Reason to hope

Michael Bechloss, historian of the American presidency, has thoughts that give me some reason to hope:

If you look at presidential power in terms of checks and balances, Donald Trump may feel as if he is riding high. If he manages to get his first choice confirmed, he could soon enjoy a strong conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and he dominates his party in Congress in a way we have rarely seen in modern times.

Polls show him with high standing among Republican voters. But history suggests that this may not last forever. Trump is under the growing shadow of the Mueller probe and other investigations. If those inquiries or failure of any of his key policies should undermine his popularity and standing, he may find that Republican senators and members of Congress are no longer so obedient.

As for the Supreme Court majority, history is full of examples in which justices have not turned out to consistently vote as expected. And how often in history has a President been opposed by a majority of the voters with the intensity of the current national opposition to Trump?"

[Axios gives no source for these observations. They appear to be a Twitter thread, but I find no trace of one. I’ve redone the paragraphs to make a less choppy line of thought.]