In my 2024 election post-mortem, I wrote about President Donald Trump’s deft use of “security” as a means of garnering support. He played off people’s fears, promising protection from dangers real and imagined. These were the pillars of his campaign:
Physical security: Crime is out of control (it’s not). Look at Kamala’s San Francisco! Immigrants want to murder you!
Economic security: Inflation, grocery prices, housing—he promised lower costs “on Day One.”
Cultural security: Pronouns, drag queens, white dispossession, “toxic masculinity.”
When people feel unsafe, as they genuinely did in my native El Salvador, they’ll gladly surrender civil liberties and embrace a dictator for a sense of safety. That’s why the Democratic message fell so flat in 2024.
We warned about fascism. Voters shrugged and said, “sure, but if he can lower prices on Day One…” It’s hard to care about the next election if you can’t feed your family.
Trump leaned hard into this security frame. He kicked off mass deportations of undocumented immigrants under the guise of physical security (murderers and rapists), economic security (stealing American jobs), and cultural security (not speaking English). He sent the National Guard into major cities to “fix crime.” He attacked companies with DEI programs, even forcing branding changes like Cracker Barrel, to soothe white fears of “wokeness.” In short, he delivered what his voters wanted.
Which makes the latest Washington Post/Ipsos poll striking: 54% of respondents disapproved of Trump’s handling of crime, with only 44% approving. It’s the first time Ipsos asked this question, so there are no trendlines, but it signals weakness on Trump’s signature issue.
Still, Republicans maintain an overall advantage: voters trust them on crime 44-22% over Democrats, with a third saying “neither.” The years of “woke” district attorneys did lasting damage to Democrats’ reputation. Liberal voters themselves ousted far-left district attorneys in San Francisco, Alameda County, and Los Angeles, but the damage was done.
The experiment failed, and Republicans successfully branded Democrats as soft on crime.
The trendlines are brutal. Back in 2021–2022, around a third of voters trusted Democrats more on crime. In the late ’90s, Democrats were even competitive with Republicans, with trust numbers in the high 30s and low 40s. Today’s 22% is catastrophic. It’s hard to win elections when the electorate doesn’t trust you to keep them safe.
But here’s the fascinating part: Trump is failing on the very issue that defines him. The more voters realize Republicans have no real answers to their problems, the more space Democrats have to claw back credibility on crime and safety.
