very New York insult, evocative of Roy Cohn, President Trump’s mentor in meanness.)

Donald Trump thrives on attacking and insulting people, even to the point of reviving a smear from the days of the ``Red Scare’’ in the early 1950s. He said last year, ``We cannot allow a handful of communist radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws.’’ What’s missing with Trump is the quality of ``inspiration.’’ That is exactly the quality Democrats should be looking for in the party’s next presidential candidate – someone who appeals to voters’ higher aspirations rather than their baser instincts. We have recently had Presidents of both political parties who have won admiration for offering uplifting political messages – Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Barack Obama.

As it is now, hardly a day passes without front-page news stories about President Trump ``lashing out’’ at his critics, typically on Truth Social, his social media website. Just do a Google search on ``Trump lashing out’’ and you’ll find them: ``Trump lashes out at reports suggesting U.S. is low on munitions,’’ ``Trump lashes out at Oscar winner Michael Moore.’’ Typically, President Trump uses Truth Social to ``lash out,’’ which often operates as a kind of private means of communicating with his more rabid followers. But it creates a mean-spirited and divisive image that can also rally his enemies and suppress his job approval numbers.

What Democrats should be looking for in 2028 is an inspirational candidate, one who appeals to voters’ better nature and makes them ``feel good.’’ Hard-core Democratic partisans, of course, will offer what hard-core partisans always want – a candidate who shows a lot of ``fight.’’ But trying to ``out-Trump’’ Donald Trump by being just as mean as he is may be the wrong strategy for 2028. After two terms of Donald Trump, voters are likely to go for a President who offers more inspiration than invective.

CNN reports that President Trump is enjoying record high job approval ratings in his own party -- higher than the ratings enjoyed by Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama in their parties at the same point in their presidencies. According to Gallup (which has a long history of political polling going back to the 1930s), some presidents in the 20^th century also enjoyed comparably high approval ratings from their own party (Dwight D. Eisenhower from Republicans, John F. Kennedy from Democrats). But Ike and JFK also enjoyed considerable support from the opposition party. That is certainly not true for Trump, who is detested by Democrats (approval ratings in the low single digits).

Recent presidents have seen growing polarization between their own party and the opposing party, a trend that may be reaching a peak with Trump. In the second half of the 20^th century from Harry Truman through Bill Clinton, the difference in job approval between the two parties averaged 38 percentage points. In the 21^st century (George W. Bush through Donald Trump’s two Administrations so far), the average partisan gap has widened to 75 percentage points. The most recent gap? In Gallup’s polling at the end of 2025, President Trump was getting a nearly unanimous 89 percent approval rating from Republicans and a negligible 3 percent approval from Democrats – an enormous 86 percent gap.

Why is this happening? It’s being driven by the rise of identity politics. Partisanship is not just an expression of your opinions. It’s also an expression of your values, which are rooted in your identity. The typical Republican voter today is a working class, non-college educated white male with traditional religious values. The typical Democrat today is what conservatives mockingly call an ``AWFUL’’ – an ``affluent white female urban liberal’’ with a college degree and secular values.

As a result, politics has become more and more ideological – deeply rooted in values, not just casual opinions. Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party into a conservative movement. Moderate Republicans still exist, but they are not honored or valued in Trump’s movement.

In this year’s campaigns, we are also seeing an ideological revolt on the Democratic side, as left-wing Democrats with progressive values are winning Democratic primaries in different parts of the country.

Some are calling themselves ``democratic socialists,’’ the ultimate expression of contempt for President Trump and his policies.

The New York Times Opinion Section recently asked its influential contributors to predict what is likely to happen in the midterm election. UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck noted how ``calcified’’ our politics has become as a result of ideological sorting: ``More Americans see important differences between the two parties than ever before. So if Republicans are dismayed [presumably by President Trump’s policies, like the Iran war] they probably won’t vote for a Democrat – but maybe they stay home instead. There just aren’t that many swing voters, but the few who remain are deciding elections.’’

Most of this fall’s competitive Senate elections are in states that voted for Trump in 2024: Texas, Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Michigan (but not Maine, which voted for Democrat Kamala Harris). In the Trump states, Democratic candidates need to establish a political identity not completely in line with the national Democratic brand in order to keep Trump voters from voting against them. The pundits consulted by the New York Times believed that may happen in a few ``swing states’’ but it is unlikely to happen in at least four states, which is the number Democrats need to win a Senate majority.

In an era of ideological polarization, swing voting is likely to be limited. Objective indicators seem to predict a ``blue wave’’ this fall – Trump’s deep disfavor with voters outside his party, an unpopular foreign war, public anger over affordability, resentment over billionaires running the federal government. Nevertheless, few observers are predicting a huge Democratic swing.

President Trump is taking extraordinary steps to avert a blue wave. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School calls it a White House ``power grab’’ and warns that ``U.S. election infrastructure leaves no room for the President to insert himself. Yet that is exactly what he purports to do now: directing, dismantling and weaponizing agencies so that the Trump Administration can evade its responsibility to ensure the security of elections and the freedom to vote.’’

Ty Cobb, who was a White House attorney in the first Trump Administration, was recently interviewed on the PBC NewsHour. He warned that President Trump may be preparing to declare a national emergency around the time of the midterm election. ``There will be ICE agents at the polls. I think that’s a virtual certainty . . . anything to intimidate minority voters, particularly immigrant voters.’’ Cobb warned, ``I think we need people to come out and vote against that. That’s the best guardrail we have, and that’s the only remaining guardrail in our democracy.’’

The Washington Post reports, based on their polling, that ``Democratic supporters are far more motivated to vote’’ this year and have the advantage of more ``energy on the left.’’ What’s driving it is hostility to Trump. The Washington Post-IPSOS poll found that, while 45 percent of Republican voters ``approve of President Trump strongly,’’ 83 percent of Democrats ``disapprove of Trump strongly.’’

In a separate story, the Post reported that base Republican voters are listless and unmotivated to vote this year. Many of those Republican voters are Trump supporters who show little interest in voting when Trump’s name is not on the ballot. The headline said it all: ``GOP’s base in `scary’ place.’’

In a period of extreme party polarization, the danger is always that one party will go too far and pose a threat to democracy. That is exactly what Democrats accused President Trump of doing in his prime time address to the country on July 16, President Trump tried to make the case to the country that the U.S. election system is vulnerable to fraud and manipulation by sinister forces. And that he was cheated out of re-election in 2020 by those forces, foreign and domestic. Clearly, Trump cannot abide the idea that he is a loser. The problem, as his opponents were quick to point out, was that he was unable to provide any proof for his wild accusations.

President Trump’s obsession with relitigating the 2020 election came across as irrational and alarming. He simply refuses to accept the fact that he lost. ``It does feel a little like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick’’ a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission told the New York Times.

But Trump’s obsession has serious implications. He has staffed his Administration with ``election deniers’’ who are willing to engage his obsession. His appointees refuse to acknowledge that Trump ``lost’’ re-election in 2020 – only that another candidate (Joe Biden) was ``certified’’ as the winner, which allows the implication that Biden’s ``certification’’ was illegitimate.

The only sensible response would appear to be ``whatever – just accept the election result and move on.’’ That is probably what many Republicans would like to do. The problem is that President Trump refuses to ``move on.’’

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) draws a disturbing conclusion from Trump’s obsession: ``It’s a classic characteristic of a personalist authoritarian structure that admission to the inner circle requires self-effacing recitation of a known lie.’’ (Probably very few members of Congress can address a case of abnormal psychology with such academic authority.)

Trump refuses to give the issue a rest. In what may have been a joking moment during his speech to the White House Correspondents Dinner on July 25, Trump told reporters, ``I’m pleased to announce my intention to . . . run for a fourth term as President of the United States.’’ He then put on a ``Trump 2028’’ red cap.

It might not surprise many people if Trump tries to run again. A ``fourth’’ term? Only if you accept his argument that he really won re-election in 2020 and was cheated out of taking office by his enemies.

The United States Constitution is pretty definitive on this issue: ``No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice’’ (22^nd Amendment, ratified in 1951). But if Republicans remain as enthralled by Donald Trump as they are now – and if Democrats veer way off to the left – the GOP might nominate and elect a Trump acolyte (say Donald Jr.) who would allow Trump Sr. to run the country without actually holding the office. Don’t put anything beyond this President.

An Economist-YouGov poll taken in April, during the initial ceasefire, showed only 30 percent of Americans endorsing the view that the decision to go to war with Iran was the right decision. According to Gallup, U.S. public support for military action against Iran ``was among the least favored at the outset of those [wars] Gallup has measured since the 1980s.’’

The U.S. has a powerful tradition of isolationism. We did not even enter World War II after Europe was conquered by the Nazis. The U.S. entered the war only after Pearl Harbor, when the U.S. was attacked by Japan. A Reagan Institute Summer Survey, taken in May and June of this year, found the public split over what the U.S. is now fighting for in Iran. Some 39 percent said the objective is a negotiated settlement that leaves Iran’s current government in place and places ``verifiable limits’’ on its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. About the same number (36 percent) said we were fighting to replace Iran’s Islamic regime with a new government more favorable to U.S. interests.

By two-to-one, Republicans (especially MAGA Republicans) believe we are fighting for regime change, not just a negotiated settlement. By a similar margin, Democrats see the U.S. objective as a negotiated settlement rather than regime change. (Many of those Democrats appear to have forgotten the vicious suppression of protests by Iran’s theocratic rulers.) After the initial ceasefire was announced, President Trump told reporters, ``I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened.’’

Predictably, approval of U.S. military action was ``significantly higher among Republicans (79 percent) than among Independents (26 percent) and Democrats (8 percent).’’

President Trump continues to express resentment at the failure of NATO allies to support the U.S. war with Iran. ``I’m not happy with NATO,’’ Trump said repeatedly. He was especially tough on Spain because of its refusal to allow the U.S. to use its airspace for attacks on Iran. (The current ruling party in Spain is the Socialist Workers Party.) ``Don’t talk to them,’’ Trump advised. ``They’re hopeless. They’re bad people.’’

Nevertheless, the overall impression from the NATO summit and subsequent meeting with Western allies was one of great satisfaction. Why? Largely because of reduced tension as the allies have acceded to Trump’s demands. Despite differences on Iran, the recent NATO summit was a ``love fest’’ between President Trump and the NATO allies. Most NATO countries have increased their military spending under pressure from the U.S. to spend more on defense.

