Dear Commons Community,

Anna Dumont, a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Northwestern University, had an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, “What Autocrats Want from Academics: Servility.”  She recounts an episode in 1931 when Benito Mussolini demanded a loyalty oath from every Italian university professor.  All but twelve did so. While she clearly admits that we are not at that point in the United States, there are dark clouds brewing in the way the Trump administration is using its financial influence to have college and universities buckle to its whims. Below is the essay.

Important reading!

Tony

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Review | Essay

What Autocrats Want From Academics: Servility.

By Anna Dumont

March 20, 2025

“Since Trump’s inauguration, the university community has received a good deal of “messaging” from academic leadership. We’ve received emails from our deans and university presidents; we’ve sat in department meetings regarding the “developing situation”; and we’ve seen the occasional official statement or op-ed or comment in the local newspaper. And the unfortunate takeaway from all this is that our leaders’ strategy rests on a disturbing and arbitrary distinction. The public-facing language of the university — mission statements, programming, administrative structures, and so on — has nothing at all to do with the autonomy of our teaching and research, which, they assure us, they hold sacrosanct. Recent concessions — say, the disappearance of the website of the Women’s Center — are concerning, they admit, but ultimately inconsequential to our overall working lives as students and scholars.

History, however, shows that public-facing statements are deeply consequential, and one episode from the 20-year march of Italian fascism strikes me as especially instructive. On October 8, 1931, a law went into effect requiring, as a condition of their employment, every Italian university professor to sign an oath pledging their loyalty to the government of Benito Mussolini. Out of over 1,200 professors in the country, only 12 refused.

Today, those who refused are known simply as “I Dodici”: the Twelve. They were a scholar of Middle Eastern languages, an organic chemist, a doctor of forensic medicine, three lawyers, a mathematician, a theologian, a surgeon, a historian of ancient Rome, a philosopher of Kantian ethics, and one art historian. Two, Francesco Ruffini and Edoardo Ruffini Avondo, were father and son. Four were Jewish. All of them were immediately fired.

In the years that followed, the Twelve paid for this act of conscience. Gaetano de Sanctis, the classicist, went blind during his years in the wilderness, and would never finish the book that was his life’s work. Others, like the linguist Giorgio Levi Della Vida and the art historian Lionello Venturi, were forced into exile. Mario Carrara, a doctor of forensic medicine in Turin, was jailed. Carrara, along with the chemist Giorgio Errera, wouldn’t live to see the end of the regime.

The price for the country was, however, steeper than any of these individual tragedies. As Giorgio Boatti recounts in his book on the loyalty oath, Preferirei di No, the signing of the oath by the vast majority of professors represented the surrender of Italian intellectual life to the regime. It signaled to the rest of the country that there would be no resistance in the world of Italian ideas. What followed — the 1938 racial laws, the deportation of thousands of Italian Jews to their deaths in the camps, a bloody war, the German occupation — would forever be on the moral accounts of every professor who capitulated.

The oath has been on my mind because it did not directly dictate anything about the research programs of any of its signatories, nor the content of their lectures. The professors vowed only loyalty to the king and the fascist regime, to perform their academic duties in the interest of producing loyal citizens, and not to belong to any opposition organizations. By demonstrating their assent in this way, however, the professors themselves created a political environment in which freedom of thought, of speech, and of conscience, was relinquished.

With every suggestion that we might continue to teach the art of Kara Walker and Faith Ringgold without publicly speaking about racial justice, that we should continue to think and write about Claude Cahun or Caravaggio without defending our queer and trans students, I am reminded of the absolute failure of such bargaining in the face of past authoritarianism. If our work as historians can teach us anything, it must be this.

Our teaching and research only matter under general conditions of freedom and dignity.

