Why is it so hard to stop Donald Trump?

Americans are in a sour political mood. Despite a soaring stock market, the economy is suffering because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other policies. Inflation has increased. The job market is anemic. Youth unemployment is 10.5%, which is double the national rate. More Americans are afraid of losing their jobs. Debt is increasing. The housing market is slowing. Economists are warning about a severe recession and “stagflation.”

Trump is losing support among key parts of his winning 2024 coalition, including Hispanics, African-Americans, young people, independents and first-time voters. Traditional Republican voters and right-wing-leaning independents are increasingly concerned about his agenda. His support is apparently eroding in the battleground states that were key to his victory in 2024. There are even reports, however anecdotal, that farmers — a group that has consistently supported him — are beginning to abandon him. Republican candidates are losing special elections. Most Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. A majority views Trump as a threat to democracy and wishes he would govern with more restraint.

Every week the media is full of palace intrigue stories of arguments, tensions, jealousies, betrayals and even fistfights between the various characters in MAGA world. Some reporting quotes “insiders” and “experts” who know that, deep down inside, Trump is afraid of losing the midterms, which is why he is moving so fast with his authoritarian consolidation of power. There are growing concerns about his health and fitness to be president, which were heightened after he disappeared from public view in the days leading up to Labor Day weekend. Any one of these issues, but especially his poor handling of the economy and inflation, would likely sink another president’s popularity. In normal times, Congress would even convene impeachment hearings due to some of his behavior.

But this is Donald Trump we’re talking about. Since he first announced his candidacy for president in 2015, the walls have been “closing in” on him because of his rhetoric, 34 felony convictions, alleged crimes and numerous attacks on the country’s democratic institutions and norms.

The president’s political end has never come. He has always emerged from scandals, controversies and trials even more popular among his MAGA followers — and many other Americans as well. Nearly nine months into his second term, which has seen him follow through on his autocratic “shock and awe” campaign to remake America in his image, his approval ratings have remained steady, hovering around 41 to 45 percent.

Though hardly popular, Trump’s gift for political survival nevertheless remains intact.

The Economist recently asked: “Donald Trump is unpopular. Why is it so hard to stand up to him?”

Their answer: “He moves much faster than the lumbering forces that constrain him. He is like the TikTok algorithm, grabbing attention and moving on to the next thing before his opponents have worked out what just happened.”

But there are other explanations for the president’s endurance against the odds.

Trump’s “law and order” theater, which has included mass deportations and threats to “invade” Democrat-led cities and blue states, are more popular than many in the news media, political class and general public would like to believe. If “the cruelty is the point,” as The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer so memorably wrote, there is a big audience for it in America.

We are living in an era of rage against the elites. Incumbents and establishment voices, not only in America but also around the world, are at a severe disadvantage in such an environment. Some of this is a result of the COVID pandemic, Joseph Lemoine and Will Mortenson recently argued in the Washington Post.

“[G]lobal democracy suffers from a form of long covid,” they wrote. “Political freedom, already in decline, was driven to a 25-year low following the pandemic. Since 2019, the global annual rate of democratic backsliding has quadrupled, new data shows. At least 112 countries have lost some political freedom, and more than a third of these were not experiencing decline before the pandemic. This group includes the United States, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Australia and 20 of the 27 European Union countries.”

Lemoine and Mortensen explained that “the cure” for this trend is “deliberate repair.” They recommended several measures, including legislatures working to “prevent emergency powers from hardening into permanent authority.” Sunset provisions should be issued for digital surveillance technologies, they said, and investment in and civil education for youth should be prioritized.

One of Trump’s political superpowers is what political theorist Steven Lukes has called “epistemic liberation” — the ability to invent facts and suffer no consequences. The president also has the power to confound and bend political and social reality to his will, a dubious gift that has short-circuited systems of political accountability.

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Then there’s the Democratic Party’s deep and obvious problems.

“If there’s one thing a large majority of Americans have consistently agreed on this year, it’s that the Democratic Party sucks,” Christian Paz wrote in a new essay at Vox. “Unfavorable views of the party seem to keep rising with every passing month of President Donald Trump’s second term and that discontent has reached a new height this summer…More than 60 percent of American adults view the Democrats with derision, according to weekly tracking polls conducted by YouGov. Looking at this another way, positive views of the Democratic Party have now crumbled to a historic low, with only about one-third of the country seeing them in a good light, per Wall Street Journal polling that shook the political world in July.”

For various reasons, Americans also dislike the party’s leaders. A fight with a charismatic leader and political strongman like Trump will be largely decided by force of will and personality, as well as a powerful narrative that can summon emotions. On the national level, Democrats do not yet have a champion who can consistently go toe-to-toe with Trump and MAGA.

The party failed to mount a forceful, ideas-driven opposition and a compelling narrative that will convince voters the party is on their side. Instead, they have spent the 11 months since former Vice President Kamala Harris’ election loss soul-searching, holding meetings with highly-paid consultants and other experts to determine a way forward.

Some of these solutions are tragicomic: Finding new ways to talk to men, or desperately searching for the liberal equivalent of Joe Rogan. As I and others have repeatedly warned, while Democrats are playing defense, at some point they will be encircled. That moment may have arrived.

No better illustration exists than this:

On Sept. 23, Harris will release “107 Days,” a memoir that promises to relitigate former President Joe Biden’s decision to seek reelection and then withdraw from the race, and her own 2024 defeat. She will embark on a national book tour of speaking engagements.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump and his MAGA movement are scapegoating “the left” and vowing vengeance on their “enemies.”

It would be deeply irresponsible for those of us with a public platform to offer assurances that somehow everything is going to turn out fine because of “America” and our “optimism” and “national character.” Moreover, it is this reckless and naive optimism contrary to the facts that helped to create this rapidly worsening disaster.

America’s politics and society feel more and more broken each day, perhaps irreparably. Where do we go from here? I do not know. We are truly lost in a fractured country of our own making.