I’m writing this on Independence Day, July 4th, the nation’s birthday and our annual joyous celebration of everything American. We, the luckiest people on the planet, are blessed to be American citizens. How good is that?

But despite all the July 4th festivities — the American flags flying everywhere, the fireworks shows — I can’t shake the sense that we are not a happy public these days. Unfolding reports of the flash flood tragedy in Texas, along with the ever-dour social media posts and the relentless negativity in news broadcasts (including disgusting video of flag-burning protesters), dampen our usual high spirits on this day.

The unpleasant truth is that our partisan divide is wider and deeper than ever — even after the decisive 2024 election outcome (the one that we’d naively hoped would pull us together), and the steady stream of positive achievements by the new administration in its first six months.

Published opinion polls tell the tale. Across the board, more than half of respondents do not approve of Mr. Trump’s performance, with an average margin of about 10%.

As a recent case in point, public reaction to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) is dismal; respondents disapprove by a two-to-one margin. While it is always possible to find things we don’t like in a 1,000-page legislative package, nothing in this bill was much of a surprise — it was largely a codification of everything that candidate Trump had promised to do. (Imagine that — a president who does what he promises!)

Regardless, I can think of no federal legislation that has aroused so much interest — and antipathy — as this one. Democrats, with full-throated support from left-leaning media (i.e., nearly all of it), lobbied fiercely against the OBBBA. And when the dust settled, Senate and House minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries loudly and proudly trumpeted that not a single Democrat in Congress voted for Trump’s bill. Not one!

Evidently, we’re to believe that all of their constituents are quite OK with a massive income tax increase (affecting about 60% of all taxpayers), a certain consequence of defeating the OBBBA and thus letting the 2017 Trump tax cuts expire; or that they don’t like the idea of government-funded investments for children; or that they want to pay taxes on tips and Social Security.

Or, more likely, the Democrats’ furious objection has little to do with the bill and everything to do with the fact that it’s Trump’s bill. They are wedded to the strategy of opposing all things Trump, banking on his failure as their ticket back to political power.

That is the essence of resistance, plain and simple. Shortly after Trump’s election last November, I expressed on these pages the hope that Democrats would not relapse into their resistance mode of 2016. It’s toxic, bad for the country, and politically dumb.

The Democrat resistance mentality is not limited to the legislative branch — it is infecting the judicial branch as well. In the recent Trump v. Casa decision, the Supreme Court issued an unambiguous 6-3 ruling that the Constitution does not give to individual lower-court judges the authority to reverse executive actions taken by the president. But should that not have already been obvious to everyone in the chamber (and the nation)?

While media talkingheads were debating the SCOTUS ruling, my mind wandered back to my Navy submarine days, and I was imagining our Commanding Officer directing the Officer of the Deck (me, perhaps) to “take her down!” — only to be countermanded by some dweeb in the engine room who pipes up and says, “Nah, let’s not submerge right now.” Happily, it doesn’t work that way in the U.S. Navy — or, for that matter, in our federal government.

6-3 is decisive, but it was a party-line ruling on a matter that should transcend politics. Why was it not 9-0? Perhaps it was the intangible but real political pressure on our three left-leaning Supreme Court justices, on a case labeled with the ominous words “Trump v.”, that drove them to dissent forcefully with their colleagues on a commonsense and constitutionally clear judgment.

At its core, the Democrats’ entire political strategy to win back their 2024 defectors is blanket hatred of the president and automatic opposition to anything he does, regardless of whether or not it’s good for the country. Perhaps they haven’t noticed that in six short months, the new president and his administration have racked up an astonishing string of successes, benefiting the entire nation. Among the more notable:

• Illegal immigration has been stopped in its tracks, and we’re making progress in removing illegal entrants, with priority on those who pose a danger. It’s a daunting, sometimes controversial task, but the certain benefit is the averting of uncountable instances of violence, drug distribution, and human trafficking.

• Our Middle East relationships have been comprehensively restructured, the Iranian nuclear threat is greatly impeded (and perhaps eliminated altogether), and we’re making real progress toward a Hamas/Israel ceasefire.

• Trump is personally and directly engaging with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine to end hostilities there.

• U.S. stature among our European partners is strong again; NATO members have finally committed to pay their assigned share.

• The U.S. economy is on the march, inflation is in check, trade is more balanced, unemployment is down, and markets are at all-time highs.

On the other side, the Democrats’ orchestrated resistance is betting on our president’s — and therefore our nation’s — failure in these and other arenas. Conceivably, that tactic will pay political dividends, but at the expense of collateral damage to all. It is political malpractice of the worst order.

The situation is really not that complicated. If the president we elected succeeds, we all succeed. We should give him all the help we can and hope — for his sake and for ours — that he hits home runs every time he steps up to the plate.

Democrats, get on the bus, please. If you think you could do better, tell us (the electorate) how and offer us better political candidates than you did last time. Don’t bank on failure — it hasn’t worked for you yet, and it won’t this time.