We are not yet in a moment like 1931. And in fact, the words ringing in my ears these past weeks have been those of a warning penned by the socialist historian Gaetano Salvemini in 1925. From France, where he fled under threat of a lengthy jail sentence for his political activities, Salvemini penned an extraordinary letter of resignation to his former colleagues at the University of Florence. Admitting that, prior to his arrest, there was no direct pressure on what he said in his classroom, he cautioned his colleagues that such a test was dangerously shortsighted:

If the members of the Academic Senate are waiting for this kind of pressure to feel limited in their scientific independence and personal dignity, it is not to say that they will not soon be satisfied in this respect as well: But when they have allowed themselves to have been led to this point, they will no longer have any dignity to protect.

Our teaching and research only matter under general conditions of freedom and dignity. These conditions do not exist under the threat of arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, deportation, or suspension of medical care. As academics, we do our work because we hope it will matter in the world, from our colleagues developing new vaccines, to those investigating histories of American colonial power. To pretend otherwise is, as Salvemini wrote, to reduce our intellectual work to either “the servile adulation of the dominant party, or mere erudite exercises.”

It may seem prudent now to keep our heads down and hope this storm passes. History tells us this is unlikely. Free inquiry and the public exchange of our findings pose a real threat to authoritarian government. If we continue to preemptively change our language, pretend that the deep inequities of class and race and global power that shape our world are not relevant to the governance of our institution, or demonstrate to both Trump’s agents and the public that we will fold under the slightest pressure, we will find ourselves, perhaps not so long from now, without any dignity left to protect.”

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who was one of only four Republicans to vote against Trump’s steep international tariffs Wednesday, says the policy is “bad” both politically and economically — and has led to utter “decimation” for his party in the past.

Paul noted tariffs didn’t work out so well for Republicans when then-Rep. William McKinley (R-Ohio) led the effort for the Tariff Act of 1890, nor when Sen. Reed Smoot (R-Utah) and Rep. Willis C. Hawley (R-Ore.) sponsored their own eponymous levies in 1930.

“When McKinley, most famously, put tariffs on in 1890, they lost 50% of their seats in the next election,” Paul told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “When [Smoot and Hawley] put on their tariff in the early 1930s, we lost the House and the Senate for 60 years.”

Trump dubbed April 2 “Liberation Day” and announced a sweeping 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the U.S., with levies on some countries set even higher. The European Union and China face tariffs of 20% and 54%, respectively. He has already set tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico at 25%

Paul and three other Republicans reached across the aisle Wednesday and helped the effort, led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), to oppose the Canadian tariffs, resulting in a 51-48 Senate vote in favor of terminating Trump’s emergency powers to impose them.

The GOP senator joined Kaine for a Fox News interview Wednesday to explain his view, stating that “we should not live under emergency rule” and that the U.S. Constitution specifically notes taxes, which the tariffs essentially are, “are raised by Congress” — not the president.

“But on the tariffs in particular and the idea of trade, trade is proportional to wealth,” Paul continued. “The last 70 years of international trade has been an exponential curve upwards, and the last 70 years of prosperity has been upwards, also.”

“We are richer because of trade with Canada — and so is Canada,” he argued. “Whenever you trade with somebody, when an individual buys somebody else’s product, it’s mutually beneficial, or you wouldn’t buy it. If a trade is voluntary, it’s always beneficial.”

Trump previously justified his tariffs against Canada as a matter of national security, or payback for Canada allowing “massive” amounts of fentanyl into America. In reality, only 43 pounds of the deadly synthetic drug were seized at the U.S.-Canada border last year.

“There is no ‘Canada versus the U.S.,’” Paul told Fox News. “The consumer wins when the price is the lowest price, tariffs raise prices and they’re a bad idea for the economy.”

Sorry Senator Paul but Trump is your guy!

Tony

This chart shows the levies on some of America’s biggest trading partners.   (The new fees exclude Canada and Mexico, which already face separate tariffs.)

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, Trump held up a chart at the White House Rose Garden. He laughed that not everyone in the audience could read it because the font was so small. But the content was anything but small. It detailed the tariffs he will impose on China, the European Union, Japan, India and dozens of others. Essentially that chart started a trade war against the rest of the world. As reported by German Lopez of The New York Times. 

