Trump, Iran, and Public Opinion
The basics. Plus the week's links
I said my bit about how unprepared Trump and his administration are for the Iran situation last week, and I’m certainly not an expert on the specifics here, so I’ll just refer back to that. We’ll have more soon from all of us here at Good Politics/Bad Politics, I’m sure.
Meanwhile, just a quick note on public opinion, as I see people reporting on Trump supporters preparing to blame Joe Biden for anything that goes wrong:
First: the GOP-aligned media closed information loop is extremely efficient at filling in the details of why whatever Republican leaders are doing is brilliant. Expect Trump’s strongest supporters to adopt those views, whatever their previous positions on (say) Middle East wars may have been.
Second: Beyond that? Presidents often try blaming their predecessors for problems, and the long history of this says that it just doesn’t work. Even when they have a reasonable case for it. Beyond the president’s strongest supporters - typically somewhere between a fifth and a third of the electorate - voters tend to hold presidents responsible, whether it makes sense or not.
And before you say that this time is different? Remember that Trump is unpopular, and in fact is close to record lows for this point of a new presidency. In part, no doubt, because some of the same people who didn’t like the economy and blamed Joe Biden in 2024 still dislike the economy and now blame Donald Trump.
Don’t ascribe magic powers over public opinion to Trump. There’s just overwhelming evidence he doesn’t have even normal persuasive skills. In fact, he and his allies know squat about convincing anyone outside of their strongest supporters of anything. Trump may get a modest rally effect over attacking Iran – although that’s hardly guaranteed. But rally effects fade, and should there be sustained hostilities it’s more likely to hurt a president’s popularity than to help.
On to the links:
1. Elizabeth N. Saunders on the authoritarian presidency and foreign policy.
2. Henry Farrell on how Trump makes decisions.
3. Nadia E. Brown and Christine M. Slaughter at Good Authority on Juneteenth.
4. Omar Wasow and Robb Willer on protests.
5. Seth Masket on suppressing dissent.
6. Matthew Green at Mischiefs of Faction on public opinion and the megabill.
7. Natalie Jackson on ten years of Trump and public opinion.
8. And Scott Lemieux on ranked-choice voting. I’m not particularly a fan of the system, but I don’t exactly think it’s undemocratic, and I think he has the best of the argument here. One more thing, which I was going to say up top before events intervened…whatever merits there may be for any particular choice in the NYC mayor’s race, the argument that electing (the very liberal) Zohran Mamdani will hurt Democrats nationally because Republicans will link every candidate to him is about the stupidest argument I’ve ever seen. Politics just doesn’t work that way! Even if it did, whatever very marginal differences there might be between linking Democrats to Mamdani instead of, say, AOC are tiny at best. Not to mention that to the extent guilt-by-association matters, the obvious mayoral candidate to avoid is the one who resigned from a sexual harrassment scandal.