Less than two months into the Trump Presidency, and I get the subtle but definite impression that the steam from the Anti-Trump Movement is dissipating.
You can see it on the 24-hour news channels and you can see it in the newspapers. You can hear it talking to your neighbors.
The constant Trump bashing is getting old.
The cold days of winter with Democratic eyes pealed to MSNBC and CNN are giving way to warmer days of better things to do.
Media is learning fairly quickly that viewers and readers are bored with the attacks.
“Now, many (New York Daily) News staffers and alumni feel like the air has been sucked out of the room, and they are perhaps coming to terms with the notion that Trump is more popular with segments of their readership than they thought, even in deep blue New York.” (Politico)
MSNBC has been climbing, but has yet to beat Home & Garden TV in the ratings, but brags about beating CNN (which is akin to bragging about an overtime win against the 49ers), but it’s still far, far behind FoxNews. 13 of the Top 15 cable news programs are on FoxNews. Only two cable networks draw over a million viewers per month, FoxNews and Nickelodeon. Even the ratings for Megan Kelly’s timeslot is up 31% since she left.
Trump bashing is quickly going out of style.
And it looks like March Madness, where it seemed every weekend was a time for a new protest march, isn’t going to survive March.
We’ve gone from a women’s march in January that had 24-hour coverage and a large crowd to a “Women’s Day” this week that was essentially a non-event. Congressional town halls were staged “protests” from liberal activists who are used to losing campaigns in their hometowns and failed to persuade one non-liberal that their shrieks represented a majority view. Trump’s initial “extreme vetting” Executive Order? Wall-to-wall outrage. This week’s replacement order? Hardly a peep of protest.
Especially now that Congress is starting to offer legislation that the Republicans campaigned for and won during the elections, liberal protests and constant attacks on Trump are sounding ridiculous. How many days in a row can the press corps ask the same dumb questions and get the same smart answers and call themselves news? News is supposed to be new.
The strategic error in opposition politics is you never want to bore the audience. You never want to be more interested in droning on about things no one cares about. That goes for newspapers, television or talk radio. Even a great song gets old if you play it long enough.
I fully expect Anti-Trumpism to fade into the background and wait for a new opportunity to come back with a fury later. They just can’t sustain 24-hour-a-day attacks on Trump without attacking him on things people like or don’t care about, and it’s starting to ring hollow.
And if Democrats begin to try to pick their spots, they’ll still have trouble if they pick the wrong spots. No one elected Trump to keep Obamacare, increase abortions, bring in more illegal aliens or decrease American jobs.
And since people actually care about those issues and agree with Trump’s position, Democrats have few other options.
And it’s starting to show.