The last few months have been quite chastening for millions of Americans.
We have seen ICE raids conducted in cities across the polity, with Democratic strongholds specifically targeted by the Trump administration and there’s been punitive tariffs on Chinese, European and Canadian imports leading to everyday folk paying much more than ever.
And we have seen a good number of farmers go out of business, as a consequence of the campaign promises of the current occupant of the white house.
The Republican manifesto was all about putting America first, building walls to keep out illegal aliens and taking the fight to the Chinese who have been allowed to have it their way, with their cheap merchandise and technology.
And we also can’t deny the strong pull of project 2025, which had distracted people with culture wars by creating imagined enemies, home and abroad.
But there’s always a chasm between rhetoric and reality and the voters who handed Trump a majority in the senate and congress, a year ago, have been forced to learn economics in real-time.
And it is fair to state that many more farmers will go out of business should the tariffs stay in place.
All of which brings us to the very basis of this piece: Are Trump supporters having buyer’s remorse?
By every indication, it would seem that this is very much the case.
Donald Trump, in lots of ways, is your quintessential snake-oil salesman, who sold a lie to multitudes who gave absolutely no thought to the practicalities of his ideas, only to find that his flagship policies had no iota of sense.
Agent orange and his closest associates, have been the biggest beneficiaries of the flurry of changes which we have seen from the 20th of January 2025, till date.
And folks who would have been happy to proclaim their MAGA status from the rooftops, a year ago, have suddenly become mute, watching their principal lay siege to every single facet of their lives.
Travelling stand-up comedians, who would have been circumspect and hesitant about their material in hostile territory, have thrown caution to the wind in attacking the patron saint of right-wing politics and there’s been no push back from the Republican crew.
Zohran Mamdani, whose candidacy for New York mayor has attracted a huge amount of derision and bigotry, will have a huge number of Republicans turning up to the voting booth to put him in city hall.
The paroxysm of regret from the MAGA crew isn’t at all dissimilar to their British cousins, who have awoken to the reality that the decision to leave the European Union wasn’t a wise move and have sought to engineer a partial return to the political bloc, which has a number of advantages.
Now whether this feeling can lead to the long overdue reconfiguration of American politics in the 21st century, remains to be seen, but it’s apparent to most that there’s a degree of buyer’s remorse pervading America.