Comments by the allied leaders sounded a lot like the extravagant praise Trump elicited from Cabinet members at their first full Cabinet meeting in June 2017. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Ankara, ``There is a feeling of love in the air.’’ Trump’s response? ``They said, `We love you, sir, we love you.’ These are grown people saying that. Isn’t that nice? There was a love in that room. It was great,’’ President Trump said. ``This was a tremendously successful summit.’’

It happened not because NATO allies agreed with President Trump on everything (certainly not on his demand for a U.S. takeover of Greenland) but because Trump acknowledged the Allies’ independence on key issues that Trump doesn’t care about as much as the Iran war.

One of those issues is Ukraine. Western allies are solidly aligned with Ukraine in its resistance to Russian invasion. After all, the NATO alliance was formed at the beginning of the Cold War in 1949 to counter Soviet expansion and military aggression in Europe. Support for Ukraine is entirely consistent with that historic NATO objective.

President Trump has been somewhat less enthusiastic in his sympathy for Ukraine. It’s another issue where Trump is not fully in line with U.S. public opinion. Americans are overwhelmingly more sympathetic to Ukraine than to Russia. The April Economist-YouGov poll found 62 percent of the American public more sympathetic to Ukraine and only 2 percent to Russia.

President Trump has sometimes been ambivalent about the conflict. Trump admires strongmen, and he seems to recognize in Russian President Putin a fellow strongman. President Trump has occasionally praised Putin, calling him ``smart’’ and ``a strong leader.’’ Trump has even described Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as ``genius’’ and ``savvy.’’

Everyone remembers the cool reception Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky got when he visited the White House in February 2025. At the time, Ukraine’s prospects against Russia looked fairly bleak. Trump urged Zelensky to pursue a ceasefire with Russia and to show more gratitude for U.S. military aid. ``Without us, you don’t have any cards,’’ Trump said.

Thet was then. This is now. Now Ukraine’s prospects look noticeably better, as Russia faces bombardment of major population centers by homemade Ukrainian drones, plus huge troop casualties and a serious crisis of manpower.

Trump likes winners. So when he met with Zelensky this month at the NATO summit in Turkey, the atmosphere was different from what it was last year in Washington. Trump admired Ukraine’s war effort and offered Zelensky’s beleaguered country generous new military assistance in the form of a license to produce U.S.-designed Patriot air defense systems to protect Ukraine from bombardment by Russian ballistic missiles. Ukraine would become one of the few allied countries licensed to produce Patriot anti-missile defense weapons.

``We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriot missiles,’’ Trump said. President Trump, who can’t resist self-congratulation even when complimenting someone else, added, ``Look, [Zelensky’s] been very effective, and he’s had the best equipment because he’s had our equipment.’’

The Save America Act would require anyone registering to vote to present documentary evidence of U.S. citizenship (like a passport or birth certificate) and present a photo ID to election authorities when they cast their ballot. The federal government would have the authority to review state voter files and challenge unauthorized voters.

President Trump has said, ``A state is an agent for the federal government in elections’’ – an assertion that appears to contradict the Elections Clause (Article I, Section 4, Clause 1) of the Constitution that says ``State legislatures will establish the times, places and manner of holding elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate, subject to Congress making or altering such state regulations.’’ The Supreme Court has interpreted the Elections Clause expansively, enabling states ``to provide a complete code for congressional elections, not only as to times and places, but also as to prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, duties of inspectors and canvassers and making and publication of election returns.’’

In other words, the Constitution gives the states full authority over the election process for Congress. According to the House Committee on Administration, ``The Constitution grants Congress a purely secondary role to alter or create election laws only in the extreme cases of invasion, legislative neglect or obstinate refusal to pass election laws.’’ The House Committee describes the Elections Clause as a ``division of sovereignty.’’

President Trump may have an ulterior motive in demanding passage of the Save America Act. Here is how the Director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program describes it: ``It’s to inject distrust and confusion into our elections, both to discourage people from participating and lay the groundwork for calling elections into question after the fact.’’ For President Trump, a Blue Wave this year would be the perfect time to do that.

President Trump posted on Truth Social that unless congress passes the Save America Act, ``The Republican Party will never win another Election. I will, sadly, be the last Republican president.’’ He has often complained that Democrats will cheat in the election, but he has never offered evidence that cheating is widespread (certainly not widespread enough to change the outcome of an election). Just as he has argued, with no proof, that the 2020 presidential election (which he lost to Joe Biden) was stolen.

Meanwhile, President Trump refuses to sign the bipartisan housing bill that congressional Republicans see as their big opportunity to address the affordability issue roiling the electorate this year. Trump’s response? ``Big deal. It’s a yawn. To me, compared to the Save America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.’’

President Trump has said, ``I think the Save America Act is exactly what it says – it’s saving America from crooked elections.’’ Trump called the housing bill ``very bipartisan,’’ but he didn’t mean that as a compliment. ``That means the Democrats like it,’’ he said. Trump likes the Save America Act precisely because it is not bipartisan.

When House Republicans added voter restrictions from the Save America ACT to the Defense Authorization bill – legislation to fund the Pentagon budget that’s considered essential – the defense bill failed to pass on a procedural vote. The Homeland Security bill was stalled for months because it contained voting restrictions, which Republicans eventually had to abandon. Now the House has had to abandon efforts to pass the defense bill and go into recess for the time being.

President Trump has even revived 1950s-era warnings about the communist menace to dramatize the need for voter restrictions. The Soviet Union may be gone, but President Trump sees the communist menace coming from a new source. He said when he spoke at Mt. Rushmore on July 3, ``There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.’’

President Trump called the primary victories of left-wing ``progressive’ Democrats, including several democratic socialists in New York City and Colorado,``the greatest threat to our country since its founding.’’

``They said they’re social democrats. Doesn’t it sound pretty?’’ Trump said. ``They’re actually communists.’’ The Washington Post reports that mentions of ``communism’’ have risen sharply on social media posts and podcasts by right -wing ``influencers’’ and politicians in the past week.

The next big test will come in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary on August 4 – a state that Democrats need to win in order to have a majority in the Senate. The candidate leading in the polls is Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat and former public health official.

Congressional Democrats are worried that left-wing candidates like El-Sayed will help Trump make his case that the progressive surge is being caused by aliens and extremists. But a major factor behind it is anti-establishment anger among Democratic voters frustrated by cautious party leaders in Washington. Primary voters – particularly young Democratic primary voters in big cities like New York, Denver and Detroit who were not around for the Cold War – are voting for fighters who will stand up to President Trump. They are voting for ``the resistance.’’

Michigan is a large state with has a sizeable Arab population. Candidates like El-Sayed enable President Trump to tie his longstanding anti-immigrant rhetoric together with his new anti-communist theme in making the case for the voting restrictions in the Save America Act. ``We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms,’’ President Trump warned last week. Meaning, if we let the resistance have its way.

But Mamdani was only part of the explanation for what happened in New York. It also had a lot to do with growing criticism of Israel in the Democratic Party. Mamdani is a champion of the Palestinian cause and a vigorous critic of what the left sees as Israel’s ruthless suppression of Palestinian rights and interests, and even Palestinian lives. Some New Yorkers tried to denounce Mamdani’s opponents as ``genocide enablers.’’

As it happens, over 30 democratic socialists have won primary elections over the past year, not just in New York, but also in Washington, D.C., Seattle and elsewhere. In large cities all over the country Democratic primaries are exposing real tensions in the Democratic Party, especially over Israel. Mamdani’s candidates won by depicting their opponents as Establishment Democrats, insufficiently critical of Israel.

You can see it in polls of Democratic voters, like the New York Times-Siena College survey this spring which found Democrats now more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis by 60 to 15 percent, a clear break with the party’s decades of strong support for Israel. Republicans are now more sympathetic to Israel by an equally decisive margin (61 to 13 percent), although some anti-interventionist MAGA Republicans have been heard to complain about the U.S. fighting ``Israel’s war’’ with Iran.

Democrats are wary that Republicans will try to use the New York primary results to make the case to voters that Democrats have gone too far to the left in searching for the party’s new identity. At a victory party in New York City on primary night, jubilant Mamdani supporters chanted ``Free, free Palestine!’’ and ``DSA!’’ for Mamdani’s political movement, the Democratic Socialists of America. ``Republicans will very quickly seek to elevate, as they always do, the most radical voices in the Democratic Party,’’ a Democratic strategist warned.

Sure enough, the morning after the New York primary, President Trump sent out a social media message that tried to revive old Cold War fears, warning his followers that ``America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!’’ No one but Trump is really talking about ``communism,’’ of course. Mamdani’s party calls itself ``Democratic Socialist’’ in order to distinguish it from communism, which is not committed to democracy. (Communists endorse a one-party system, ``the dictatorship of the proletariat.’’)

Still, centrist Democrats in Congress are clearly worried. A group of moderate House Democrats, led by Rep. Tom Suozzi of Long Island, N.Y., signed a letter proclaiming, ``We are capitalist, not socialist.’’

A representative of the DSA party released a statement that ``Ending wars, passing Medicare For All, forgiving student loan debt, abolishing ICE and taxing the rich – those are all popular policies.’’

If Mayor Mamdani’s smile can light up a room, President Trump’s scowl can darken it. As it did at a luncheon with Senate Republicans that was supposed to celebrate the passage of bipartisan legislation to address the nation’s affordability crisis. Instead, President Trump got into a shouting match with members of his own party over a war powers resolution curbing the president’s authority to pursue war with Iran. Smiling was not in evidence.

When he addressed the Faith and Freedom Summit a few days after the New York primary, President Trump revived what has always been for Americans a politically potent image of communism as a threat to religion. The Pew Research Center has provided data showing that ``Americans are far more religious than adults in other wealthy nations.’’ By attacking ``Godless communism,’’ Trump is reviving the most serious threat posed by communism to American values – a religious threat, not just an economic or military threat.

Like other left-wing urban politicos, Mamdani thrives in what might be called ``the godless belt’’ of the city: rapidly developing areas crowded with sleek renovations, trendy shops, gyms and hot new restaurants and bars, populated by expensively educated young people with weak religious values. What do they really have in common with older Democrats who lived through the Cold War and the civil rights struggles? Asked if they would like to see the Democratic Party move more to the left, 44 percent of young Democrats but only 18 percent of Senior Democrats said yes in the Times-Siena College poll.

Actually, one thing unites them: both sides of the left-wing generation gap detest Donald Trump. In the poll, 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president. So do 94 percent of Democrats 65 and older.

The generation gap shows up on the issue of Israel. Have Democrats been too supportive of Israel? 63 percent of young Democrats, but only 35 percent of Democratic seniors, say yes. You want to split the Democratic electorate? Talk about Israel.

