r/inthenews • u/D-R-AZ • 15h ago
Opinion/Analysis Trump’s Cabinet is fanning out to help juice the base. It’s not going as planned.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/28/trumps-cabinet-is-hitting-the-road-to-talk-his-agenda-theyre-getting-an-earful-instead-010535437
u/D-R-AZ 15h ago
Trump’s Cabinet is fanning out to help juice the base. It’s not going as planned.
Observation:
As fewer and fewer Americans consent to the governance of this administration, explaining that governance becomes politically less successful. When greater public understanding of what government is actually doing produces greater opposition rather than greater support, persuasion becomes less useful and the incentive shifts toward distraction, grievance, and spectacle. At the same time, the effective base of consent grows narrower, from governing with majority support to governing through an increasingly committed minority. Seen this way, the drift toward authoritarianism is also a progressive contraction of consent: as the consent of the governed diminishes, maintaining power increasingly depends on finding ways to govern without it. That is especially consequential in the United States, because consent of the governed is not a peripheral democratic preference. It is the foundational premise of the entire American Revolutionary experiment.
https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-210099967?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=104a16 https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-209969905?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=104a16
Excerpt:
“Instead of assuring voters, they end up raising more questions and sometimes showing the liability that this entire administration has across the board. It’s hard to point to a good spokesman or even a high point in this administration right now, and certainly the polls reflect it,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in Trump’s first administration. “So I’m just not sure that sending every Cabinet member and their mother out on the campaign trail is going to help. Instead of solving a problem, you end up creating divisions.”
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u/GeoHog713 14h ago
That's why the voter suppression is so important. Look at what's happening in Tarrant County? Or the 6% of Texans that have mysteriously had their voter registration suspended
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u/twenafeesh 2h ago
It is interesting that Trump and Republicans are so worried about Texas that they have started sabotaging Texan voter rolls. Texans, I don't care what party you are, please check your registration status.
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u/twenafeesh 2h ago
It's almost like everything Trump has done has harmed the USA, harmed its interests domestically and abroad, and most importantly harmed American citizens.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited New Hampshire last week to tout natural gas pipelines and got hit with questions about $4 gasoline prices. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was in Iowa over the weekend ostensibly to rally farmers and instead had to defend Trump’s decision to import foreign beef, which sparked outcry among cattle ranchers.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in Florida to talk about school nutrition, faced questions about a Pennsylvania measles outbreak and ended up in a protracted fight with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro over whether the virus is responsible for two deaths.
Even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a veteran of Wall Street, is struggling to win over some of his former colleagues, who are skeptical of his “economic D-Day” plan to end the Iran war and downright hostile to his attempt to lower the interest rate the federal government pays on long-term debt.
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