Exactly.

I’ve had Republican friends send me articles, I read them, start the debate, only to realize they literally only read the headline.

I’ve found myself reading terribly written articles just so that I’m sure I don’t misunderstand anything being portrayed in the article. Sometimes spending an extra 20-30 additional minutes for fact checking.

Trying to have a subsequent conversation with them is like pissing in the wind.

We need never be afraid of the vote of informed Americans. It is only the ignorant voter we have to fear, ignorant politically, no matter how fine his house or how expensive his schooling. Such people have never experienced democracy; they have merely enjoyed its benefits. It is hard to explain what democracy is; it is necessary to participate in it to understand it.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

Unfortunately, there seems to be an awful lot of ignorance out there today.

Well, if goods become even more expensive, and wages fail to improve or get worse, then people tend to notice that more than the spin.

Sure you have very loud passionate politically active people who are game for “their team” to win no matter what and will listen to anything to rationalize their position and reject anything that disagrees, but a lot of folks are just looking at their personal circumstance and deciding if they think it’s bad or not and voting either to continue or change, without a whole lot of consideration of what either side says will work or why things are the way they are, they just know “keep it going” or “change it out”.

It seems he is out for revenge on anyone who slighted him in the last 8 years.

Economists also said that Trump would tank the economy. Americans sleep.

Not even just “sleeping”, Wallstreet is celebrating his win!

Well, a scenario is that he cuts taxes and applies massive tariffs, resulting in a huge regressive expense paid the most by the poorest. That he lets companies be more sociopathic toward their workers and says “screw you” to anyone that needs welfare.

The end result if 2 years sees even more expensive bills and less safe employment and less recourse when the employment screws them over would be an electorate that demands him out and takes it out on the house and senate races. Perhaps to the point where they could remove him from office, and maybe even Vance too, and have a Democratic president finish out his term.

So his point is simply that while he pursues republican economic policy, which I suspect the author agrees with broadly, to take it easy and make sure he doesn’t piss everyone off in the process.

There’s no such thing as swing voters. At least not one relevant to winning an election. Elections are about getting your 40% out to vote.

He may not care about Trump’s specific presidency, as much as he wants some conservative economic policy in general to maybe endure. This means he would want a republican house, senate, and presidency even after Trump’s second term concludes, and really doesn’t like the idea of going too hard core and the fallout causing a loss of that influence as early as 2027 in the mid terms.

He can’t get elected again

He’s going to start talking about a third term within a month of taking office. At first they’re going to write it off as “jokes” and then he’s going to push it to the supreme court.

I’m sure his Supreme Court would be happy to rule the constitution unconstitutional.

That summary was a bit misleading compared to the linked summary.

“What Americans really want, sir, is fewer protections on the job and a weaker safety net,”

The conservative economist is not saying that he shouldn’t have tax cuts and maybe some deregulation, is that he shouldn’t screw the pooch for swing voters in the process.

As he looks toward his new term, Mr. Trump could claim a mandate to lead however he wishes,

As an example, I heard a MAGA politician on the radio the other day. Admittedly it didn’t sound like anyone “hooked in” to Trump’s circle, but I suspect his rhetoric was consistent. The interviewer put to him a question like “given how divisive things are, what do you hope Trump will do to be a good leader for all the nation, including those that didn’t vote for him?”. The response was that Trump won, therefore, there’s no mandate to do anything for the losing voters, and the mandate was simple to do whatever Trump wants to do.

Further, Don Jr. said a key facet for anyone in Trump’s administration is that there must be no one who would dare think themselves smarter than the president. Only yes men allowed.

Ultimately, people need to feel like they have viable livelihoods with a return to relatively affordable goods, and they need to see that within 2 years or else the house and senate will be hard blue come 2027. Of course, there’s always the potential for dismantling the democracy, but the economist would probably think that would be disastrous for stability, and a grave threat to everything including economic concerns. So best outcome for him, as a conservative economist, is somehow making the electorate willingly want to keep the republicans, and he knows that Trump listening only to himself and hard core sycophants is not a recipe to make the electorate happy.