"No Longer the Vessel Into Which People Can Pour Their Discontent with the Status Quo"

"Many voters were desperate for a straightforward alternative to what they saw as the stale establishmentarian liberalism of the Biden-Harris administration. So they projected its opposite, as they understood it, onto their only other viable option—and Trump, ever attuned to the needs of his audience, was more than happy to humor their hopes. But in actuality, the 2024 election was not a traditional binary choice between two coherently opposed political alternatives, the electoral equivalent of the Yankees versus the Red Sox. It was the Yankees versus a flaming tennis ball launched into orbit by a Tesla rocket—a choice not between two teams but between completely different sports. Many voters who thought they knew the rules to the game and would turn out the winners are now discovering that they didn't and won't."

Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic discusses "[t]he Trump Backers Who Have Buyer's Remorse."

Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg at The Nation give advice regarding "How to Organize Our Way Out of the Trump-Musk Putsch."

At Newsweek, Ross Rosenfeld writes that "Trump Is Creating a Deep State."

David Brooks at The New York Times asserts that Trump "campaigns as a populist, but once he has power, he is the betrayer of populism."

And Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic argues that "[a] president who maintains that the law means whatever he wants it to mean is a constitutional crisis."