As the thermostat turns

After every election, there’s a tendency to treat every revealed trend as if it represents a permanent transformation of the American political landscape. Sometimes it’s even true, but sometimes it isn’t. Certainly, the Trump administration is acting as if the shifting of Hispanic voters into the Republican coalition was an inexorable trend, and his narrow victory a mandate to do anything he wanted with no political cost. The bills are coming due on that very quickly:

This is just one snapshot, and needless to say it’s important not to assume that the increasing appeal of the Republican brand to Hispanic voters has vanished permanently. But the all-stick-no-carrot radicalism of Trump 2.0 is serving as an object lesson about why voters tend to trend against incumbents, and I’ve never seen an incumbent more indifferent to public opinion than this one. Admittedly. immigration was the one issue where he had real political headwinds, but a critical minority of that was people who wanted to believe he wanted to go after the bad hombres in contrast to Biden and Obama’s policy of total open borders. It’s a tightrope he can’t walk nearly as well when he’s actually governing as when he’s campaiging.