You want solidarity in the party? How’s this: Has Donald Trump ever said anything that you found offensive? 90 percent of young Democrats say ``Yes.’’ So do 91 percent of senior Democrats.

Why is this happening?

The toughest choice in an election is often not which candidate to support but whether your vote should be driven by the candidates or by the issues. That’s the choice facing voters in Maine this year. The biggest issue in the 2026 midterm is Donald Trump, who’s not running for anything. The midterm gives anti-Trump voters an opportunity to offer exactly what the Constitution provides: a check and balance on presidential authority. If Americans elect a Democratic House of Representatives and Senate, the new Congress will have the authority to deny Trump the ability to get whatever he wants from government, whether it’s imposing new tariffs on imported foreign goods or a gold-encrusted monumental arch greeting visitors entering the capital city.

Those issues will come to a head in Maine this fall, specifically in the Maine Senate race where the Republican incumbent, Sen. Susan Collins, is running for a sixth term in office. Her Democratic opponent, Graham Platner, is a self-styled populist who is trying to make the Maine Senate race a referendum on Donald Trump. On primary day, Platner confronted Collins asking, ``How can she claim to be an independent voice when she votes with Donald Trump 95 percent of the time?’’

Platner has a good reason to say that. In a University of Massachusetts Lowell/YouGov survey of likely Maine voters taken in May, only 38 percent of the state’s likely voters said they had a favorable opinion of President Trump. 59 percent had an unfavorable opinion of Trump, including 95 percent of Democrats. It worked. Platner took 72 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Only 19 percent voted for Gov. Janet Mills (D), who had suspended her campaign six weeks earlier.

The primary really amounted to a test of how much damage Platner is suffering with his own party as a result of negative stories about his personal behavior. If Platner wins in November, the clear answer will be, ``Not much.’’ Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith put it this way: ``Democrats want to win.’’ Implying that Democrats will do whatever it takes to stop Trump. Even nominating a candidate like Platner who makes a lot of voters uncomfortable. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) put the primary results this way: ``[Platner] won the nomination. That was the decision of Maine voters. And I respect that decision.’’

Trump supporters like to say that the Democratic Party today has fallen under the control of what they call ``awfuls.’’ It’s their nasty acronym for ``affluent white female urban liberals’’ – women like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton and Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota in January. Women like that are supposed to have little tolerance for men like Platner, who is dogged by controversies over his past abusive treatment of women (including physically threatening behavior).

Platner has apologized for his past behavior and offers himself to Maine voters as a changed man. He said to his supporters on primary night, ``If you believe as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change. And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it.’’

Well, he once had a Nazi tattoo – the totenkopf or death’s head image associated with the elite Nazi SS units and with some white supremacist groups. He has since had it removed.

Democrats have endured a significant loss of support among white working-class voters (generally taken to mean the non-college educated), and some party strategists see Platner as the answer to their prayers. He enlisted in the Marines after high school and served three combat tours in Iraq. He works as an oyster fisherman – a very blue-collar (and Maine) occupation. He was not born to great wealth or privilege, though he attended prep school and enrolled in college without getting a degree. His mother runs an upscale restaurant to which her son sells oysters. Platner calls himself a progressive populist and is highly critical of the political establishment and the billionaire class. He is running with the enthusiastic endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the progressive icon.

New England was once the homeland of moderate and even liberal Republicans. Several of them bore the cherished name ``Lincoln’’ – among them, former Governors of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee and Lincoln Almond. That tradition survives today in the last remaining Republican elected to Congress from New England – Sen. Susan Collins. New England has trended steadily liberal in recent years as the Republican party has become solidly conservative. In the last three presidential elections, Donald Trump has not carried any New England state.

As a Maine Republican, Platner cannot find Trumpism totally alien. Maine is one of two states that awards an electoral vote to the presidential candidate who carries each of the state’s congressional districts (the other state is Nebraska). Trump has carried Maine’s Second Congressional District three times. The Second District is heavily rural and probably includes more moose than voters. Like most rural areas of the U.S., backwoods Maine is Trump country.

Maine has elected, and re-elected, a very Trump-like Republican governor, Paul LePage (serving from 2011 to 2019). When Gov. LePage endorsed Trump in 2026, he said, ``I was Donald Trump before Trump became popular.’’ Former Gov. LePage is now running for Congress from Maine’s Second Congressional District.

Part of Sen. Collins’ appeal is that, in an era of intense political polarization, she may be the last true moderate in Congress. A veteran Republican strategist called her ``the best cross-party appeal candidate Republicans have fielded anywhere in the last ten years.’’

There is one wild card in the 2026 Maine Senate race: the abortion issue. Justice Brett Kavanaugh very likely cast the deciding vote in the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Court’s 1973 decision that gave constitutionally protected status to abortion rights. When Kavanaugh, who was named to the Court by President Trump, was up for Senate confirmation in 2018, Sen. Collins famously said that that he told her that he considered Roe v. Wade ``settled law.’’ She voted to confirm him and he voted with the majority to overturn Roe.

A Democratic strategist told NBC News that Maine is the only battleground state where ads supporting abortion rights are likely to affect the vote. Three quarters of Maine voters polled last month by the University of Massachusetts and YouGov endorsed the view that women should have the right to get an abortion in every state.

If Platner loses, the Maine Senate election will be widely interpreted as a personal defeat for a flawed candidate. If Collins loses, the Maine Senate election will be widely interpreted as a defeat for President Trump. But resentment of Sen. Collins’ role in the loss of abortion rights will likely have been a key factor turning the state against her after five terms in office.

Last fall, after he succeeded in getting his One Big Beautiful Bill through Congress making his tax cuts and spending policies permanent, President Trump recalled saying, ``Put it all into one bill, and if we get it done, we’re done for four years. We don’t need anything more from Congress.’’ The voters seem to agree. The average level of national voter turnout in presidential elections since 2000 is 57.7 percent of the voting-age population. Voter turnout in midterm elections over the same period has averaged less than half of the eligible population (42.8 percent).

What about the notion that the Constitution creates a system of checks and balances whereby Congress sets the nation’s agenda and the President would be ``only the legal executive, the presiding and guiding authority in the application of the law and the execution of policy’’? That’s the way Woodrow Wilson described the U.S. constitutional system in his textbook, Congressional Government (1885), originally written as his doctoral dissertation at Johns Hopkins University. (Wilson is the only U.S. President who earned a Ph.D.) In Wilson’s view, the President’s veto power was his only check on Congress, or as Wilson put it,``a power of restraint, not of guidance.’’ The nation’s agenda would be set by Congress.

But the days of faceless party functionaries (Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison) are over. In this age of mass media, a President is expected to be a tribune of the people. In a midterm election, there is only one candidate. A midterm is a vote of confidence, or no confidence, in the incumbent. A presidential election gives voters a choice between two options: the incumbent President (or the candidate of the incumbent’s party) and the opposition candidate.

This year, it doesn’t much matter what the opposition Democrats are offering. Even if they win control of Congress, Trump will still be President and the President will continue to control the national agenda.

For example, the White House is issuing a report that aims to restrict government grants across a wide variety of areas – health, environmental protection, science, education -- to topics considered (by the White House) to be consistent with the President’s agenda. There will be no federal spending on ``DEI’’ topics (diversity, equity and inclusion) and no grants to organizations whose goals are deemed incompatible with the White House political agenda, like the American Civil Liberties Union or the National Urban League.

``It means that all grants, not just science grants, are now subject to the rules defined by the White House rather than by a technical agency,’’ the director of an organization that promotes scientific research said.

Some Democrats are concerned about the emergence of left-wing radicals in their party, particularly the growing influence of democratic socialists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). A few moderate House Democrats are even asking their colleagues to take a pledge calling for ``persuasion over purity’’ and declaring that ``we are capitalist, not socialist.’’

But whatever forces divide Democrats this year are much weaker than the one galvanizing force that unites them: hatred of Donald Trump. Just look at the polls. In the late May YouGov-Economist poll, no fewer than 97 percent of Democrats said they disapprove of the job President Trump is doing; only 1 percent of Democrats support Trump. And how are Democrats voting in this year’s midterm? 95 percent say they will vote for the Democratic candidate and only 1 percent for the Republican. Unity like that is rare among Democrats. It can only be explained by an intense hatred of Trump.

Republican unity is not quite as intense. Eighty percent of Republicans approve of the job President Trump is doing while 19 percent (one in five Republicans!) disapprove. Republicans are a little shakier than Democrats. Republicans say they will vote 86 percent for Republican candidates for Congress and 2 percent for Democrats (8 percent say they ``don’t know’’ how they will vote).

The Quinnipiac University poll, taken at the same time as the YouGov poll, shows almost exactly the same results. Among the nation’s Democrats, 97 percent disapprove of President Trump and 96 percent say they will vote for the Democrat for Congress. Again, Republican unity is slightly weaker: 80 percent approve of the job Trump is doing and 86 percent say they will vote Republican in the midterm. Given the state of the economy and criticism of the war with Iran, Republicans may be facing the bigger problem of party unity.

Do problems in the midterm election portend problems in the general election two years from now? Not necessarily. Democrats got a ``shellacking’’ in 2010, President Barack Obama’s first midterm. 2010 was a true ``red wave’’ election. Republicans rallied against Obamacare, and an anti-government (and anti-immigration) ``Tea Party’’ movement broke out across the country. Republicans gained seven Senate seats and a phenomenal 63 House seats in the 2010 midterm.

But the 2010 midterm did not presage anything for the next presidential election. In 2012, Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and the last gasp of the moderate Republican establishment, 52 to 47 percent. Four years later, Donald Trump took possession of the GOP.

Israel started off after World War II warmly embraced by the left. Zionism began in Europe in the late 19^th century as a Jewish counterpart to right-wing ``blood and soil’’ nationalist movements, which were springing up all over the continent. European Jews were mostly on the left politically, and socialism was a major strain of the Zionist movement.

In its early years, Israel warmly embraced socialist policies. Labor was Israel’s major party and collective farms – kibbutzim – were an important way of life. Both the United States and the Soviet Union (countries that had vanquished the Nazis) supported Israel during the early years of the Cold War.

Israel’s alignment with the left began to change after the Six Day War in June 1967. Having won a great victory over invading Arab forces, Israel gained control over territory inhabited by Palestinians and controlled by Arab countries but claimed by Zionists as a Biblical right. Israelis began to be seen by Western liberals as

white Europeans occupying territory belonging to indigenous Third World people – the last European ``settlers’’ claiming such a right.

