4 - The Political Physics of Destruction and Repair

How Trump could make progressive change possible

This is the fourth in a series of occasional posts about rebuilding democracy after Trump. You can read an overview of the series here.

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Politics, like nature, sways to predictable rhythms.

We commonly speak of political forces as though they are equivalent to physical forces, picking up on patterns that have repeated over time.

We’ve seen unexpected crises change the direction of an administration as if it were an object thrown off balance by an external force, like when George W. Bush’s inert presidency was catapulted to unprecedented heights of responsibility and public support by the September 11 attacks.

There is acceleration in politics. A surge in positive press attention and a rush of elite support can give a candidate momentum, like when Joe Biden’s moribund presidential campaign gained velocity from his 2020 primary win in South Carolina to leapfrog over a crowded field and into first place in the Democratic nomination contest.

Then there is the political equivalent of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: whenever an object exerts force on a second object, there is an equal and opposite reaction from the second object.

That’s the one I’d like to pay attention to today, because no one can exert force on other objects like Donald Trump.

For the past half-year, Trump has been exerting force on the administrative state, the judicial system, our international alliances, and the economy, undermining the basis of our security and our freedoms. He is breaking things that are essential to global, domestic and personal stability while putting nothing of value in their place.

Starting on day one with the DOGE-directed destruction of government, Trump has been attempting to remake the bureaucracy into a personal patronage organization by smashing the safeguards designed to buffer it from politics, while crippling the government’s ability to do everything from respond to natural disasters to protect public health. He has treated laws like they are optional suggestions and legal judgments against him as little more than nasty comments. He has lashed out at our allies and cozied up to our adversaries, undermining the order that brought stability to international affairs. He has imposed a chaotic and illegal tariff regime on the world, substituting personalized transactions for global economic leadership.

He has rebuilt the Republican party in his narcissistic image. Its motto could be: “We hurt you in order to help me.” It could be: “We take from you in order to enrich me.”

Or maybe: “Robin Hood got it backwards.”

When a constituent confronted Sen. Joni Ernst on how people are going to die from Republican Medicaid cuts made to keep taxes on the wealthy from going up, she responded, “Well, we are all going to die.”

This is the Trump philosophy distilled so effectively that you could put it on a bumper sticker during next year’s Iowa Senate race.

Someone probably will. It will resonate if they do.

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People notice when you make their lives worse. They’re noticing already, with Trump suffering a sharp decline in popular support from the start of his administration and historically low job approval scores.

But they will notice differently the longer this goes on and the worse it gets. Apart from the most committed Trump supporters, expect the public to react to the damage Trump is doing to their lives in a manner equal to the intensity of the dislocation and suffering they feel.

Right now, we are looking at signs that suggest next year’s midterm cycle will be a bad one for Republicans, consistent with what happens when an administration ignores its central campaign promises and pursues profoundly unpopular policies. Should things continue in this vein, we would expect the disaffection we’re seeing in polling to deepen until the country gives up on MAGA governance, increasing the likelihood that 2028 will be the fourth change election in a row, and one that will accrue to the benefit of Democrats.

This would be within the normal range of reactions to unpopular incumbents over the years. Voters reject the party of the rejected president, that party regroups as the public gets restless with the alternative that replaced them, then the once-defeated party returns to power and the cycle continues. It’s a series of equal and opposite reactions.

But what if things get worse?

Unfortunately, they could. As unpleasant as it is to imagine, they could get much worse.

MAGA governance is attempting to wreck global arrangements in place since the Second World War, dismantle the social safety net we’ve depended on since the New Deal, institute pre-Depression era economic arrangements, and return society to a time when inequality could flourish without recourse.

Some people may prefer to live in the 19th Century, but I suspect most do not. We may take for granted the stability we’ve been afforded in the post-war era, but we certainly will notice it when it’s gone.

Outside MAGA World, even people who rail against big government want their food and water supply to be safe and their air suitable for breathing. They want to have a basic level of safety when they travel and the security of knowing the government will respond to natural disasters. They prefer accurate weather reports and protection against infectious disease. They don’t want open conflict between nuclear powers. They don’t want the economy to collapse.

We do not know how bad things will get, but the Trump administration’s malevolent incompetence elevates the prospect of a significant economic, geopolitical, or public health crisis. It is tempting fate to have people with hostile intentions and no skills operate the levers of the most powerful country in the world for four years.

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Enter Newton’s Third Law.

Disasters have consequences equal in magnitude to the force of the disaster. The United States was reshaped by the Civil War into a republic based more on the lofty ideals of the Declaration of Independence than the racist compromises of the original Constitution. It was reshaped again by the Great Depression into a modern country that birthed a stable middle class around the idea that the federal government has an obligation to provide for its people.

These crises were deep enough, enduring enough, and consequential enough to shatter the elite governing arrangements that otherwise prevented progress. In each case, there was a clear demarcation between the politics of the earlier era and the politics that followed.

We noted that Barack Obama inherited the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression but was unable to transform the country the way Lincoln and FDR had because as bad as things were in 2009, they weren’t bad enough to turn out the old guard. Perhaps it would have been different if the crash had happened in 2005 or 2006, the way the Depression hit early in the Hoover administration, and Bush struggled to address it. Perhaps things would have been different had the pandemic arrived in 2017 or 2018, and Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden presided over the economic shock that followed.

This moment feels different.

It takes a significant earthquake to dislodge governing systems, but Trump is destabilizing enough pillars to make a crisis probable. Even if we get through his term without an economic catastrophe, a foreign policy catastrophe, or a public health catastrophe, the crisis of democracy he is precipitating could in its own right be sufficient to scramble old political arrangements. And let’s not forget that someone who had to be extracted from office the first time is likely to trigger a constitutional crisis the second time the country ushers him out the door.

While this unstable moment is developing, Trump is undermining his party as he disassembles the government he was hired to run. His electoral coalition shattered when he ignored his promise to lower prices. Anger at Elon Musk exploded when people realized the administration was working in the interests of a tiny economic elite. Now the Epstein scandal is starting to spread awareness even in loyal corners of Trump’s base that he is out for himself and doesn’t mean what he says.

This is fertile ground for an assault on the Musks and Epsteins of the world—an exclusive club that lives by its own rules without fear of being held accountable for its actions. Once Trump’s destruction reveals the “deep state” to be bureaucrats whose efforts provided services people will miss when they’re gone, we may finally be ready—after a lot of suffering—to pull back the curtain on that club.

A lasting realignment would require at least two election cycles—in 2026 and 2028—where voters are united by shared economic grievances against the hyper-privileged rather than divided by the cultural and racial grievances that the hyper-privileged have exploited to keep Republicans in power.

A crisis of historic proportions could make that happen.

Only a crisis of historic proportions could make that happen.

But regardless of what happens next, we already know that a historic repair job awaits us on the other side of this reactionary moment. History tells us that when the damage is bad, a new party comes along and cleans it up. But if the destruction is catastrophic, a new party has the latitude to strip away the debris and rebuild from the foundation up.

From those ruins, a new republic could emerge.

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UP NEXT: What a new progressive era could look like.