Voters are done with Trump's 'magic' power: NYT editorial

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media as he flies from Florida to Washington, aboard Air Force One, U.S., October 19, 2025. REUTERS Elizabeth Frantz

E.J. Dionne Jr. tells the New York Times that if Trump has proven anything since he returned to office it’s that he “can win when he’s not the incumbent and can go on the attack (2016, 2024), but he leads his party to defeat when he has to govern and fails to deliver (2018, 2020).”

This is a message that many voters who voted for Trump in 2024 will be taking back to the polls in November when they vote for Democrats,” said Dionne. And between now and November, Democrats can safely hit the formerly invulnerable Trump’s on the issues that once elected him: The economy and immigration.

“… [Democrats] need to get over their terror of Mr. Trump’s assumed magic and mastery — they’re ebbing — and their anxiety that the voters who decide elections share his contempt for so many of our fellow Americans.”

Dionne says the country is not “stuck in November 2024.” And the “wild pace” at which Trump has made unpopular decisions has “fundamentally altered the electoral terrain,” as indicated by Democrats’ strong performance at the ballot box last fall and in special elections across the country. The discontent that typically drives impatience with the Democrat party doesn’t appear to be tamping down the huge turnout that’s ramming Democrats into Republicans’ political offices.

“The backlash against Mr. Trump is undercutting Republican support among the key groups that swung his way in 2024, especially Latinos, young men and independents,” said Dionne. “If he thinks he can woo back these defectors with his version of the ‘Two Minutes Hate’ that George Orwell depicted in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ he’s wrong.”

The truth is Trump is happily hobnobbing with the superrich, not with men and women “toiling on assembly lines or in warehouses,” said Dionne, and his obvious alignment with billionaires is “so obvious that even his loyal white working-class supporters are beginning to break away.”

Trump is a creature that needs enemies like Somalis and trans people to sell his agenda, said Dionne. And to distract attention from his failures he “regularly tries to provoke hostility toward the groups he hates.”

But those days are over.

“Maybe he could pull it off if Americans were happier about the economy. But since so many feel let down, the message of his diatribes is that the only thing he can deliver after 13 months in office is fear itself,” said Dionne. “It’s a tired act. A presidency built on reruns is rapidly losing its audience.”

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