I once interviewed Israeli general Ariel Sharon just before he became prime minister. He complained that American Jews were losing their Zionism. ``How would you define Zionism?’’ I asked. ``With a single word,’’ Sharon answered: ``Oretz’’ (the Hebrew word for ``land’’). Most Israeli Jews claim that the land given to the Jewish people by God in the Bible is their birthright.

Most Americans today say they favor a ``two state solution’’ (an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel). In fact, Americans favor a two-state solution more than either Israelis or Palestinians do. A territorial compromise along those lines is unacceptable to both sides. The State of Israel was first created in 1948 with a partition of territory that didn’t work out because it was unacceptable to both sides.

It is sometimes assumed that American support for Israel is rooted in pity for Jews victimized by the Holocaust. But American support for Israel increased considerably after the Six Day War, when Israeli Jews were seen as winners, not as victims – particularly at a time when many Americans were frustrated by the stalemate in Vietnam. ``Where is our Moshe Dayan?’’ many Americans asked. American support depends more on admiration for winners than on pity for victims.

Sympathy for Israel has now collapsed among rank-and-file Democrats. Anger at Israel first emerged among young people who were outraged by the racism and discrimination of Israeli occupation policy. The progressive base of the Democratic Party – which includes many Jews -- became deeply critical of Israel, and the rule is that political elites eventually move toward their base. It took a long time because Jewish voters and Jewish financial support are so strongly tied to the Democratic Party, but eventually Democratic Party support for Israel started to weaken.

The May New York Times-Siena College poll asked voters which side they sympathize with more ``in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.’’ Only 17 percent of Democrats said Israel; a majority (57 percent) said the Palestinians. Independents were also inclined to support the Palestinians, though by a smaller margin (44 percent said the Palestinians and 29 percent said Israel). Republicans were far more one-sided – and not for the Palestinians (66 percent of Republicans said they sympathize more with Israel and only 9 percent with the Palestinians).

There is evidence that Democratic politicians are moving toward their base. In a 2025 vote to block an arms sale to Israel, only 15 Democratic senators voted to block the sale. A year later, another resolution to block an arms sale to Israel got 36 Democratic Senate votes. Moreover, several Democrats who may run for president in 2028 told Politico that they would not accept contributions from AIPAC, America’s leading pro-Israel lobby. AIPAC endorsements and contributions are becoming a litmus test for Democrats on the Israel issue. Many progressive Democrats have come to regard AIPAC as poisonous.

There is also trouble for Republicans on the Israel issue – but from the right. President Trump is experiencing a backlash from some conservatives who say his support for Israel in the war with Iran conflicts with his ``America First’’ campaign pledge. Joe Kent, a former counterterrorism official, was quoted as saying about the war with Iran, ``It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.’’ Mark Lynch, who is challenging Sen. Lindsey Graham in the South Carolina Republican primary, says Graham ``is not America First. He is Israel instead.’’

There is some evidence of a Republican division over Israel. Trump voters who identify themselves with MAGA are more pro-Israel, notwithstanding some important defections from the MAGA movement over the war with Iran (commentator Tucker Carlson, former Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, former White House strategist Steve Bannon). In the May Politico poll, Trump MAGA voters are more likely than non-MAGA Trump supporters to believe the Israeli government has too much influence over U.S. foreign policy. And only 19 percent of MAGA Trump voters complain that President Trump is spending too much time on foreign affairs. Among non-MAGA Trump supporters, 40 percent feel that way.

Sam Markstein, a spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, put the Republican Party’s Israel problem issue this way: ``The Democrats have a full blown 105-degree fever. Republicans have a sore throat. . . . We can’t lay down and let the radicalized fringe of the [Republican] Party do to us what happened to the Democrats.’’

An April IPSOS poll for the Washington Post and ABC News found that the view that the U.S. is too supportive of Israel has more than doubled since 2015. It increased from 26 to 66 percent among Democrats, from 20 to 51 percent among Independents and from 7 to 22 percent among Republicans.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken to arguing that the strong military alliance between Israel and the U.S. -- ``an alliance like no other’’ – is the real payoff for Israel for the war with Iran. But some MAGA supporters are unhappy that U.S. military might is being used by another country to fight its war.

President Trump is now making a last-minute demand that more Muslim countries – particularly Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan – should sign the Abraham Accords and normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. Trump recently wrote on Truth Social, his social media site, ``After all the work done by the United States, . . . it should be mandatory that all these countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign on to the Abraham Accords.’’ Several Muslim countries – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco – have already signed the accords and normalized their ties to Israel. Could President Trump get more countries to sign? He even fantasized about getting Iran to join: ``Wow, now that would be something special!’’ the President wrote.

But expanding the Abraham Accords is considered highly unlikely. Palestinians would call such a deal a betrayal of their interests. An anonymous Middle Eastern official told NBC News, ``For us, the most important issue since 2002 has been the creation of a Palestinian state. We made it clear long ago that joining the Abraham Accords would be conditional on a credible path toward Palestinian statehood being established.’’ Many Americans who are now critical of Israel would be sympathetic to that argument.

Though it would be difficult to describe President Trump as pious or saintly, he is launching Freedom 250, a public-private partnership to organize the jubilee and promote a toned-down version of Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism holds that the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian country with explicitly Christian values based on the Bible. Most of the speakers at the prayer event were evangelical Protestants. White born-again Christians accounted for almost a quarter of the national electorate in 2024 and voted 82 percent for Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked those gathered at the Mall to ``pray to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.’’ Hegseth called attention to George Washington’s faith saying ``Let us pray for our nation on bended knee.’’

The event included a Jewish speaker, Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who told the crowd, ``Anti-Semitism is utterly un-American.’‘ On Saturday, the day before the Christian festival, President Trump promoted ``Shabbat 250,’’ an event urging Americans of all backgrounds and faiths to adopt Jewish Sabbath practices (without Jewish theology) as a way to celebrate ``gratitude for our great nation.’’

Americans are unusually religious for people who live in such a wealthy country – far more religious than other wealthy countries. A 2018 study by the Pew Research Center found that ``of 102 countries, the U.S. is the only one with both above average [wealth] per capita and above average frequency of daily prayer.’’ The study found a powerful relationship (as shown in the grafik on the following page): the wealthier the country, the less religious its population, as measured by the percentage of the population who say they pray every day.

Most people in poorer developing countries (for example, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Bolivia) say they pray daily. In wealthier countries (Norway, Japan, Canada) daily prayer is less frequent.

With one important exception: the United States. Across all countries, the frequency of daily prayer averaged 49 percent. In the U.S., over half of Americans (55 percent) said they pray daily. That was closer to Ethiopia (65 percent) than to Great Britain (where only 6 percent of the population said they pray every day).

Pew also researched a slightly different measure of religiosity (``How important would you say religion is in your life?’’). They got the same result: ``Overall, people in wealthier nations tend to place less importance on religion than those in poorer nations.’’ Once again, the United States was the great exception. About twice as many Americans said religion is very important in their lives (53 percent) as said the same thing in Italy (26 percent) and Canada (27 percent). More even than in Israel (34 percent). And a lot more than in Australia (18 percent) and Japan (11 percent).

The United States stands alone as a country of great wealth and strong religious commitment. The question is, why? What explains the unusually high level of religious practice and religious conviction in the U.S.?

It could be, as Christian nationalists argue, the fact that the U.S. was founded 250 years ago by men with strong Christian convictions. But I believe the most convincing explanation was given by my academic mentor, the great political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset.

Lipset argued that people who immigrated to the United States were often seeking religious freedom. They typically came from disestablished churches like the Puritans in 17th century Britain (who lived under the oppressive domination of the Church of England) and more recently, Jews in Czarist Russia (who faced violent religious persecution).

The United States has always attracted dissenters in matters of faith (and still does). Baptists, Methodists, Quakers were all dissenters living under what they saw as the oppressive authority of an established church. While the U.S. is not the world’s only majority Protestant country, it is the only country dominated by people who espouse what Europeans would call dissenting (as opposed to established) faiths.

People who are seeking religious freedom tend to have strong religious convictions and take their religious values very seriously. They pass those values and convictions on to future generations. That’s how religious values (such as adopting a church affiliation, daily prayer and regular churchgoing) became so ingrained in American culture.

One of the founding principles of the United States, embodied in the Constitution, was ``no establishment of religion’’ and no established church. With strong laws and norms against religious persecution, the commitment to religious freedom appears to be weakening over time. That is exactly what may be happening now.

While religious commitment remains relatively stronger in the U.S. than in other wealthy countries, the Gallup poll has identified ``a 17 point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life – from 66 percent in 2015 to 49 percent in 2025 -- ``the largest drop Gallup has recorded in any country over any 10-year period since 2007.’’

As a result, attitudes [toward religion] in the U.S. ``are drawing closer to those in other advanced economies.’’ Which may explain the pressure from conservatives that we saw last weekend for ``A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving.’’ As well as the concern among liberals that conservatives want to make evangelical Protestantism the established church of the United States. The quote from a liberal protester splashed across the front page of Monday’s Washington Post said, ``I don’t want to live in a country that tells me how I have to worship my God.’’

Given the formidable unity of the Republican Party today, congressional Republicans have never provided much of a check and balance on President Trump’s power. They’re too intimidated by Trump’s threats to run challengers against them in Republican primaries and end their political careers.

With the U.S. Supreme Court now firmly controlled by conservatives, the federal courts don’t provide much of a check and balance either. For the past year and a half, most Democrats have believed that their best chance of stopping Trump in the 2026 midterms would be by winning a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Now that may be changing. President Trump’s sharply declining popularity (below 40 percent approval in the latest national polls) and the unpopularity of his policies on the economy and the war in Iran may change those odds and end up hurting Republicans more in the Senate than in the House.

Democrats are beginning to dream about the 2026 midterm looking like the 2006 midterm, which was also held under an unpopular Republican President (George W. Bush). Bush’s job approval rating in 2006 was about the same as Trump’s is today (38 percent). And the war in Iraq was about as unpopular as the war in Iran is today. In the 2006 midterm, Democrats gained six seats in the Senate and 31 seats in the House of Representatives, ending Republican control of both chambers. 2006 gave Democrats their first House majority in twelve years.

