I’d like to put two facts in opposition to each other. The first is that in Trump’s “budget” bill, which passed the Senate today, thanks to Vice President Vance’s vote, will have devastating effects on Trump’s core constituency.

Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at J. D. Vance’s alma mater [1] put it this way,“Districts represented by Republican members of Congress — as well as counties that supported Trump in the last election — are poorer, more rural, less dense, have fewer college graduates and are more likely to be in areas scarred by deindustrialization.”

It is hard to imagine that the Trump coalition will hold together through such a massive betrayal. Still, as Drew Altman, the president and chief executive of KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) put it. “It looks like Republicans are handing Democrats their golden issue, but it’s not a slam dunk.
Why is it not a slam dunk? Against all the financial losses that will be suffered by the states most loyal to Trump, I put the sentiment in this picture.

You see that it is a Trump campaign poster. You can recognize him even in the blue tie. Think for a minute about who “They” is in this admonition. It isn’t just the Democrats. It is the nebulous evil organization he sometimes refers to as the “deep state.” It is the swamp he promised to drain. “They” are swamp demons.

And they are “after you.” There is an implacable resentment between “them” and you and this resentment is flavored with a casual dismissal of all the work you have done for them, In Kentucky’s District #5, Arlie Russell Hochschild ran into a sentiment that was expressed like this. [2]“They” are people who don’t honor the sacrifice that won World War II as the sign clearly says.

And I am “standing in the way”. I am going to take the vindictiveness of the people who disrespect you and turn it against them. I am the one you can turn to as a way to express your courage and your defiance.

That’s the way I read that sign. And that’s why it’s not a slam dunk. A lot depends, a Drew Altman puts it, on “whether Democrats succeed in holding the Republicans responsible.”

The case is there to be made. Altman, of KFF cited polling “showing that many voters are unaware of the effects of the Trump legislation. When they are told of the consequences, the already weak support drops precipitously.’ That is why the case is there to be made. Among these voters—the ones Altman is talking about—the support is weak and it goes into a nosedive when the practical consequences of the Trump budget are revealed.

Some say this nosedive occurs when people experience the concrete consequences. That will be some time. Altman’s experience with polling is that the nosedive occurs when the people are told about what they can clearly see is likely. That is the job of the Democrats.

And they have one more job. They need to find a way to be the ones that offer a way forward. Showing how bad Trump is will not do the job. The Democrats need to offer a candidate people can believe in. They don’t need to do that to win back the House and the Senate, but they do to win back the presidency.

[1]. If law schools have alma maters.
[2] Her recent book on this issue is called Stolen Virtue—surely one of the best titled books in recent years.