Our friend and leading philosopher Andrew Breitbart always warned the Right that “politics is downstream from culture.” Did the 2024 election prove that — and does that explain the accelerating collapse of the Democrat Party?
Yesterday, the New York Times finally admitted to the latter, although the warning lights have flashed red (heh) for over a year. Political explanations abound for this bleed-out -- Democrats' increasing radicalism, the Joe Biden Fraud, furor over illegal immigration and crime, the backlash to "woke" and Queer Movement-driven policies, and so on. And all of those undoubtedly contribute to the desperate straits in which Democrats find themselves.
However, those explanations feel insufficient, or at least incomplete. Former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway put her finger on the point this morning, especially in the second clip:
'THE TRUMP EFFECT': @KellyannePolls says voters missed @POTUS’s toughness & calls the 2024 election a battle of strength over weakness. pic.twitter.com/bGOg9ohE0M
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) August 21, 2025
"That election was about many things," Conway told Fox & Friends, "but it was really about strength over weakness." While that may sound like an oversimplification, it explains the totality of the current environment better than any policy discussion does.
As I told my pal Tony Katz today on his radio show, I've seen this movie before. Forty-five years ago, American voters faced a similar choice. The Left came out of the 1960s and 1970s obsessed about the notion of decline and despair; Jimmy Carter offered America a vision of 'malaise' in a seminal national address, which he titled "A Crisis of Confidence." Carter argued that the US had to live with limitations and corrosive despair, while Ronald Reagan offered a vision of "a shining city on a hill" whose best days lay ahead of it. Voters roared in approval, with Carter losing one of the largest landslide presidential elections in American history.
Reagan offered strength, while Carter offered weakness. And voters responded rationally to that choice.
Reagan, of course, was a much more broadly popular figure than Donald Trump. He charmed allies and opponents alike, although the media painted Reagan as a fascist, a warmonger, and an ignorant clown. (Some things never change.) However, his charm became legendary and eventually turned into the explanation for his political victories. Reagan's charm deserved its legendary status, but that isn't what won two landslide elections. Reagan didn't just offer strength in rhetoric, but acted with strength in nearly every instance that mattered.
Trump doesn't enjoy that same broad popularity. In fact, his approval and favorability ratings usually are stuck in the net-negative area. RCP currently has his aggregate job approval at -5.1, and his favorability gap at -7.8. And yet, Trump won in November not just in the Electoral College but also in the popular vote, the first Republican presidential candidate to do so in 20 years. Why? Because voters responded to strength over weakness, perhaps especially when Democrats offered a senile Biden and then the utterly incompetent and incoherent Harris as the alternative.
Say what you will about Jimmy Carter, but he was neither senile nor incoherent.
Trump has not hesitated to act with strength to employ policies that the electorate prefers, even or maybe especially where Democrats spent years acting with weakness: immigration, crime, pandering to victimologies like 'woke,' the Queer Movement, etc. He has also applied strength to American foreign policy, with allies and opponents alike. It may not be improving his approval ratings -- although that's arguable -- but it certainly isn't damaging them either. Both job approval and favorability ratings in this term are significantly better than in Trump's first term.
Given how those actions support the policy preferences of American voters, that's not much of a surprise:
Again, though, this isn't so much about policy as it is culture. Trump projects strength and muscularity. Democrats ... do not. Gavin Newsom may dimly realize the cultural moment, but mistakes posturing for action. Despite being a governor with significant executive authority in California, Newsom has passively sat by through wildfires and a collapsing business climate, preferring podcasting and posturing to acting with strength to solve problems. Lately, Newsom has taken to doing what he thinks is a Trump impression on social media, which only highlights the absurd contrast between Trump and Democrats.
Trump certainly trolls and clowns on social media too, but he also acts. Newsom's act is all he has, leaving him as a pusillanimous symbol of all that afflicts the Democrat Party in this era. And the rest of their bench is hardly better; shall we discuss Governor JazzHands McSnitchLine in Minnesota, Democrats' VP nominee last year?
The latest screeching over Trump's efforts to clean up Washington DC is a perfect demonstration of this contrast. It's the mirror image of Democrats' shrieking over immigration enforcement. In both cases, Democrats argue for passive inaction in response to a crisis, with heavy implications or outright explicit arguments that decline is inevitable or even 'justice.' It's Carter's malaise all over again, and promoted with similar defeatist attitudes, if not outright hostility toward the American system of constitutional liberty. Democrats would rather consign city dwellers to danger and decline than act to reverse both. Trump, on the other hand, wants to end and reverse that decline, using strength in service to a more hopeful and faithful approach to the great American experiment.
That goes far beyond politics. That is a cultural conflict, just as it was 45 years ago. Democrats haven't learned a thing in the intervening time. And finally, it also bolsters the argument that this moment decided the election -- and if we're lucky, the future course of the great American experiment.
Update: Like I said -- toughness matters.
🚨NEW — DONALD J TRUMP IS ON PATROL IN DC.@POTUS's first comment to law enforcement:
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) August 21, 2025
"Well hello, this is a healthy looking group of people. That's good."
LOL. pic.twitter.com/eOiNHkImQF