The levies will total 10, 20 and even 50 percent, depending on the country. “Many people had been expecting the president to announce high tariffs today, but the numbers that he just revealed are stunning.” 

In Trump’s telling, the tariffs are necessary to counter trade barriers that other countries have placed on America. To some extent, he has a point: Other nations do have higher tariffs than the United States does. But Trump exaggerates how big the gap is, as Ana Swanson explained. And these tariffs will not simply hurt other countries; they will also hurt the U.S. economy. Experts say the levies will result in higher prices and lower economic growth — and potentially even a recession.

The levies

The tariffs make little distinction between allies and adversaries. The administration claims they are based on other countries’ trade barriers against the United States. In reality, the levies are based on how much more another country exports to America than imports from it, Tony Romm, Ana and Lazaro Gamio wrote. The difference between exports and imports doesn’t necessarily reflect trade barriers; Americans may simply want to buy more stuff from, say, Japan than the Japanese want to buy from the United States.

”Practically speaking, the chart shows that Americans will now pay more for goods from other countries. If companies pass the tariffs on to consumers — and they almost always do — a $20 pack of beer from Germany will cost $24. A $100 bike from China will cost around $130. A $400 video game console from Japan will cost nearly $500.

The levies are in addition to past tolls, such as those Trump placed on China. They exempt some goods, including some forms of energy, pharmaceuticals and things that Trump had already tariffed, particularly cars, steel and aluminum. Overall, though, they amount to a huge tax on some of America’s biggest trading partners.

Following Trump’s announcement, China and Europe vowed to retaliate and the global economy showed signs of distress.

China’s government said it would take countermeasures to “safeguard its own rights and interests.” Its options could include more tariffs, restrictions on U.S. investment in China or export controls on rare earth minerals.

In Brussels, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, held a news conference just after 5 a.m. and said the bloc was ready to respond. “If you take on one of us, you take on all of us,” she said.

Markets in Asia and Europe dropped. The U.S. market is also expecting a rough day today. One analyst told The Times that the tariffs were “shockingly high” and “a disaster.”

What’s next

In the coming days, other countries will probably retaliate with their own tariffs and other trade barriers. The European Union has even discussed limiting American banks’ access to certain E.U. markets, Bernhard Warner reported. Those steps could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy.

One question remains: Is Trump committed to a trade war? He said he would withdraw his tariffs if other countries rescinded their own trade barriers. Perhaps minor concessions would suffice; Trump suspended his penalties against Canada and Mexico after they promised to make nominal changes. A month later, he tried again but largely reversed himself after the market panicked. Perhaps that story will repeat itself.

Open your wallets Americans!

Tony

Flying a kite in Seattle.

Dear Commons Community,

Today is my wife, Elaine’s eighty birthday.  

I have been blessed to have her on my life’s journey.

She is simply the best!

Tony

In Florence.

On Omaha Beach,, France.

In Philae, Egypt.

In  Cappadocia,Turkey.

With the grandkids, Michael and Ali.

In Quebec.

On Nantucket.

In Copenhagen.

In Scotland.

With our grandkids Ali and Michael and our daughter, Dawn Marie.

Dear Commons Community,

A Democrat-backed judge has won a key seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a vote widely seen as a referendum on  Trump’s administration.

Susan Crawford overcame the wrath of Trump and a $21 million donation to her Republican opponent by Elon Musk.

Her victory is a boost for the Democrats, who had framed the race around the popularity of Trump and Mr. Musk.  As reported by The Telegraph.

In Wisconsin, Ms. Crawford defeated Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney and conservative judge from Waukesha county, after Mr. Musk helped fund the most expensive judicial contest in American history.

During the campaign, Mr. Musk said the race could “decide the future of America and Western civilisation”.

