From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthit. This is interesting times, and today I'm going to tell you something that too few conservatives are willing to admit.

A year into his second presidency, Donald Trump has lost the country.

The majority of voters believe the country's worse off today than Trump's approval rating at 37%, the lowest of his second term.

And the grand coalition that he assembled to defeat Kamala Harris has evaporated.

And all of this was predictable.

From the first days of Doge through the debacle in Minneapolis,

the Trump administration has consistently governed

as though swing voters and moderates aren't important to its coalition. And now, sure enough,

they aren't. So I work on my family's farm and we've lost our best hands because of Trump's

deportations. I regret voting for Donald Trump. But here's the thing.

It's not moderates and swing voters who lose out when a right-wing administration loses popularity.

It's people on the right, people like me, certainly people further to my right, who support

some of the big things the administration has tried to do, who like having a secure border,

who like seeing universities pressured to become more ideologically diverse, who want to see

DEI reset and rolled back. All of that, all of that agenda will just disappear if the

Republican Party can't win elections.

Something that Republicans might actually need to worry about are, of course, the midterm elections.

Texas Republicans faced a major loss over the weekend.

This was a district that Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024.

That's an over 30-point shift to the left.

You just can't have a transformative agenda

if you don't keep moderates and the general public on your side.

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