I have a keen memory of the 2006 midterm election. Democrats won on a huge wave of antiwar sentiment. I was working with the CNN political unit, which won an Emmy for its coverage on election night. The genius behind the Democrats’ victory was Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the [House] Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Emanuel went on to become President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, then served two terms as Mayor of Chicago and later, President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan. The chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2026 election is Rep. Suzan DelBene (WA-1). Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the 2026 election. Former chairman Emanuel, who made his national reputation in the 2006 midterm, is reported to be considering a run for President in 2028. Emanuel’s political savvy could easily match that of anyone in Trump’s army.

Mindful of the similarities between the 2006 and 2026 midterms, J.B. Poersch, who runs the Senate [Democratic] Majority PAC, said, ``There’s a very unpopular President, there’s war on, and it’s a really hard Senate map.’’ Democrats need to hold all their Senate seats, including seats in Georgia and Michigan, which were Trump states in 2024. Republicans need to hold only one Kamala Harris state (Maine). Democrats will also need to take four currently Republican seats. It won’t be easy. But it wasn’t easy for Democrats to flip Bush states in 2006 either.

You would expect Republicans to be more vulnerable in the House where their majority is only five seats. But President Trump is resorting to some unusual tactics to keep the House Republican majority. He certainly knows that if Democrats control the House, they will do everything possible to sink his agenda and will almost certainly impeach him (as they did in 2019 and 2021). Trump has taken the unprecedented step of pressuring a strong Trump state (Texas) to redraw congressional district boundaries in the middle of the decade in order to create more Republican-friendly congressional districts. Democrats have been fighting back in blue states by creating more Democratic districts in their own territory, like California.

There’s a reason why mid-decade redistricting may work for Republicans. 23 states have Republican ``trifecta’’ governments (Republican majorities in both legislative chambers and a Republican governor). Democrats have only 16 trifectas, including Virginia. In Virginia, Democrats fought back by putting a redistricted congressional map on the ballot in a special statewide referendum, where it passed narrowly. The result would have reduced the number of Republican-inclined congressional districts from five to one. But a state court nullified the vote because it failed to follow the mandated procedure for amending the state constitution.

Some out-of-state Republicans are even trying to pass a ``Make D.C. Square Again’’ Act that would return heavily Democratic areas in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., to the District of Columbia, which ceded those areas to Virginia in 1846. It seems that all’s fair in the redistricting wars.

Since the Supreme Court recently handed down a decision outlawing racial redistricting, several strongly Republican southern states are proposing to create new congressional district lines more favorable to Republicans (i.e., districts with large southern white majorities).

President Trump seems determined to do everything possible to protect his political advantage. Including making certain that Congress remains under his control. But that’s not the way democracy is supposed to work. In a democracy, the voters choose their representatives. Redistricting allows representatives to choose their voters. As Virginia’s new Democratic governor said, ``My focus as governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November in the midterm elections because in those elections we – the voters – will have the final say.’’ Partisan redistricting is a way of rigging the system so that the outcome is assured.

President Trump is trying the rig the system to ensure Republican majorities. Democrats are saying, ``If Republicans want to play that game, we can play it, too.’’ Imagine a system in which all congressional districts are one-party districts. The outcome of every election would be predetermined and democracy would be a joke. Republicans could have won the 2006 midterms and the Iraq war could have gone on for years, public opinion be damned. The only changes would be registered in relatively low turnout party primaries, which typically pull the parties to the extremes.

There’s a reason why Senate elections may be more responsive to public opinion than House elections: Senate elections get more media coverage. Most House races are seen as ``local.’’ Incumbents tend to be familiar local figures; they march in parades and go to weddings and funerals; they do favors for constituents; voters see them as ``our guy (or gal)’’ in Washington. Challengers are typically invisible, and people don’t vote for somebody they’ve never heard of and know nothing about. Senate elections are more often driven by national issues. And have televised debates.

Typically over 90 percent of House incumbents get re-elected (97 percent in 2024, 94 percent in 2006) Senate re-election rates are slightly smaller (88 percent re-elected in 2024, 79 percent re-elected in 2006). The ``blue wave’’ in 2006 brought a net Democratic gain of 31 seats in the House and six Senate seats. The big news coming out of the 2006 election was that the majority party in both chambers shifted from Republican to Democratic – an outcome that would thrill Democrats (and enrage President Trump) this year.

The combination of an inconclusive war, high energy prices, a shaky economy and an unpopular President should produce a heavy turnout of angry voters this year, with their anger focused on the President’s party. That’s the formula for another ``blue wave’’ like the one in 2006. The question for 2026 is whether Trump can use his army of followers and their mastery of the legal rules and procedures to prevent that from happening – and whether voters would accept an outcome as fair if it fails to register their anger.

Shelley’s sonnet, however, was far from a tribute to a powerful ruler. It was about the evanescence of power and the ravages of time. The poem tells the story of a traveler who encounters a colossal ruin:

``Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand / Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, / and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.’’ Who was this fearsome oppressor?

``And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’’

But what of ``his works’’ is there to see? The poet continues,

``Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.’’

Shelley tells us nothing about Ozymandias’s rule, but his reference to the statue’s frown and ``sneer of cold command’’ suggest that he was a cruel despot.

Power is fleeting, the poem says. Even for those ``whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command’’ are preserved in stone. The ruined and lifeless statue now stands as a warning to aspiring tyrants: ``Sic transit gloria mundi’’ – “Thus passes the glory of the world.’’

From the evidence of the colossal statue in the desert, one is led to conclude that Pharoah Ozymandias was pursuing``the glory of the world.’’ He invites the world to ``Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’’ Not unlike the current President who threatened ``the destruction of an entire civilization [Persian]’’ if Iran did not make a peace deal. And whose desire for wealth and glory seem excessive for a democratic leader.

Donald Trump wants to be surrounded by gold, crystal and marble. He rode downstairs on a golden escalator when the first announced he was running for President in 2015. He has created a tropical palace for himself at Mar-a-Lago, a place of pilgrimage for his followers. He is trying to remodel the White House – often called ``the people’s house’’— to look as much as possible like Mar-a-Lago.

The President’s Oval Office – the symbolic center of Democratic governance – is cluttered with gilded bric-a-brac. Trump has uprooted the historic White House Rose Garden and replaced it with a patio suitable for ladies in high heels who like to dance at parties.

President Trump has torn down the entire East Wing of the White House in order to replace it with a gigantic ballroom – overshadowing the rest of the White House -- in which he can hold celebratory events and lavish ceremonies. The trappings are less suitable for a democratic leader than for a Roman emperor. And for the American people? Instead of gladiators and ``games,’’ President Trump is planning to have an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout on the White House lawn to celebrate the country’s 250^th anniversary (and his own 80^th birthday).

President Trump has added his name to the Kennedy Center for the Arts -- now the ``Trump Kennedy Center.’’ He plans to add his signature to the currency. He is also planning a ``National Garden of American Heroes,’’ a sculpture garden with 250 statues of notable figures from American history including Founding Fathers, political figures, business leaders, athletes and popular culture icons (Will Michael Jackson make the list?).

President Trump has accepted the gift of a private jumbo jet from a wealthy Arab principality. He is reported to be angling for the Palm Beach International Airport in Florida, where he often flies to Mar-a-Lago, to be renamed the Donald Trump International Airport.

President Trump has plans to build a gigantic ``victory arch’’ between the Lincoln Memorial and the Arlington National Cemetery -- the nation’s most hallowed ground. ``Victory’’ over what? Who knows?

President Trump was apparently inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which he saw when visiting Paris for Bastille Day. The French Arc de Triomphe was built to celebrate Napoleon’s military victories and later to honor the memory of French soldiers who fought and died for the Republic.

At a height of 250 feet, the U.S. arch would be taller than the Arc de Triomphe. President Trump promised that the U.S. arch would top the French arch by ``a lot.’’ When asked what victories the U.S. arch would celebrate, Trump said about France, ``The only thing they have is history’’ (actually quite a bit of it). Asked by a U.S. television reporter whom the American monument would be built to honor, Trump pointed to himself and answered, ``Me.’’

There exists an old and no longer much heard adjective that describes President Trump’s inclinations. He behaves in a ``vainglorious’’ manner, meaning ``signifying empty glory’’ or ``worthless boasting.’’ Trump is probably the most vainglorious president this country has ever had. In a Washington Post-ABC News-IPSOS poll, only 28 percent of Americans said they supported the idea of building a triumphal arch. Trump’s proposal for a huge new White House ballroom was opposed by a margin of two to one (56 to 28 percent). Printing Trump’s signature on the currency was disapproved by an even bigger margin (68 to 12 percent opposed). In an Economist-YouGov poll, 66 percent of the public said they disapprove of adding Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center; only 18 percent approved.

A Fox News poll found that 60 percent of voters do not think Trump has ``the temperament to serve effectively as President.’’ What about his policies? In the Washington Post-ABC News-IPSOS poll, 61 percent said that using military force against Iran was a mistake. That’s about the same number who said the war in Iraq was a mistake in 2006, shortly before Democrats won control of both houses of Congress in that year’s midterm election.

It took three years for the war in Iraq to reach a comparable level of disapproval with the war in Iran today. According to Gallup, Americans finally turned against the Vietnam War in 1971, six years after the war was decisively escalated by the U.S. It only took two months for the Iran war to reach that level of unpopularity. Even though, according to the Pentagon, only thirteen American service members have so far been killed. Americans know about ``forever wars’’ in faraway places. After all, Trump ran against such wars.

Trump’s vainglorious tendencies are causing a lot of Americans to lose confidence in the President and his policies. What is especially damaging is that President Trump’s policies so explicitly favor the very rich. Not just his economic policies but also his social policies that offer benefits and opportunities to wealthy individuals, especially those who help finance Trump’s vainglorious escapades. Trump boasts that his ballroom project is being paid for with private donations rather than public funds. As a result, the very rich are bound to get special attention simply because they feed Trump’s vanity.

That is driving a wave of Democratic hostility to the very rich and boosting Democratic candidates with a populist anti-Establishment message. The very rich provide an easy target for President Trump’s enemies. And for critics of the Democratic Party Establishment as well. The very rich are resented, not because they have a lot of money, but because they are out of touch with the less fortunate. Especially when the very rich behave in a vainglorious manner.

A number of recent presidential races have been close, with the winner decided by less than 3 percent of the national popular vote (2000, 2004, 2016 and 2024). In two of those races (2000 and 2016), the winner of the national popular vote (Democrats Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016) lost the electoral college and therefore the election (to Republicans George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016).