Referring to the Tesla and SpaceX founder in her victory speech, Ms. Crawford said: “Growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I would be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin… And we won.”

Mr. Musk, who for weeks prioritized efforts to secure Mr. Schimel’s victory, said after the result that the “long con of the Left is corruption of the judiciary” and what was more important was a vote in favour of voter ID.

The result means liberals will keep their 4-3 majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, which will hear significant cases on abortion and bargaining rights.

The court could also hear cases that could prompt Wisconsin, a national swing state, to change the boundaries of its eight congressional districts, which currently benefit the Republicans.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, said there had been a “historic turnout” for the election, with seven polling stations running out of ballots.

Around $80 million was spent on the race in total, including $21 million by Mr. Musk and his associates.

The Tesla billionaire revived some of the tactics he used to support Mr Trump in November’s national election, giving voters $100  to sign petitions and travelling to Wisconsin to offer $1 million  checks to two voters.

“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” Ms. Crawford said in her victory speech. “And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale.”

Speaking hours before the vote, Mr. Musk told Fox News: “In general, there’s a huge problem with activists that are actually politicians in judge’s robes… These fake judges should be ashamed of themselves”.

When Mr. Schimel told his supporters he had conceded to Ms. Crawford, some started to boo. One woman started chanting: “Cheater!”

“No,” Mr. Schimel responded. “You’ve got to accept the results.”

 YES!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page yesterday whacked Trump for handing Democrats what it said could be a winning campaign message in the 2026 midterm elections.

In particular, the Journal took aim at Trump for professing indifference to the price increases his tariffs are likely to inflict upon American consumers when he said that “I couldn’t care less” if car manufacturers raise prices in response to his tariffs. He further added, “I hope they raise their prices, because if they do, people are gonna buy American-made cars.”

“As a political matter, Mr. Trump’s ‘I couldn’t care less’ quote about price increases is likely to show up in Democratic campaign ads next year,” the editors warned. “Polling shows most voters don’t think Mr. Trump is focusing enough on reducing prices—64% say not enough in the CBS News survey released Sunday. Mr. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2026, but you can bet TV ads will link Republicans in Congress to Mr. Trump and those comments.”

Below is the entire Wall Street Journal editorial

Tony

——————————————————————————–

The Wall Street Journal 

A $6 Trillion Trump Tax Increase?

Navarro says tariffs will raise $600 billion a year for the government, but he says this is a tax cut.

By The Editorial Board

March 31, 2025 5:40 pm ET

Financial markets have the shakes as President Trump prepares to launch his next big tariff salvo on Wednesday. And nerves are appropriate since Mr. Trump’s chief trade adviser, Peter Navarro, is boasting about what he says will amount to a $6 trillion tax increase from the tariffs.

“Tariffs are going to raise about $600 billion a year, about $6 trillion over a 10-year period,” Mr. Navarro told Fox News on Sunday. This is on top of $100 billion a year from Mr. Trump’s car and truck tariffs. He also tried to claim that “the message is that tariffs are tax cuts.”

George Orwell, call your office. In the real economic world, a tariff is a tax. If you raise $600 billion more a year in revenue for the federal government, you are taking that amount away from individuals and businesses in the private economy.

By any definition that is a tax increase, and the $600 billion figure would be one of the largest in U.S. history. It amounts to about 2% of gross domestic product, and it would take the federal tax share of GDP above 19%. The average since 1975 is about 17.3%. Democrats, who love tax increases, haven’t dared pass such a large revenue heist.

It’s possible Mr. Trump will walk back from this tax ledge, and Kevin Hassett, who runs the White House economic council, wouldn’t say on Sunday what Mr. Trump will do.

But what is clear is that the President is going to impose significant tariffs, and do so when the economy is slowing. The Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDP Now estimate for the first quarter, which ended Monday, has the economy shrinking 0.5%. That volatile number will change as March data arrive, but both consumers and businesses have grown more cautious as they worry about the effect of tariffs.

