Let's face it: our political class pretty much sucks.
That's not news per se, but in a country so politically divided and filled to the brim with dedicated partisans, poll after poll shows that Americans as a whole are united in wanting just about anyone other than our current politicians to run the country.
Why, then, do so few people outside this class get elected? Well, Americans did elect Donald Trump two or three times, depending on how you view the 2020 election, to clean up the mess, but he only won those elections by a small margin, and he is reviled by half the country and the subject of constant slanders and hoaxes.
Cong Dems now have a -55 net approval, an all-time low & lower than the Dead Sea.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) December 18, 2025
2 causes: Dems gives them a -6 pt net approval(!), & they're at -61 pts with indies!
The effect? Dems lead on the generic ballot is less than half of what it was at this pt in the 06 & 18 cycles. pic.twitter.com/Os17D7BkHR
Elections are won or lost by gaining the votes of people choosing between the lesser of two evils, which explains why everybody is so sour on Congress, and the last time Americans as a whole felt positive about the direction of the country was in 1999.
Trump's approval rating is nothing to brag about at about 43%, although numbers like that have become normal in the past decade. But compared to the Democratic Party, Trump looks positively popular. With a popularity rating hovering around 20%, it's clear that Americans don't want to buy what they are selling. The approval ratings for Republicans in Congress are almost twice as high as those for Democrats, at a still ridiculously low 35%.
Unfortunately, that doesn't guarantee electoral failure. As the Virginia elections showed, every Democrat will crawl over broken glass to vote against a Republican, and sometimes enough Independents will hold their nose and vote for a politician they hate just to send a message to Republicans.
The overwhelming message is, "A pox on both your houses." And it is hard to blame people.
It's easy to assign too much blame to Republican leaders in Congress for their failures to make progress on solving the most important issues facing the country. Their majorities in Congress are razor-thin, the filibuster is an obstacle to progress, and even a tiny number of Republicans in the House defecting can stall any bill.
That's why I thought the battle over the Speaker of the House was stupid. Who the Speaker is makes little difference because his room to operate is nonexistent. Anyone could replace Speaker Johnson, and the results would be the same.
And, to be fair, solving our most pressing problems will be political suicide, because our big problems come from spending way too much money on programs that have political constituencies that will murder anybody who gores their particular oxen.
That's not an excuse, per se. But we revere so few politicians because so few are heroic. Heroes go above and beyond, which means that most people will never be heroes. Feet of clay and all that.
Americans are unhappy, and rightly so, but we can't agree on how to solve the problems, even though to any sane person the answers are pretty obvious, if painful to implement.
So the left touts socialism as a catch-all answer, and any honest politician can only promise short-term pain for long-term gain. Anybody who has struggled to maintain a diet and exercise regime can, in principle, understand why "healthy at any size" appealed. That's socialism.
As you can see from the poll numbers for Democrats, most people are smart enough to reject that logic, but as you can see from the continued electoral viability of the Democrats, the "diet and exercise" regimen that honest Republicans offer isn't much more appealing.
People want political Ozempic.
The only thing that will come close to that is fiscal restraint combined with massive economic growth, and that is what Trump is trying to create. So far, he has struggled with both, but it's impossible to tell how things will look in a year or two. Electorally, though, what matters is how things look a few months from now, when people start solidifying their voting intentions, at least subconsciously.
Hence the seeming contradiction: voters approve of neither party, but they approve of Republicans in Congress at a much higher rate than they approve of Democrats. Yet they say they want Democrats to win by a small margin in the elections next year.
As much as they claim to hate gridlock, they seem to prefer it over the alternative, which is either party getting its way.
Hence, everything rests on Trump's shoulders, for good or ill, and he will face a united elite opposition until he leaves office. His task is Herculean, and we won't know for sure whether his prescription for making America great again is the right one unless he can overcome opposition and gridlock to implement it.
Even if he does so, it's no sure bet that his prescriptions are the right medicine. Will tariffs really remake the world economic order in our favor? Time will tell. Can he impose enough fiscal discipline? Hard to see how with gridlock in Congress and the huge political price that Congressmen will pay for making unpopular votes.
For better or worse, though, Trump is the only political actor with the power (sort of) and the will to confront the crisis we face.
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