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Moving Forward: What Lessons Can We Learn From Nixon? [1]

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Date: 2025-04-27

Let’s first start with this mind-boggling poll that came out recently:

Among a sample of people who voted for Trump, only 2 percent said they regret their vote and would vote differently if they had the chance, according to a new University of Massachusetts Amherst / YouGov poll. But regardless of the chaos Trump has caused by upending decades-old policies and established agencies, more than 50 percent of Trump voters said they remain hopeful about the next four years, though the Trump voters who are more hopeful are white, non-college educated and earning less than $40k.

Just let that sink in for a minute. Even though I appreciate that public opinion polls are rapidly turning against the regime and their actions, this lack of remorse alone allows me to feel unsympathetic to any FAFO Trump voter.

As we know, this partisanship is not a new thing. It took a long time for the American public to turn on Nixon:

Even though these comparisons are not quite the same (Nixon facing one central crime and scandal and Trump facing a dozen or more on any given day), I think it is still useful to see what we may be facing going forward. When Nixon resigned, only 57% of the public thought he should be removed from office, despite his abysmal 24% approval rating. Current pollsters should be asking this question about Trump: “Should he be removed from office?” That would be some important data to be evaluating right now.

Another similarity that we’re seeing today is that the Republicans in congress during Watergate were mostly complicit in supporting Nixon:

Republicans generally saw the inquiry as legitimate, but that didn’t mean they had lost faith in Nixon. “Many remained vocal in support of the president, saying he was innocent,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University and the former director of the Nixon presidential library. “Others were more judicious, waiting for the evidence to come out.” Some of the Republican defense of Nixon probably boiled down to party loyalty, according to Jeffrey Engel, a presidential historian at Southern Methodist University. “For a long time, they just weren’t going to pull the trigger on a duly elected president from their own party,” he said. Republicans also faced pressure from a small but powerful group of activists who were vehemently opposed to Nixon’s impeachment and were aggressively lobbying their representatives not to abandon him. “Increasingly, [Republican leadership] thought it would be better for the party if Nixon could be persuaded to go,” said Mark Nevin, a history professor at Ohio University Lancaster who has studied Republican support for Nixon at the end of his presidency. “But nobody wanted to be the one who pushed him out.” (emphasis added).

Sound familiar? Like Nixon, it will probably take the “moderate” Republicans (or whatever semblance is left of them) in our current congress to break ranks with Trump before any significant changes can happen:

This is one reason why everyone should be contacting their own congressional representatives, especially if you live in a red area. Public pressure can work even on Republicans. We are starting to see some rumblings of these breaks already happening. But let’s be clear--there are no profiles in courage in the current Republican congress and there’s been no mention of impeachment from them that I’ve seen yet:

One complicating factor here is that if Republicans were to abandon Trump, history does not suggest that Trump loyalists would easily forgive them for joining the Democrats’ impeachment effort. Even though most Americans did eventually support removing Nixon from office, Republican voters were mostly not part of that consensus. Days before he resigned, a Gallup poll found that only 31 percent of Republicans thought Nixon should no longer be president. And some of those supporters deeply resented their representatives for their role in ousting Nixon, which may even have contributed to the Democratic landslide in the 1974 midterm elections.

There is one major difference between Watergate and what’s happening today. I think it’s fair to say that the Nixon and Watergate did not affect the American voters directly. Unlike Nixon, Trump’s actions and policies are negatively affecting wide swaths of the American electorate directly and personally and will continue to do so. So, we may be entering uncharted waters here with the reaction of the American public. I do predict that the resistance will continue to grow faster and a strong backlash is coming for the Republicans in the midterms. Let’s hope for a 1974 style Democratic landslide.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/27/2319023/-Moving-Forward-What-Lessons-Can-We-Learn-From-Nixon?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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