This is especially worrying because the signs are that Mr. Trump thinks tariffs are worth the economic damage. The latest evidence is his weekend claim that he doesn’t give a hoot if prices rise on foreign cars. “I couldn’t care less, because if the prices on foreign cars go up, they’re going to buy American cars,” Mr. Trump told NBC News. “I hope they raise their prices, because if they do, people are gonna buy American-made cars. We have plenty.”

Somehow we doubt American consumers will feel the same at a dealer showroom. Mr. Trump’s 25% tariff on foreign cars, which goes into effect this week, will raise car prices by some amount. Foreign car makers might absorb some of the tariff cost, but some part of the 25% levy is sure to be passed on to American consumers.

Mr. Trump also ignores that U.S. car makers are also likely to raise their prices. If Hyundai raises the price of an export model made in South Korea, then Ford and GM may at first try to capture market share. But over time the U.S firms would be foolish not to raise their prices to increase profits, perhaps by some margin less than the increase on imported cars.

That’s what happened after Mr. Trump raised tariffs on washing machines in his first term. Washer prices rose nearly 12%, according to a 2019 study, and it didn’t matter where the machine was made.

As a political matter, Mr. Trump’s “I couldn’t care less” quote about price increases is likely to show up in Democratic campaign ads next year. Polling shows most voters don’t think Mr. Trump is focusing enough on reducing prices—64% say not enough in the CBS News survey released Sunday. Mr. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2026, but you can bet TV ads will link Republicans in Congress to Mr. Trump and those comments.

The President’s ideological fixation on tariffs is crowding out rational judgments about the consequences. Americans are being told to accept the pain of higher prices, a slower economy, and shrinking 401(k) balances in the name of Mr. Trump’s project to transform the American economy into what he imagines it was like in the McKinley era of the 1890s.

We wonder if the working-class voters who are supposed to be the vanguard of the new GOP will feel as good about the pain as they try to make ends meet paycheck to paycheck.

Dear Commons Community,

The outlook for international travel to the U.S. has drastically changed and is now seen declining this year instead of rising.

According to a Feb. 27 report from research firm Tourism Economics, visits are expected to fall 5.1%, down from an earlier view for an 8.8% increase. Spending by foreign tourists is expected to tumble 11%, representing a loss of $18 billion this year.

That’s as President Trump’s tariffs and friendlier approach to Russia have created a global backlash, while an expanded trade-war scenario is seen slowing economic growth across U.S. trade partners and weighing on their currencies.  AS reported by Fortune.com.

“In key origin markets, a situation with polarizing Trump Administration policies and rhetoric, accompanied by economic losses to nationally important industries, small businesses and households, will discourage travel to the US,” the report said. “Some organizations will feel pressure to avoid hosting events in the US, or sending employees to the US, cutting into business travel.”

In emailed comments to Fortune, Tourism Economics President Adam Sacks said in the two weeks since the report came out, the situation has deteriorated further and the forecast for a 5.1% decline is likely to get worse.

Visitors from Canada, which has been hit by Trump’s tariffs and demands for it to become the 51st U.S. state, have been canceling travel plans. In fact, the number of Canadian car trips coming back from the U.S. were down 24% in February compared to a year ago, and overall travel from Canada is seen falling 15% this year.

Meanwhile, Trump’s immigration crackdown may also raise concerns among potential travelers, particularly from Mexico, the report added.

Travel from Western Europe, which accounts for over a third of foreign tourism to the U.S., is susceptible to declines due to tariffs and “the administration’s perceived recent alignment with Russia in the war in Ukraine as sentiment towards the US is damaged,” Tourism Economics warned.

Separate data shows the overall number of foreign visitors to the U.S. fell 2.4% last month from a year ago. Travel sank 9% from Africa, 6% from Central America, and 7% from Asia, with China down 11%, according to a Washington Post analysis of government statistics.