That has happened five times in U.S. political history: 1824 (Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but John Quincy Adams won the election, which was decided by the House of Representatives), 1876 (Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the election after a deal was made to end Reconstruction following the Civil War) and 1888 (incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by less than 1% and lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison in the electoral college). According to one calculation, “In elections where the popular vote margin is less than 3 percent,’’ it’s likely that the loser of the popular vote will win the election (i.e. will prevail in the Electoral College) about one in three times. As noted above, that actually happened in two out of four close elections in this century.

If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives this fall, as looks increasingly likely, they will move quickly to impeach President Trump (for the third time). And Trump’s MAGA base is starting to look shaky.

Right now, the midterm election this year is beginning to resemble a blue wave. President Trump’s approval ratings have been declining all year, especially following the invasion of Iran by the U.S. and Israel. Trump’s popularity has now dipped below 40 percent, a dangerously low level for an incumbent president who will be in office for nearly three more years. He is likely to see Republican members of Congress turn against him and fail to support his more controversial policies. President Trump’s record of winning special elections this year has been pretty dismal.

It’s reached the point where Democrats are now talking about winning a majority of the Senate as well as the House. Winning control of the Senate has always been seen as a longshot for Democrats in 2026 because so many Senate seats are up in Trump states (23 Senate seats in states carried by Donald Trump in 2024, 10 in states carried by Kamala Harris). But as Nate Cohn recently wrote in The New York Times, ``If a blue wave materializes, Democrats have a chance to ride it to Senate control.’’

President Trump himself set off the redistricting wars by pressuring states where he is strong to take the unusual step of mid-decade redistricting in order to shore up his congressional support. Following Trump’s orders, Texas has created five new Republican-leaning congressional districts. In a democracy like the U.S., voters are supposed to choose the politicians. But in redistricting, politicians choose the voters – and politicians always want constituents whose support they can rely on. Redistricting is President Trump’s insurance policy if his support in the House weakens.

With Trump’s unpopularity growing, Democrats see an opportunity to take him on. Which is exactly what they did in in Virginia by fighting back in the redistricting wars. Virginia Democrats sponsored a referendum to redistrict the state for the fall midterm election. It worked – narrowly (51.5 percent of Virginia voters favored the Democrats’ redistricting plan).

Virginia went into the special election with six congressional districts that elect Democratic Representatives and five that elect Republicans. As a result of the mid-decade redistricting, Virginia may now end up with ten Democratic districts and just one Republican district (the ``Fighting Ninth’’ in the far western edge of the state, a rural white Appalachian district which votes like solidly Republican West Virginia next door).

Virginia, normally a decorous state, has put itself at the center of the country’s redistricting wars. It’s a southern state – formerly a slave state that included the capital of the Confederacy. Under the leadership of Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., Virginia embraced a policy of ``massive resistance’’ to school desegregation after the U.S. Supreme Court banned school segregation in 1954. Several public schools in various parts of the state actually shut down rather than integrate.

But Virginia also has a large constituency of well educated voters, including many federal government employees, in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C. Virginia is the best educated southern state and one of the ten best educated states in the U.S. (as measured by the percentage of voters with a college degree). Education has become a key defining factor in political partisanship (the often-discussed ``diploma divide’’ – college educated Democrats versus white working class Republicans). In the last three presidential elections, Virginia never once voted for Donald Trump.

Some Republicans are supporting ``retrocession,’’ an effort to return heavily Democratic parts of Northern Virginia to the solidly Democratic District of Columbia and ``Make D.C. square again’’ (look at a map). (Congress originally acted to cede those areas back to Virginia in 1846.) By calling for ``retrocession,’’ Republican activists want Virginia to expel Democratic voters in order to keep them from interfering in state politics.

The Virginia redistricting battle has now gone to the state courts, where Republicans have filed an emergency motion to nullify the April 21 redistricting vote. So far, the national redistricting wars look like they may end up with offsetting gains by both political parties, with Texas and North Carolina (and possibly a few other states) gaining new Republican House seats and new Democratic seats in California and Virginia (and possibly a few other states). President Trump is known to exploit every political advantage he can to increase his power, and Democrats are responding in kind.

Abigail Spanberger, Virginia’s new Democratic governor, recently signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The Compact has now been signed by 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, with a total of 222 electoral votes, near the majority of 270 needed to win the presidency. States that signed the Compact agreed to deliver their states’ electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote no matter how their own states voted.

Under the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures decide how presidential electors are chosen. The purpose of the Compact is to ensure that the candidate who wins the national popular vote is elected president. That’s why it will go into effect only when states with a majority of the electoral college (i.e., 270 electoral votes) have signed on. The Compact guarantees an electoral college majority to the winner of the national popular vote (NPV).

Think about what would have happened if the Compact had been in effect in the 2024 election. In 2024, Donald Trump carried the national popular vote by a scant one and a half percent (49.8% to 48.3%). The Compact would have obligated each of the states that signed the pact to cast all of its electoral votes for Trump, no matter how the state’s voters actually voted. One of those states was California, the nation’s largest state, with 54 electoral votes in 2024; California signed the pact in 2011. California voters chose Democrat Kamala Harris (a Californian) over Republican Donald Trump by 58.5 percent to 38.8 percent (i.e. not even close). Under the terms of the NPV Compact, all 54 California electoral votes would have gone to Donald Trump, the winner of the national popular vote.

Do you think the voters of California would have allowed this to happen, that is, would they have stood by to see their votes for President simply ignored because of the way the rest of the country voted? As someone who lived and voted in California for many years, I doubt it. The cry, ``To hell with the National Popular Vote Compact’’ would have been heard throughout the state (and very likely the land). ``We will not stand by and see our votes ignored.’’

The are also some technical and administrative problems with the NPV Compact. Different states have different procedures for tabulating their popular votes. And some states may not tabulate them at all (``States rights!’’). Some states use ranked-choice voting if no candidate gets a majority of first choices. Would a state with ranked-choice voting report only a candidate’s first choice votes, or the candidate’s total votes after second, third and fourth choices (and so on) are calculated?

The National Popular Vote system would almost certainly change the nature of our presidential campaigns. The Electoral College system gives candidates a powerful incentive to concentrate their campaigns—and their campaign spending – on a few hotly contested swing states that could vote either way.

In 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice found that two thirds of the general election campaign events took place in just six swing states (Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Michigan). By swinging one way or the other, those voters would decide the election. Campaigning to swing voters rather than hard-core voters meant addressing issues with broad appeal rather than appealing to ``us’’ over ``them.’’ Swing voters generally abhor divisiveness.

If the election is determined by the national popular vote, candidates would suddenly discover a powerful incentive to go where the voters are, that is, to densely populated states like California, Texas and New York – states currently ignored but whose votes would quickly rack up a candidate’s national vote total. There would be less of an incentive to concentrate the campaign on wavering voters in swing states. Campaign spending would go up because television markets in the big states (i.e., states where the voters are) are very expensive.

In order to pump up their national vote total, candidates would be more likely to focus on hard-core partisan issues that bring out the party base (and the opposition). If the election is determined by the national popular vote, the game will be to drive up turnout and the campaign becomes even more a war between ``us’’ and ``them.’’ Passive and weakly committed ``swing voters’’ can be ignored. They are less likely to vote for you or against you if they don’t care very much.

When you have a candidate like President Trump who stirs fervent support and strong opposition, the campaign becomes more intense and more exciting. And turnout goes up. As it has been doing for some years now. For both parties, politics, like war, is becoming more existential.

It was an unusual war. It never had the support of the U.S. public – not at the beginning or the (apparent) end of the fighting. Congress was not consulted and never gave its approval, as required by the U.S. Constitution. Congressional Democrats were highly critical of the cost, which ran to about $1 billion a day just for weaponry. Influential figures in Trump’s MAGA political base opposed the war from the outset. President Trump was shocked by the fact that major U.S. allies like South Korea and Australia did not rally to support the U.S. in wartime. Actually, the President never really asked for their support. But he still expressed disappointment that major allies failed to rally to the U.S. cause without being asked.

President Trump expressed particular resentment over the lack of support from NATO, musing at one point whether opposition to a U.S. takeover of Greenland might have been a factor. He wrote on his social media account, ``NATO wasn’t there when we needed them, and they won’t be there if we need them again. Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run piece of ice.’’ Trump tried to acquire Greenland, but NATO resisted. In Trump’s view, the Iran war looked like payback time for NATO. (Payback is a concept Trump lives by).

Despite Trump’s claim of total victory, the U.S. did not achieve most of its war goals. We did not end Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, which has a major impact on worldwide oil and gas prices. (Normally, about 25 percent of the world’s oil and gas shipments passes through the Strait of Hormuz every day). More than 500 pounds of enriched, bomb-grade uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, remain buried in underground vaults in Isfahan, Iran. ``They will either give it to us or we’ll take it out,’’ Secretary Hegseth has pledged. It could take hundreds of U.S. Special Operations troops to do that, at the risk of high casualties. Asked how the uranium would be removed, Hegseth answered, ``That’s something the President is going to solve.’’

President Trump was particularly annoyed by the fact that the Iranian people did not take the opportunity to rise up and overthrow an abusive authoritarian government that had murdered tens of thousands of Iranian protesters less than a year ago. Trump believed that Iranians, particularly young Iranians, ``would be willing to suffer in order to have freedom.’’ The evidence? Trump said, ``We’ve had numerous intercepts: `Please keep bombing’ – bombs that are dropping near their homes -- `Please keep bombing. Do it.’’’

Iran is governed by an authoritarian theocracy, which came out of the 1979 revolution. The Iranian revolution, led by Muslim clerics, overthrew the authoritarian government of the Shah, who governed with the support of the United States and received U.S. protection. For many Iranians, it was a bitter choice between a foreign adversary and a domestic tyranny. The U.S. quickly dropped its demand for regime change in Iran as a war objective.

It didn’t help when President Trump threatened to do something no military power has threatened to do since Nazi Germany in World War II – embrace a policy of genocide. Trump wrote on his website, ``A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen but it probably will.’’ The President was threatening to destroy 3,000 years of Persian civilization going back to Cyrus the Great, just as the Nazis aimed to destroy Jewish civilization in Europe (and nearly did). When the cease fire agreement was declared, an Iranian engineer told The New York Times, ``The issue is that the Islamic Republic is still in power.’’

Trump’s reckless language – violent profanity – may have conveyed the impression to Iranians that they were dealing with a lunatic whose violence knew no limits: ``Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!’’

After President Trump threatened to attack bridges and power plants in Iran – public works that have civilian uses as well as military significance – legal experts warned that such a policy could violate international law. Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale Law School and former State Department legal adviser, warned the Trump Administration, ``International humanitarian law protects from attack objects indispensable to the survival of civilians. So if implemented, the attacks Trump threatens could constitute war crimes.’’ Trump once told The New York Times in January, ``I don’t need international law.’’

