June 18, 2025
DEMOCRATS, LEFT NEWS MEDIA NEED TO JUST SHUT UP ABOUT TRUMP

Any person who has gone through the dating scene, as I did long ago, understands the timeless adage that what you don’t say you don’t have to explain later. And believe me, girlfriends (and spouses) remember EVERYTHING you say. That’s why silence is golden.

Some guys, on the other hand, instantly forget everything that doesn’t impact their wallet or bedroom. I never did buy into that happy wife/happy life stuff. But I better shut up now. And so should the Democrats and the anti-Trump news media. The 2028 election is 40 months away and Trump will not be running. Trump will be president for another 43 months, and that’s about 1,300 more days of absolute apocalyptic catastrophe in the eyes of the Left. And normal voters have just tuned out.

And then there’s the possibility of 4 or 8 more years of a Vance-Rubio or Vance-Gabbard Administration. Add another 1,400 or 2,800 days of misery and incalculable damage. Better get a shrink real quick. Having written this column since June 1973 – in fact, this month marks the start of my 53rd year – I consider myself a political psephologist, which is somebody who absorbs and analyzes facts.

Mark Twain once opined that there are “Lies. Damn lies. And statistics.” Some statistics don’t lie. I spent considerable time researching the facts on the CHART attached to this article and I was stunned at some of the numbers. Here are my takeaways.

Most Americans have one all-consuming priority, and that is themselves. Their lives are not infused with politics. They want a president who makes them prosperous, and they don’t care  how or why. They don’t spend hours watching CNN, MSNBC, FOX or the legacy media (NBC, ABC, CBS), or even reading newspapers. Mike Kaage, who operates the Edison Park newsstand where I buy the Sun-Times told me that nobody younger than age 40 buys newspapers anymore. Kaage will be closing his newsstand at the end of this month.

Nevertheless the Democratic politicians’ and media’s all-consuming obsession is to get some anti-Trump headline on social media every minute of every day. That’s exhausting work. And it has not worked well. The fact is that Trump’s voter base has increased by 15 MILLION since 2016 (see CHART). The Democrats’ voter base is up by 10 MILLION.

A humongous $2.5 billion was spent in the 2024, $1.5 by the Harris-Walz Democrats to villanize Trump, and yet the Democratic base vote declined by 6 MILLION over 2020. And turnout in 2024 over 2020 actually DECLINED by 3.2 million. How can that be? The simplistic answer is two words: Harris-Walz. But this column will be more sophisticated and look at the 21 presidential elections over the 80 years since 1944. There is a distinct ebb and flow, a granular turnout increase almost every cycle, and a hardened party (R and D) base which never fluctuates and remains about 45-47 percent each.

1944/1948/1952: FDR (D) was seeking his fourth term in 1944 as WWII was culminating; 2 million men were overseas, the economy was booming because of government wartime borrowing and the turnout was nearly 48 million. Republicans labored under the onus of being the Hoover/Depression party. FDR died in 1945, Truman succeeded him, and post-War dislocations as vets flooded back included food and housing shortages, inflation plus countering Soviet aggression in Europe. Yet 1948 turnout, with servicemen home, and with a Truman-Dewey race and a Socialist and segregationist on the ballot, actually DECLINED by 1.2 million. The base vote was about 24M/22M D/R and Truman won.

Then along came 1952, a CHANGE election. Eisenhower (R) ran on “Corruption, Communism and Korea,” the Republican base vote exploded to 34M (up 13M) and turnout was up 13M. The Dems’ New Deal hegemony was over; their base vote was up just 3M.

1960/1964/1968: By 1960 Americans were weary of grandfatherly Ike, the 1958-59 recession and the Cold War. JFK (D) ran as the generational CHANGE candidate – youth (age 43), vigor, New Frontier, etc. Nixon (R) got 34.1M votes to JFK’s 34.2M, a margin of 115,327. Nixon’s vote was equal to Ike’s 1952 vote, but JFK upped the Dem vote by 7 million over 1952. The Space Program was a boost but the Bay of Pigs and Cuban missile crisis were failures. But then all was moot when Kennedy was assassinated.

Successor Johnson (LBJ) inherited the JFK legacy, which was supposed to bestow upon RFK and Teddy. Republican nominee Barry Goldwater ran as a conservative and a seminal moment was his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act – which realigned racial politics in the South and nationwide. Blacks embraced the Democrats and conservatives became Republicans. LBJ crushed Goldwater with 61.1 percent, getting 9 million more votes than JFK in 1960 but turnout was up just 2M. The media proclaimed the Republicans extinct.

But then LBJ had to govern and trotted out his Great Society, Model Cities, War on Poverty, Medicare and Voting Rights Act, costing billions, and drafted 500,000 young men to fight in Vietnam. He self-destructed. Republicans kept their mouths shut and came back strong in 1966 and won the presidency in 1968. Is there a lesson here? Republicans let LBJ self-destruct; they did not spend 24/7 trying to destroy him.

In 1968, despite all the turmoil, turnout was up just 2.6M and Nixon won with 43.4 percent, getting 4M more votes than Goldwater while Hubert Humphrey (D) had 12M fewer votes than LBJ.

1972/1976/1980: Nixon won re-election with 60.7 percent with anti-War liberal McGovern (D) being soundly rejected, getting 2M fewer votes than Humphrey and Nixon 14M more than in 1968. But then came Watergate and Nixon’s oblivion. Newcomer Jimmy Carter (D) did not win in a 1976 blowout, beating Ford by less than 1M votes. The Republican base vote held firm. The late Carter’s legacy is that of oil embargos, gas shortages, inflation and Iranian hostages. In 1980 his vote was down 5M and Reagan’s up 5M over Ford’s.

1992/2000/2008: Performance matters. A popular president can boost his successor, as occurred in 1988 (but not in 1960, 2000 or 2016). Clinton won in 1992 through the art of triangulation – positioning between Left and Right. Turnout was up 12M in 1992, down 8M in 1996 and up 9M in 2000, when Bush got fewer votes than Gore. Gore lost because he DID NOT run on Clinton’s record. By 2008 W. Bush was toxic, blamed for the stock market and housing market crash and ensuing recession. Obama coasted to victory.

The Dem vote was up 10M over 2004 and the Republican vote down 2M, with a turnout of 131M, up 9M from 2004.

2016/2020/2024: American politics was always based on class and culture: The elite and over-educated vs. the working-class. Once it was Rs vs. Ds; Trump reversed that to Ds vs. Rs. From 2016 to 2020 turnout surged by 29M, but turnout fell by 3.1M in 2024. The hysteria of 2024 was a factor, but the most impactful factor was that 6M 2020 Biden-Harris voters abandoned Harris-Walz.

There are potentially 81M anti-Trump voters (from 2020) out there and more entering the voter pool.  Presidents fail because their policies fail, not because of unrelenting criticism. Democrats should shut up and let Trump fail on his own if they want to get back in the game.

Read more Analysis & Opinion from Russ Stewart at Russstewart.com

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