Airlines have also sounded the alarm recently on lessened travel demand from consumers and businesses as tariffs and mass federal layoffs create economic uncertainty.

Not only are tariffs slamming foreign tourism, they are widely expected to slow U.S. economic growth, with Wall Street pricing in growing odds of a recession. And fewer overseas visitors will make that worse because all their spending in the U.S. is treated in government statistics like an export, meaning the trade deficit is poised to widen. A deeper imbalance was a major factor in the Atlanta Fed’s GDP tracker suddenly shifting into negative territory for the first quarter.

To be sure, similar declines in foreign visitors were seen during Trump’s first term, especially from Mexico, China, and the Middle East, according to Tourism Economics. But his trade war was more limited back then. Now, his tariffs are more aggressive and expansive, with no sign he plans to back down.

That comes as the U.S. will feature prominently in major upcoming tourism events. The U.S. will co-host the World Cup next year, and Los Angeles will host the Summer Olympics in 2028.

Sacks told Fortune the World Cup is less likely to be affected while the Olympics may be more at risk comparatively.

“The issue for general holiday travelers is that they have a choice of when and where to travel,” he added. “This ultimate discretion means that antipathy towards a country’s leadership can have appreciable effects.”

States with high foreign tourism like New York and Florida will be especially hard hit.

Tony

Credit…Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

In an  editorial yesterday, The New York Times declared that the Democratic Party is in a state of denial about why it lost the presidency, as well as the Senate and the House in 2024, and said its proposed solutions for getting back on track are delusional as well. 

“As comforting as these explanations may feel to Democrats, they are a form of denial that will make it harder for the Democratic Party to win future elections,” the Board said in the editorial.

The title of the editorial flatly declared, “The Democrats Are in Denial About 2024.” 

The Times editorial comes as the Democratic Party’s approval rating has been at one of its lowest points in modern history. According to national polls from CNN and NBC News published earlier this month, just 29% and 27% of respondents, respectively, say they view the party favorably. These represent the lowest approval numbers for the party surveyed by those outlets since the early ’90s.

The NYT editorial board hammered “many party leaders” who have “decided that they do not need to make significant changes to their policies or their message” following their “comprehensive defeat.” 

Furthermore, the party has turned to a “convenient explanation for their plight,” namely that forces beyond its control, like “postpandemic inflation” hurt its chances, as well as the fact that they just need to message better. “If Democrats could only communicate better, particularly on social media and podcasts, the party would be fine,” the board stated, summarizing part of their denial.

The editorial also mentioned how new Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin insists that the party has the “right message” and just needs a way to “connect it back with the voters.” It also provided the example of former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., recently telling voters that “90 million” people stayed home last election and the party has to get their support. 

Denial indeed!

Below is the entire editorial.

Tony

———————————————————————

The New York Times

The Democrats Are in Denial About 2024

March 29, 2025

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Last year’s election was close, despite President Trump’s hyperbolic claims about his margin of victory. Still, the Democratic Party clearly lost — and not only the presidential race. It also lost control of the Senate and failed to recapture the House of Representatives. Of the 11 governor’s races held last year, Democrats won three. In state legislature races, they won fewer than 45 percent of the seats.

In the aftermath of this comprehensive defeat, many party leaders have decided that they do not need to make significant changes to their policies or their message. They have instead settled on a convenient explanation for their plight.

That explanation starts with the notion that Democrats were merely the unlucky victims of postpandemic inflation and that their party is more popular than it seems: If Democrats could only communicate better, particularly on social media and podcasts, the party would be fine. “We’ve got the right message,” Ken Martin, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said while campaigning for the job. “What we need to do is connect it back with the voters.”

A key part of this argument involves voter turnout. Party leaders claim that most Americans still prefer Democrats but that voter apathy allowed Mr. Trump to win. According to this logic, Democrats do not need to worry about winning back Trump voters and should instead try to animate the country’s natural liberal majority. “I don’t think we’re going to win over those 77 million that voted for Donald Trump,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s 2024 vice-presidential nominee, said this month. “I’m concerned with the 90 million who stayed home.” It was an unfortunate echo of Hillary Clinton saying that millions of Trump voters were “deplorables” and “irredeemable.”

