Democrats Worse Off than Trump

A curious thing is happening in the US electoral scene. Voters are unhappy with President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs, immigration and foreign policy. Trump’s approval rating is better than the 40 per cent at this point in his first term but still low at 46 per cent. Yet, that isn’t translating into a windfall for Democrats hoping to ride public anger to regain their majority in the House in next year’s mid-terms.

As a Wall Street Journal poll has found, Democrats are at a 35-year low, their worst since 1990, with 63 per cent voters unfavourably disposed towards the Democratic Party. That’s a 30-point difference with the 33 per cent who view Democrats favourably. Voters appear to have more faith in the Republican Party and trust Republicans more on handling the self-same issues of economy, inflation, immigration, etc even when they disapprove of Trump. But all is not lost for Democrats as 3 per cent more respondents still favour a Democratic candidate for Congress than a Republican although that lead was 8 per cent at this stage in 2017. Right now, the Democratic brand is not good enough to challenge Trump.

Eighty Years of Living with the Bomb

It’s been 80 years since the Trinity test, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in the New Mexico desert as part of the Manhattan Project. On August 6 and 9, it will be eight decades since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, were temporarily bombed out of existence. For most of the Cold War, the world had lived in the shadow of nuclear annihilation. In retrospect, it might have been a safer time, since even the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t end in nuclear Armageddon. Somebody always pulled back, whether Khrushchev prevailing over Castro, or Kennedy learning from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or a Soviet duty officer rightly dismissing a warning about the US launching five missiles—the satellite had it wrong. But in a world where the pursuit of nuclear weapons, in offence or deterrence, hasn’t ceased, a country like India, with two nuclear neighbours, couldn’t be expected to give up its own. Yet, as more nations, including South Korea and Japan, the world’s only victim of the atomic bomb, plan to go nuclear against the backdrop of American decline, the risk of someone making the kind of mistake not made in the Cold War increases. How will Kim Jong Un, for instance, react to a nuclear Seoul?

The Wages of Obstinacy

When Israel began its retaliation for October 7, 2023, several voices had warned that it should be short and sharp. Killing the Hamas leadership in their tunnels might have been hard but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned Israeli action into a war of annihilation. Now, Canada has joined France and the UK in declaring that it will recognise a Palestinian state by September, but the Palestinian Authority must hold elections next year without Hamas. The UK’s condition is that Israel immediately agree to a ceasefire. Three G7 countries have now lost their patience. The old two-state roadmap is dead. Netanyahu can’t seem to win the diplomatic war anymore.

Benjamin NetanyahuDemocratesDonald TrumpgeopoliticsIsrael-HamasManhattan ProjectNew Mexico desertnuclear weaponUS politics