President Trump offered a contemptuous criticism of the Iranian regime much like the one he made to Ukranian President Volodomyr Zelensky when he visited Washington in February. Trump wrote on his website,``The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short-term extortion of the world by using international waters.’’ Trump seems to admire rule by strongmen like Vladimir Putin in Russia, which is something the U.S. Constitution was designed to prevent. But the Iranians do have one card and they know how to play it: energy prices. As Laurel Rapp of Chatham House in London has written, ``Rising gas prices and concerns about inflation are the two most visible consequences of the war today. And analysts believe that further delayed financial costs are coming. . . . Financial markets may be less resilient to additional geopolitical shocks, a metric the Trump Administration watches closely. Such a scenario would present a real threat to Republican midterm hopes.’’

Even if the United States takes control of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the costs of clearing the Strait of mines, drones and missiles and making it safe for passage will be high. While the U.S. is less dependent on Iranian oil than other countries, the price of oil and gas cannot be controlled by the U.S. Democrats see the ``affordability’’ issue as their best hope for winning control of the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate this fall.

A Democratic Congress would be President Trump’s worst nightmare (and the Iranians know it). A Democrat-controlled House would move quickly to impeach President Trump -- for the third time. Trump was impeached twice during his first term, in 2019 and 2021. He was acquitted by the Senate both times and would likely be again, given the two thirds Senate majority required to convict. But the economy and the war have made Trump a far less popular president than he was in his first term. His enemies in Iran understand American politics and know how to make life difficult for a U.S. Administration.

Aaron David Miller, an experienced Middle East negotiator and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that Iran believes ``they hold the cards amid `dysfunction and chaos in U.S. national security decision-making.’’’ In other words, Iran believes it holds the political edge, though certainly not the military edge, in the conflict.

CNBC television reports it this way:``Higher earning consumers, encouraged by rallying stock holdings and elevated property values, are splashing out on vacations and premium goods. . . . On the other hand, after years of higher than ideal inflation rates, lower-income cohorts are struggling to afford necessities.’’ The ``Gini Index,’’ which measures the concentration of wealth, had been dropping to ``multidecade lows’’ as a result of pandemic stimulus measures.

Following a slight improvement in 2020 and 2021, the index of inequality reached a 60-year high in 2025, when the share of national income going to workers declined to its lowest level in more than 75 years. ``The average non-farm business worker is seeing an increasingly small slice of an economy that has largely boomed over the last 15 years.’’ According to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, ``This is not a cyclical or temporary phenomenon. This is a structural, fundamental issue.’’

In its February 2026 ``Roundup of Money in Politics,’’ the Brennan Center reports that, since he took office for a second term in 2025, ``President Trump has added approximately $3 billion to his net worth.’’ Two thirds of those gains came from his family’s cryptocurrency venture (World Liberty Financial) and ``hundreds of millions more’’ from international real estate deals. The scale of President Trump’s enrichment is unique even if few of his dealings are illegal given that the President, like members of Congress and Supreme Court justices, is ``exempt from ethics rules that bind most other federal officials.’’ Eric Petry, counsel to the Brennan Center for Justice, writes that, since returning to office, Donald Trump’s net worth has increased by almost $3 billion. According to Petri, President Trump ``has enriched himself financially on a scale that dwarfs even the most infamous scandals in American history.’’

The Brennan Center has produced a chart showing the scale of ``Notable U.S. Corruption Scandals’’ in order to make that comparison. The Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s, which resulted in a cabinet official going to prison, involved bribes totaling $27 million (in today’s money). Watergate involved bribes totaling $22 million in illegal campaign contributions and hush money. The Credit Mobilier scandal in the 1860s involved bribery and inflated construction costs for the Union Pacific Railroad totaling $1.4 billion (in today’s money) – roughly half the increase in President Trump’s net worth in 2025.

For much of U.S. political history, resentment of wealth has been a major issue. It has never really been ideological. Unlike most Western democracies, the U.S. has never had a mass socialist movement, largely because the U.S. working class – at least working class white men – did not have to struggle for political rights. There was, of course, an intense political struggle over the right of labor unions to organize in the early 20^th century that gave rise to the New Deal Democratic majority.

Corruption and ill gotten financial gains have been persistent political issues. President Trump’s financial wheelings and dealings are essentially comparable to the behavior of Americans of great wealth during the Gilded Age of the late 19^th century.

The corruption scandals of the Gilded Age gave rise to the political reforms of the Progressive Era before World War I (including the establishment of the civil service system, the Federal Trade Commission and the graduated income tax in 1913).

President Trump is clearly concerned about this year’s midterm election – enough that he is calling for extraordinary measures to try to ensure that Republicans keep control of Congress (such as his desire to``nationalize’’ the midterms and call on states to use unconventional mid-decade redistricting as a way to create more Republican House districts). Trump will lose a lot of clout if Democrats win a majority in the House this year, which seems more and more likely as the Iran war loses public support.

There is even the likelihood that Trump will be impeached by a Democratic House (for the third time). Democratic political strategist James Carville has predicted that President Trump will resign and turn the presidency over to Vice President Vance. (Carville has produced a video titled ``Trump Will Chicken Out of the Presidency’’). However, resignation seems highly unlikely because it would discredit everything Trump has done in the White House. He clearly enjoys the ``perks’’ of the presidency, such as having his name added to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and putting his signature on the nation’s currency. And he certainly would not want to end up in the same category as Richard Nixon, another Republican President who resigned in disgrace.

As President, Donald Trump is systematically disabling every check and balance on presidential power. All three of them, to be precise.

The first is Congress, which, under Article I of the Constitution, is the principal branch of government. The Constitution establishes Congress as ``the First Branch’’ of government with power over legislation, taxation, war and peace. No less an authority than President Woodrow Wilson — scholar, university president and 28th President of the United States (1913-1921) — published a famous textbook in 1885 describing the U.S. system as ``Congressional Government.’’

President Trump seems to regard Congress as a nuisance. He is establishing presidential pre-eminence over American government. The newly fashionable Theory of the Unitary Executive, which many of President Trump’s intellectually inclined supporters embrace, holds that the President of the United States, the only government official elected by the entire country, possesses total executive authority. There are no ``independent agencies.’’ Not even the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which functions as the U.S. central bank and controls the money supply.

President Trump has targeted Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, for removal because he has defied President Trump’s demand to juice the economy by lowering interest rates. Powell’s term as chairman ends on May 15, although he will remain a member of the Federal Reserve Board until 2028. President Trump continues to support a Justice Department criminal investigation of Chairman Powell concerning Powell’s testimony to a Senate committee regarding renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington.

As long as Republicans control both houses of Congress (even by excruciatingly tiny majorities) President Trump is likely to have his way. The reason is political. Trump has overwhelming power over the Republican Party. Any Republican member of Congress who displeases President Trump could find himself facing a Trump endorsed (and well financed) Republican primary opponent and fighting for political survival at the next election.

Trump’s power over Republicans in Congress is so strong that he can persuade the Republican majority to support policies that Republicans might normally find unacceptable, like high tariffs. A tariff, after all, is a national sales tax, and resistance to tax increases has long been a deeply embedded Republican Party principle.

That is why President Trump has so much at stake in the midterm election this fall. If either the House of Representatives or the Senate ends up under Democratic control, Trump’s power could effectively be curtailed. Trump himself is the main issue in this election and both parties are in a state of rage, especially now that President Trump has effectively taken the country to war with Iran without congressional authorization. A Democratic majority in the House of Representatives would be under enormous political pressure to impeach President Trump and force him to go on trial — for the third time. Impeachment would be immensely distracting, even if President Trump survives, as he did after he was impeached in 2019 and 2021.

Trump is not a popular President — he has never reached 50 percent approval in the Gallup poll — but he has an intensely committed base, held together by personal loyalty and right-wing ideology. Now he is also facing antiwar sentiment, which makes everything unpredictable.

Perhaps the most remarkable factor in President Trump’s political success has been his ability to dominate the courts. Judicial review has been a powerful constitutional principle ever since the early 19th century, when it was established by Chief Justice John Marshall. Nevertheless, the Federal courts have been remarkably compliant with Trump’s agenda, granting him the legal authority to have his way with Congress and with the executive branch. About half of federal judges were nominated by Republican Presidents, as were six out of nine current Supreme Court justices. As humorist Finley Peter Dunne once wrote (using the voice of ``Mr. Dooley’’), ``The Supreme Court follows the election returns.’’

Even when the Court rules against President Trump, as it did on tariffs this year, Trump has been willing to defy the Court and implement his agenda using a different authority (as was the case with raising tariffs, normally a congressional prerogative). President Trump has often expressed admiration of Andrew Jackson, the country’s first populist President, who was reported to have said after an unfriendly Supreme Court decision, ``[Chief Justice John] Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.’’

The third constitutional check and balance on the President is imposed by the First Amendment: ``Congress shall make no law abridging . . . the freedom of the press.’’ A federal judge recently struck down restrictions imposed by the Pentagon revoking press passes for reporters ``if they engage in any conduct that the Pentagon believes threatens national security.’’ After the new policy was implemented in October, the New York Times reported that dozens of journalists (including seven Times reporters) turned in their Pentagon press passes rather than abide by the new restrictions. The Pentagon replaced them with reporters from news organization deemed friendlier to Trump Administration policies.

The federal judge who struck down the restrictions ruled that the policy rewarded news organizations ``willing to publish only stories that are favorable’’ to Administration policy. In other words, pro-war with Iran. Reporters who raise questions about Pentagon policy can not be declared ``security risks’’ and barred from asking questions.

A federal court is upholding the right of a free press to check and balance presidential authority. Checks and balances are still alive — but only barely, and only in the free press.

Iran has historic experience with two kinds of popular protests: anti-foreign and anti-government. Before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, popular protest was often targeted at Britain because of its control of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. After the Iranian Revolution, popular protest was mostly targeted at the United States because of its support for the Shah and at Israel because of its suppression of Palestinian Muslims.

More recently, popular protests have been aimed at Iran’s brutal authoritarian government, which has killed tens of thousands of protesters. Italy’s right-wing prime minister spoke for many European leaders when she said recently, ``We cannot afford an Ayatollah regime in possession of nuclear weapons.’’

