Quack
Trump's lame duck status, plus three other measures of political physics
There are very few laws in politics, but there are a lot of constants. At this moment, when Elon Musk is illegally smashing government agencies and things are moving at an insane pace, it’s easy to feel like normal rules no longer apply.
They still do.
Trump’s frenetic crime spree has not repealed or replaced the fundamental elements of politics, even though everything right now feels upside-down.
Trump has been ignoring several political forces as he moves quickly to establish his illegal dominance over government. These forces will take some time to make themselves known, but their presence in the weeks and months ahead will be a good barometer of how much regular politics can constrain the would-be authoritarian, even when his party and institutional guardrails will not.
Unless Trump is able to overturn the constitutional system—and the pushback we’ve seen over the past two weeks suggests that will not be easy to do—he will eventually run into situational obstacles as well as obstacles of his own creation.
Specifically, it is a tenet of political physics that:
Trump is a lame duck
Overreaching causes political damage
Ignoring core campaign promises is politically costly
Public opinion constrains presidents, and public opinion goes down
Below the fold, for paid subscribers, I’ll look at how each of these applies to Trump, and how we can use them as measures to assess how much he has warped the political system—or how much the system remains resilient despite his best efforts to destroy it.
