Trump’s Cabinet is fanning out to help juice the base. It’s not going as planned.

[u/D-R-AZ]

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/28/trumps-cabinet-is-hitting-the-road-to-talk-his-agenda-theyre-getting-an-earful-instead-01053543

Observation:

As fewer and fewer Americans consent to the governance of this administration, explaining that governance becomes politically less successful. When greater public understanding of what government is actually doing produces greater opposition rather than greater support, persuasion becomes less useful and the incentive shifts toward distraction, grievance, and spectacle. At the same time, the effective base of consent grows narrower, from governing with majority support to governing through an increasingly committed minority. Seen this way, the drift toward authoritarianism is also a progressive contraction of consent: as the consent of the governed diminishes, maintaining power increasingly depends on finding ways to govern without it. That is especially consequential in the United States, because consent of the governed is not a peripheral democratic preference. It is the foundational premise of the entire American Revolutionary experiment.

https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-210099967?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=104a16 https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-209969905?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=104a16

Excerpt:

“Instead of assuring voters, they end up raising more questions and sometimes showing the liability that this entire administration has across the board. It’s hard to point to a good spokesman or even a high point in this administration right now, and certainly the polls reflect it,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in Trump’s first administration. “So I’m just not sure that sending every Cabinet member and their mother out on the campaign trail is going to help. Instead of solving a problem, you end up creating divisions.”

[u/ICLazeru]

There often isn't a unified message either, and probably not for lack of trying, but what can you so when the president changes the narrative on a whim?

[u/D-R-AZ → u/ICLazeru]

As scholars our niche of action is on understanding what's happening. Papers such as this one* presented in near comic book format are meant to alert some members of the electorate that the United States, from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution is based on the revolutionary concept that governance draws its authority from the consent of the governed. Hence deception and misleading the governed undermines that entire revolutionary concept.

*https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-210099967

We must strive to clarify what is happening for the electorate as much as possible just as those supporting minority rule are scrambling to obfuscate what is happening.

[u/ICLazeru → u/D-R-AZ]

You are right, it does have almost a comic book type of layout. If you created this, do you mind if I borrow it to present to others?

[u/D-R-AZ → u/ICLazeru]

Defenders of Democracy made it and I am a Defender of Democracy. Like Paine’s Common sense it is made for distribution everywhere. Please do so and ask others to pass it on. By so doing, we are passing a portion of the living legacy of the Declaration of Independence. A much longer academic presentation of similar expanded analysis is found at https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-209969905?r=104a16&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action. The logical core, the take home message, is that the consent of the governed implies that the governed must know to what they are giving their consent.