As comforting as these explanations may feel to Democrats, they are a form of denial that will make it harder for the Democratic Party to win future elections.

Even many conservatives and Republicans should be concerned about the Democratic denial. The country needs two healthy political parties. It especially needs a healthy Democratic Party, given Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party and his draconian behavior. Restraining him — and any successors who continue his policies — depends on Democrats’ taking an honest look at their problems.

The part of the Democratic story that contains the most truth is inflation. Prices surged during Covid’s supply-chain disruptions, and incumbent parties around the world have suffered. Whether on the political right or left, ruling parties lost power in the United States, Brazil, Britain, Germany and Italy.

But some incumbent parties managed to win re-election, including in Denmark, France, India, Japan, Mexico and Spain. A healthier Democratic Party could have joined them last year. The Democrats, after all, were running against a Republican whose favorability rating rarely exceeded 45 percent. Most voters did not like Mr. Trump. They did prefer him to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Polls make clear that inflation was not the only reason. Voters also trusted Republicans more than Democrats on immigration, crime, government spending, global trade and foreign policy. Among the few exceptions were abortion and health care. As the headline of a recent Times news article summarized, “Support for Trump’s Policies Exceeds Support for Trump.” Only 27 percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Democratic Party. It is the party’s lowest approval rating in decades.

Support for Democrats hits a low

The part of that Democratic story that contains the least truth is voter turnout. Nonvoters appear to have favored Mr. Trump by an even wider margin than voters, as Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, has reported. David Shor, the bracingly honest Democratic data scientist, put it well: “We’re now at a point where the more people vote, the better Republicans do.”

The good news for Democrats is that winning over nonvoters and Trump voters is not in conflict. People who do not vote have many of the same concerns as voters who flipped to Mr. Trump. Nonvoters are disproportionately working class, young, Asian, Black, Latino or foreign-born, and each of these groups shifted away from Democrats. When Democrats call for ignoring the country’s 77 million Trump voters, they are writing off a diverse group of Americans, many of whom voted Democratic before.

We recognize that the Democratic Party is in a difficult position. It must compete with a Republican Party that shows an alarming hostility to American democracy. And we urge Democrats to continue speaking out against Mr. Trump’s authoritarian behavior — his bullying of military leaders, judges, law firms, universities and the media; his disdain for Congress; his attempts to chill speech through deportation; his tolerance for incompetent cabinet secretaries who endanger American troops. Whatever polls say about the political wisdom of such criticism, Democratic silence on these issues would only encourage timidity from other parts of society.

It is the rest of the Democratic strategy that requires more rigorous and less wishful reflection. To regain voters’ trust, Democrats should take at least three steps.

First, they should admit that their party mishandled Mr. Biden’s age. Leading Democrats insisted that he had mental acuity for a second term when most Americans believed otherwise. Party leaders even attempted to shout down anybody who raised concerns, before reversing course and pushing Mr. Biden out of the race. Already, many voters believe that Democrats refuse to admit uncomfortable truths on some subjects, including crime, illegal immigration, inflation and Covid lockdowns. Mr. Biden’s age became a glaring example. Acknowledging as much may be backward looking, but it would send an important signal.

Second, Democrats should recognize that the party moved too far left on social issues after Barack Obama left office in 2017. The old video clips of Ms. Harris that the Trump campaign gleefully replayed last year — on decriminalizing the border and government-funded gender-transition surgery for prisoners — highlighted the problem. Yes, she tried to abandon these stances before the election, but she never spoke forthrightly to voters and acknowledged she had changed her position.