Scientific polls of the Iranian public do not exist and would probably never be allowed by the Islamic authorities. However, a series of unscientific surveys using large ``VPN samples’’ of Iranian Internet users, the latest taken in 2025 after the 12-day war with Israel, have reported a broad consensus on what Iranians do not want: roughly 70-80 percent said they would not vote for the Islamic Republic. In all waves of the survey, ``regime change as a precondition for political progress’’ was ``the most popular position.’’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the chief U.S. ally in the current war with Iran, stated his war goals this way: ``We’re creating the optimal conditions for the overthrow of the [Iranian] regime. But I can’t say for certain that the Iranian people would topple it. A regime is toppled from within.’’

Moreover, Israel has very little influence with Iranians. And not that much with Americans. Polling this year by CNN found 56 percent of Americans opposed to any U.S. overthrow of Iran’s government. Right-wing influencer Tucker Carlson said, ``This is Israel’s war, not America’s. It’s not about U.S. national security or making America safer or richer.’’

U.S. interference in Iranian affairs has often given rise to protest and resentment in Iran going back to 1953, when the CIA plotted the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and supported the restoration of the Shah. Reza Shah Pahlavi remained in power until the Iranian Revolution overthrew him and established the Islamic Republic in 1979.

Relations with the U.S. deteriorated after the seizure of 66 American hostages in 1979 by radical Islamists. The hostage-takers demanded the extradition of the Shah, but the hostages were not liberated until Ronald Reagan became president on January 20, 1981.

The hostage crisis conveyed the message that there is a large constituency in Iran for religious fundamentalism and opposition to foreign influence. Today, 47 years later, we are seeing equally clear evidence of protest against religious extremism, mostly among younger, well educated and more secular Iranians (especially women). Protest from one side (religious extremists) can very quickly give way to protest from the other side (anti-authoritarians). Both sides are distrustful of foreign influence.

Israel has become a particularly difficult issue. The United States has assumed the role of chief guarantor of Israel’s military security, while Israel sees Iran – a Muslim but not an Arab country – as its most serious existential threat. Iran finances many radical anti-Israel organizations (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen).

The United States role is ambiguous. American culture is secular and anti-authoritarian. But under President Trump, the U.S. has become highly favorable to military strength and resentful of other countries that threaten U.S. military superiority.

Some Americans on the far right see the current U.S. attack on Iran as having been instigated by Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu often describes Iran as Israel’s number one enemy. Some American critics of the war have protested that the U.S. is being manipulated into fighting ``Israel’s war.’’

There is ambiguity in the current relationship between Iran and the U.S. Many Iranians oppose Iran’s oppressive theocratic government and would welcome regime change instigated by the United States as liberating. But other Iranians see the U.S. as a hostile foreign power that favors regime change as a way to dominate other countries and consolidate U.S. power.

Iran’s anti-democratic religious authoritarianism threatens the U.S. from the right. The next country on President Trump’s regime change agenda is likely to be authoritarian and undemocratic but threatening to the U.S. from the left, not because of its military or economic power but because of its ideological influence: Cuba.

What characterizes the U.S. as the country approaches its 250th year is a deep Diploma Divide. The reason for the divide, no one should be surprised to know, is President Donald Trump. President Trump knows that his most ardent critics can be found in American colleges and universities, and he is attacking those institutions mercilessly. Starting with Harvard, the oldest and most renowned university in the country.

I attended a Harvard commencement ceremony in the late 1960s when universities all over the country, including Harvard, were facing an unprecedented wave of protests. Harvard’s president delivered the usual announcement to the graduating class: ``This university hereby awards you your first degree in the arts and sciences and welcomes you to the community of educated men and women.’’ The graduates responded with displeasure. That was not the community they aspired to join -- not at a time of bitter resentment with the country’s ruling class and anger at both political parties.

The 1960s saw the beginning of the country’s bitter Diploma Divide, which at the outset was less partisan than anti-Establishment. But always fueled by left-wing sentiment.

The 1960s and 1970s marked the rise of the Baby Boomer generation and its distinctive anti-Establishment style of politics. What we are seeing today is the emergence of a new Post-millennial generation of Americans, born between 1997 and 2012, with its own distinctive style of politics.

The Pew Research Center published a study of the emerging Post-millennial generation in 2018. The basic finding: ``Post-millennials are the most diverse, best educated generation yet.’’

Among Post-millennials, 43 percent have at least one parent with a college degree. The figure was 32 percent with a college-educated parent for the Baby Boomer generation before them. In 2018, a bare majority (52 percent) of Post-millennials were non-Hispanic whites. A solid majority of 18-to-20-year-olds were enrolled in college (59 percent), including most young whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans.

What characterizes Post-millennials more than anything else is diversity. What characterizes MAGA Republicans more than anything else is lack of diversity. President Trump has made himself a critic of diversity. He did it most clearly at a theatrical moment in his State of the Union speech when he offered this challenge to Members of Congress: ``If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.’’

No Democrats stood. That gave Trump the opportunity to make this defiant declaration: ``You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up. . . . I’m also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens.’’

Trump was denouncing illegal immigrants as dangerous aliens who are a threat to law abiding citizens -- an arguable proposition. And denouncing Democrats for ``blocking the removal’’ of the illegal immigrant menace. Trump’s assertion was intended to throw Democrats on the defensive. It also alienated millions of young Americans who are strongly sympathetic to immigrants and supportive of diversity.

As Republicans rally behind Trump, they are rapidly losing support from well educated Americans. It’s the basis of a realignment of the country’s politics. Beginning in the 1930s, wealthier and better educated voters trended Republican (everywhere outside the South). Beginning in the 1960s with the rapid increase in the number of college-educated Americans, the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Vietnam generated an outpouring of anti-Establishment sentiment that drew well educated young millennials into the Democratic Party – a shift that accelerated as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Donald Trump changed everything. Trump drew strong support from older and rural white voters who were infuriated by the growing diversity and political correctness that dominated American politics under Barack Obama, the first black president and the nation’s most liberal president ever. White southerners and older, non-college whites formed the core of Trump’s MAGA movement and took control of the Republican Party.

What we are seeing now is a growing divergence between college-educated white voters and non-college whites, with well-educated younger voters (especially women) now staunchly Democratic. (After nominating and electing the nation’s first black President, Democrats nominated the first female candidates for President in 2016 and 2024. Trump narrowly defeated both women.)

The diploma divide has become a defining feature of American politics. The ten best educated states (as measured by the percentage of voters with college degrees) all voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. In the last three elections, Virginia, the best educated southern state, has never voted for Donald Trump. Nine of the ten least educated states voted for Trump in 2024 (the exception was heavily Hispanic New Mexico).

The least educated state, West Virginia, is over 90 percent white and solidly blue collar. During the era of Sen. Robert Byrd, the country’s longest serving Senate majority leader, West Virginia was a solidly New Deal Democratic state (coal miners). West Virginia is now Donald Trump’s second best state (after tiny, remote Wyoming). You won’t find many college educated yuppies or affluent white female urban liberals (so-called AWFULs) in West Virginia.

I attended a Harvard commencement ceremony in the late 1960s when universities all over the country, including Harvard, were facing an unprecedented wave of protests. Harvard’s president delivered the usual announcement to the graduating class: ``This university hereby awards you your first degree in the arts and sciences and welcomes you to the community of educated men and women.’’ The graduates responded with displeasure. That was not the community they aspired to join -- not at a time of bitter resentment with the country’s ruling class and anger at both political parties.

The 1960s saw the beginning of the country’s bitter Diploma Divide, which at the beginning was less partisan than anti-Establishment. But always fueled by left-wing sentiment.

The 1960s and 1970s marked the rise of the Baby Boomer generation and its distinctive anti-Establishment style of politics. What we are seeing today is the emergence of a new Post-millennial generation of Americans, born between 1997 and 2012, with its own distinctive style of politics.

The Pew Research Center published a study of the emerging Post-millennial generation in 2018. The basic finding: ``Post-millennials are the most diverse, best educated generation yet.’’

Among Post-millennials, 43 percent have at least one parent with a college degree. The figure was 32 percent with a college-educated parent for the Baby Boomer generation before them. In 2018, a bare majority (52 percent) of Post-millennials were non-Hispanic whites. A solid majority of 18-to-20-year-olds were enrolled in college (59 percent), including most young whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans.

What characterizes Post-millennials more than anything else is diversity. What characterizes MAGA Republicans more than anything else is lack of diversity. President Trump has made himself a critic of diversity. He did it most clearly at a theatrical moment in his State of the Union speech when he offered this challenge to Members of Congress: ``If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.’’

No Democrats stood. That gave Trump the opportunity to make this defiant declaration: ``You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up. . . . I’m also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens.’’

Trump was denouncing illegal immigrants as dangerous aliens who are a threat to law abiding citizens -- an arguable proposition. And denouncing Democrats for ``blocking the removal’’ of the illegal immigrant menace. Trump’s assertion was intended to throw Democrats on the defensive. It also alienated millions of young Americans who are strongly sympathetic to immigrants and supportive of diversity.

As Republicans rally behind Trump, they are rapidly losing support from well educated Americans. It’s the basis of a realignment of the country’s politics. Beginning in the 1930s, wealthier and better educated voters trended Republican (everywhere outside the South). Beginning in the 1960s with the rapid increase in the number of college-educated Americans, the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Vietnam generated an outpouring of anti-Establishment sentiment that drew well educated young millennials into the Democratic Party – a shift that accelerated as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Donald Trump changed everything. Trump drew strong support from older and rural white voters who were infuriated by the growing diversity and political correctness that dominated American politics under Barack Obama, the first black president and the nation’s most liberal president ever. White southerners and older, non-college whites formed the core of Trump’s MAGA movement and took control of the Republican Party.

What we are seeing now is a growing divergence between college-educated white voters and non-college whites, with well-educated younger voters (especially women) now staunchly Democratic. (After nominating and electing the nation’s first black President, Democrats nominated the first female candidates for President in 2016 and 2024. Trump narrowly defeated both women.)

The diploma divide has become a defining feature of American politics. The ten best educated states (as measured by the percentage of voters with college degrees) all voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. In the last three elections, Virginia, the best educated southern state, has never voted for Donald Trump. Nine of the ten least educated states voted for Trump in 2024 (the exception was heavily Hispanic New Mexico).

The least educated state, West Virginia, is over 90 percent white and solidly blue collar. During the era of Sen. Robert Byrd, the country’s longest serving Senate majority leader, West Virginia was a solidly New Deal Democratic state (coal miners). West Virginia is now Donald Trump’s second best state (after tiny, remote Wyoming). You won’t find many college educated yuppies or affluent white female urban liberals (so-called AWFULs) in West Virginia.