NOVEMBER 8, 2025 – Today’s issue of The Times featured a book review and an article that caught my attention. The rest was jetsam, not because it wasn’t informative or useful in divining the state and direction of our country, but because I had places to visit, people to meet, things to do.
The book review, by former U.S. assistant prosecutor and The Times opinion contributor, Jeffrey Toobin, featured Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department by Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, both Pulitzer Prize winners while writing for WAPO, who covered the DOJ under Trump I/II and Biden. The book provides all the particulars for a double-thesis with which most any self-respecting anti-Trumper is abundantly and instinctively familiar: Trump used (and is now deploying with steroidal force) the DOJ as his personal political payback machine, whereas the Biden Administration A.G., Merrick Garland, did the exact opposite to a highly consequential fault: he bent over backwards to avoid even the appearance of political retribution. Ironically, Garland’s approach handed Trump multiple political as well as judicial “Get out of Jail Free” cards.
What’s remarkable about Injustice, however, is that it’s unlikely to affect a single vote. In almost any prior era of American politics, such an exposé would have scandalized a meaningful chunk of the electorate. In our times, the book simply memorializes that to which we’ve all grown accustomed: unbridled Trumpian bulls in a china shop with consequential wreckage in the form of abuse of process and contempt for the rule of law. But Bondi beware: your Democratic successor is guaranteed not to be wearing kid gloves and walking around in stocking feet on eggshells Garland-style. The boom will be lowered with the goal of pinning your arches to the prison floor.
From the standpoint of electoral impact, the Times article referenced at the top reflects a much bigger reality. Written by the decade-long fact-checker Times reporter, Linda Qiu, the piece focused on the latest falsehoods uttered by you know who and amped up across the wrongwing media landscape. The salient point to be drawn from the article is not Trump’s attempt to “fool the folks” into believing that Biden was handing out untold billions in food stamps to anyone who held out a hand—including 59% of illegal aliens[1]—but the fact that according to Department of Agriculture statistics, some 19 million households (out of an estimated total 133 million or 14%) in this great land of ours are living in poverty and dependent on SNAP benefits.
Without venturing too far into the statistical weeds, a reasonable assumption is that an electorally significant percentage of households beyond the 19 million are struggling financially—some mightily—despite ineligibility for SNAP benefits. With the government shut-down and the regime’s cruel (and by all appearances, illegal) withholding of SNAP benefits, the bottom line here is that the “affordability” issue is breaking very acutely in favor of the out-of-power party.
“Affordability,” of course, extends beyond food prices: think rent, health care insurance premiums, the cost of acquiring and owning a motor vehicle, et cetera. Yet, the Commander in Cult, a summa cum malum graduate of Falsehood State(ments) University, insists that the Republicans are the “victors of affordability.”
Though Linda Qiu is to be credited for checking into and revealing a few salient facts, refutation of Trump’s falsehoods is unnecessary. As regards economic reality, res ipsa loquitur—“the thing speaks for itself.” As James Carville famously posted at Clinton campaign quarters back in the day, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That pithy and insightful statement applies ever so accurately to Trump in our day. Because the “biggest B.S.er in history” (to borrow his patented infatuation with hyperbole) believes his own blather, he has created his own serious vulnerability with voters. At his own peril—and that of his cult followers—he will continue to hail his party as the “victors of affordability.” That is principal takeaway from Ms. Qiu’s article.
If you include the coming shock of health care insurance premiums (to be exacerbated if the Republicans get their way in the current impasse over the CR[2]), far more than the “SNAP-beneficiary universe” will suffer a significant “affordability” setback—in ample time for next year’s mid-term elections. Just as James Carville narrowed Clinton’s campaign Bush I down to “the economy, stupid,” so will next year’s mid-terms boil down to the economy. Last Tuesday’s across-the-board results favoring Democrats and Democrat initiatives were a harbinger of what awaits Republicans a year from now. Trump’s inability to empathize with struggling families and his habitual rejection of truth and reality will give Democrats a winning tailwind.
Before Democrats let their feet off the gas, however, they need to understand that 12 more months of Trump will do untold damage to the polity and the economy. The cleanup will require a persistent Herculean effort, especially given the way our electoral system works—namely, the dark role of dark money in campaigns (and legislation) and the necessity of non-stop campaigning from one Election Day to the next.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Emphasis added to call attention (compare “aliens” to “immigrants”) to the age-old propaganda technique, applied with unwavering consistency by regime supporters, to create scapegoats and demonize them. More to the point, however, unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for SNAP benefits, though they might reside in the 4.8% of households comprising SNAP-eligible non-citizen (but legal) immigrants.
[2] If the CR that passes does not provide for health-care premium subsidies, the Republicans will have won a classic pyrrhic victory—and lose the “war” in the mid-terms.
