By Veteran liberal journalist Tina Brown is warning Democrats not to mistake President Donald Trump’s deteriorating approval ratings for evidence that the political movement he built is beginning to collapse.
In a sharply worded a recent Substack column titled “Trump’s Sweet Vengeance,” the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker argued that Democrats are once again misreading the country’s political landscape. Trump may be struggling in national polls amid rising gasoline prices, economic anxiety, and the continuing consequences of the Iran conflict, Brown wrote, but his influence over the Republican Party appears more formidable than ever.
“Democrats are getting it wrong again,” Brown wrote.
Her immediate fear was the Republican Senate primary runoff in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated four-term Sen. John Cornyn after receiving Trump’s endorsement during the final days of the campaign.
Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 before being acquitted by the state Senate, had also faced a securities-fraud case that was later resolved and a series of personal controversies. None of those liabilities prevented him from overwhelming Cornyn, a longtime fixture of the Republican establishment.
Brown described Paxton as a “slippery MAGA sleazebag” who nevertheless managed to “pulverize Senate old-timer John Cornyn in the Republican primary on Tuesday.”
The result represented more than the defeat of a single incumbent. Cornyn had spent nearly a quarter-century in the Senate and had once been considered a plausible candidate for Republican leader. His defeat suggested that institutional seniority, fundraising networks, and years of party loyalty remain secondary considerations in a Republican Party increasingly defined by allegiance to Trump.
Some liberal commentators portrayed the result as a potential opportunity for Democrats, arguing that Republicans may now be forced to spend heavily to defend a Senate seat in a state that has not elected a Democrat statewide in decades. Paxton will face state Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic legislator and Presbyterian seminarian, in the November general election.
Brown was unconvinced that the nomination would create a serious Republican vulnerability.
“When has Trump ever found it difficult to raise millions of dollars, especially against a Senate candidate who tweeted in 2021 that his office was ‘the first in the history of the (Texas) Capitol to put pronouns on their business cards?’” Brown wrote.
Paxton quickly signaled the cultural tenor of the campaign ahead. In his victory speech, he mocked his expected Democratic opponent with a series of nicknames: “James Talafreako,” “Six-Gender Jimmy,” and “Tofu Talarico.”
Brown placed the Texas result within a larger pattern of Republican primary victories by Trump-backed candidates. She pointed to the defeats of Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, each of whom had broken with Trump on a major issue.
Massie became a target after clashing with Trump over the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Raffensperger resisted Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia. Cassidy voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, even though he later cast the deciding committee vote to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services.
“Don’t expect House members to return emboldened when Trump has just gone four for four in the primaries,” Brown wrote.
The political environment remains complicated. Trump’s standing with voters has weakened considerably. A Quinnipiac University poll released May 20 found that only 34 percent of registered voters approved of his overall job performance, while 58 percent disapproved. His approval rating on the economy fell to 33 percent, the lowest economic rating of either of his presidential terms.
The poll also found deep dissatisfaction with the war in Iran. Only 38 percent of voters supported U.S. military action, while 56 percent opposed it. Fifty-five percent said they blamed Trump “a lot” for the recent rise in gasoline prices.
Yet Democrats have not translated Trump’s weakness into broad public confidence in their own party’s leadership. The Quinnipiac survey found that only 20 percent of voters approved of the way Democrats in Congress were handling their jobs, while 72 percent disapproved. Among Democratic voters themselves, only 41 percent approved of the performance of congressional Democrats.
The apparent contradiction is striking. The same poll found that voters preferred Democratic control of the House by an 11-point margin, 50 percent to 39 percent. An Emerson College survey released several days later similarly showed Democrats leading Republicans by nine points on the generic congressional ballot, even as 58 percent of voters said the Democratic Party was on the wrong track.
Brown’s warning is that Democrats may be too eager to interpret Trump’s poor approval numbers through the conventional rhythms of American politics. Presidents frequently lose congressional seats during midterm elections. Rising prices, unpopular wars, and voter exhaustion would ordinarily place the president’s party in a precarious position.
But Trump’s political power has never depended exclusively on conventional approval ratings. His influence rests partly on his ability to define the terms of conflict within the Republican Party, punish dissenters, dominate media attention, and transform political controversy into a test of personal loyalty.
Brown argued that the result has been a broader cultural transformation in which conduct once regarded as politically disqualifying has become normalized.
“He’s the angel of sabotage, freed from the shackles of his own malign deeds by the Supreme Court, the GOP’s moral turpitude, and the universal glint of greed from the Wall Street honchos, Silicon Valley bros, and Palm Beach plutocrats who see that the presidency is open for business,” she wrote.
Citing a Brennan Center newsletter, Brown added: “There is a zone of lawlessness around the Oval Office.”
Her deeper concern is that Trumpism will outlast Trump himself. After more than a decade of political conflict centered on the president, Brown argued, the country has adjusted to a new set of expectations surrounding executive power, institutional restraint, and political retaliation.
“There will be no snapback when he’s gone,” Brown wrote. “Even as his approval ratings tank and the country is hurting, it feels as if his base has become wider and deeper and represents a new national state of mind.”
That conclusion may be overly pessimistic. Democrats still have substantial advantages heading into the midterm elections, particularly if economic conditions continue to deteriorate. But Brown’s argument identifies a genuine weakness in the party’s emerging strategy: opposition to an unpopular president is not necessarily the same thing as public confidence in the alternative.
The central question of the 2026 midterm elections may therefore be whether voters treat Trump’s low approval ratings as a reason to restrain his administration—or whether the political transformation he engineered has become durable enough to withstand the backlash that would ordinarily follow an unpopular presidency.
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