Why TDS Has Gotten Worse Among Many Democrats in Trump’s Second Term
19th July 2025
I’ve noticed that, ever since Trump’s 2024 election and especially since he took office in January, some of my Trump-hating friends and acquaintances have gotten even angrier at Trump and angrier at those who support him, as compared to Trump’s first term. Here are my ideas about why that’s happened.
(1) Trump’s first term victory was considered a fluke and this one was not. Therefore they believe the electorate has become more evil and/or stupid.
(2) In Trump’s first term, they could claim that he didn’t “really” win because he didn’t win the popular vote. In the second term, he won the popular vote.
(3) Efforts to sabotage Trump’s first term – such as Russiagate – were immediately successful in that they convinced a lot of people and also had a restrictive effect on Trump in terms of what he could accomplish and how much energy he could devote to his policy aims versus fighting the lies.
(4) There were many people in Trump’s first administration who either weren’t onboard with his goals or were actively against them. This is far less true in his second term.
(5) He hit the ground running in his second term.
(6) During the Biden administration, Democrats watched Biden undo a great deal of what Trump had done in his first term. And now they’re having the nightmarish experience of watching Trump II undo what Biden did, or re-do what Biden had undone.
(7) One of the most awful things about the 2024 election, as far as the Democrats are concerned, was their loss of support in several of the groups on which their power depends: black and Hispanic voters. They’re not sure what to do about that.
(8) The Trump assassination attempt in Butler galls them, because it was such a close call and many really really wish Trump had been killed. His seemingly miraculous survival is especially frustrating.
(9) They thought that their lawfare against Trump would work either to put him in prison or at the very least to turn more voters against them. Instead it had the opposite effect, another dramatically and deeply frustrating result. It’s something like the classic scene in a horror movie in which the hero or heroine thinks the monster is gone and is finally able to relax and then bam! The monster pounces.