Even today, the party remains too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences — by race, gender, sexuality and religion — rather than our shared values. On these issues, progressives sometimes adopt a scolding, censorious posture. It is worth emphasizing that this posture has alienated growing numbers of Asian, Black and Latino voters. Democrats who won last year in places where Mr. Trump also won, such as Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, adopted a more moderate tone. They were hawkish about border security and law enforcement, criticizing their own party. They did not make the common Democratic mistake of trying to talk about only economic policy and refusing to engage with Americans’ concerns on difficult social issues.

Third, the party has to offer new ideas. When Democrats emerged from the wilderness in the past, they often did so with fresh ideas. They updated the proud Democratic tradition of improving life for all Americans. Bill Clinton remade the party in the early 1990s and spoke of “putting people first.” In 2008, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and John Edwards offered exciting plans to improve health care, reduce inequality and slow climate change. These candidates provided intellectual leadership.

Ms. Harris failed to do so in last year’s campaign, and few Democrats are doing so today. Where is the Democrat with bold plans to cut living costs? Or fight the ills of social media? Or help aimless boys who are struggling in school? Where is the governor who does more than talk about an abundance agenda and actually cuts regulations to help America build? New ideas should come from both the party’s progressives and its centrists. The most successful American politicians, like Mr. Obama and Ronald Reagan, deftly mix boldness and moderation. One benefit of being out of power is that it offers time to develop ideas and see which resonate. It is not a time to say, “We’ve got the right message.”

Even without reforming themselves, Democrats may fare well in elections over the next two years. Opposition parties usually thrive in midterms. The longer-term picture is less sanguine. The next Republican leader may be more disciplined than Mr. Trump. And both the Senate and the Electoral College look challenging for Democrats. Of the seven states whose population has grown the most since 2020, the Democratic Party won none in last year’s presidential election.

Defeat has a long history of inspiring honest reflection in politics. In this time of frustration and anxiety for Democrats, they should give it a try.

Dear Commons Community,

There’s passionate debate about how to solve America’s ongoing housing crisis, much of which revolves around mortgage rates, zoning issues, immigration and construction. However, billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban believes the biggest issue of all is being overlooked by the public.

“Home insurance in areas hit by repetitive disasters is going to be the number one housing affordability issue over the next 4 years. And possibly going into the midterms. More so than interest rates,” he said in a post on Bluesky. “Florida, in particular, is going to have huge problems.”

Home insurance rates have surged, driven primarily by two key factors: inflation and climate change.

The cost of labor and building materials for homes has risen rapidly since the pandemic. Although the price of lumber has recovered, the National Association of Home Builders says things like drywall, concrete and steel mill products are still selling at elevated prices.

For those with a replacement cost insurance policy, it can cost the insurer more to cover the cost of replacing your home without taking depreciation into account. The risk this presents will be reflected in your premium.

While homes are more expensive to replace, they’re also more prone to damage because of climate change.

Severe floods, wildfires and hurricanes have become more frequent, which must be factored into the underwriting of property insurance. According to the Insurance Information Institute, “cumulative replacement costs related to homeowners insurance soared 55% between 2020 and 2022.”

In fact, major insurers like Farmers and Progressive have either left states like Florida or limited their exposure to these disaster-prone regions. Mark Friedlander of the Insurance Information Institute said, “We have estimated up to 15% of Florida homeowners may not have property insurance, based on input from insurance agents across the state.”

Homeowners and potential homebuyers should be aware of how risky it is to go without coverage and prepare for the cost of adequate protection.

Lowering the cost of home insurance may seem difficult with these facts at hand, but it is still possible to shop around for a better deal on your home insurance.

I just experienced what Cuban expresses above and I don’t live in a disaster-prone area of New York (thank God). My insurance was set to increase twenty-five percent for the coming year.  I called my broker and she said exactly what Cuban is saying about insurance.  She indicated that the company handling my insurance wants to get out of the home insurance business even though it has been my insurer for almost thirty years. Through her good work, she found another insurer who issued me a policy that was actually less than my previous policy.  

Thank you, Linda!

Tony