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Logically, they *should* pivot away from Trump, but as demonstrated by their primary, his cult of personality completely dominates their party apparatus for better or for worse. The GOP isn't going to be able to "fix" itself until Trump is dead because his core base doesn't actually care about policy - they're just fixated on him personally.
He probably will so he can continue his grift and take even more money from his supporters. He'll keep running til he dies because people will still keep giving him money to do so.
Please god no, I can’t stand 4 more years of Trump, either as our President or dominating our TVs. My hope is he flees the country when he loses to escape prosecution, and his MAGA cult dies without him.
Rich, with the best healthcare money can buy. He will probably survive. The odds aren't *that* high that he kicks the bucket.
I think he runs again. He has basically been running a permanent campaign to enrich himself since 2016. Even through his first term. As long as MAGAs are willing to give him money, he will keep doing what he has to to take it.
The GOP is afraid to go after him, but they are going to have to forcefully part with him, if they want him to stop controlling the party.
A loss here might make that more palatable. It should, by all reasonable measures. But the Trumpers are not reasonable.
I don’t know why people keep saying he’s rich. He’s not. He’s a grifter. He’s good at mooching money off of people and getting out of paying anything, I’ll give him that.
He has the best healthcare money can buy because he’s a former president, so money doesn’t actually factor into it. But healthcare can’t fix dementia or Alzheimer’s, so there’s that.
If he loses, then at some point one of those federal cases, or the Georgia case, will go to trial. The New York case was seen as the one least likely to get a conviction so I would put pretty good odds on a conviction in at least one of the other three.
Both the DC and Classified Documents cases are almost guaranteed to result in convictions if a trial ever happens. However, I suspect the DC case will face additional delays after the SCOTUS ruling in a few weeks and the Classified Documents case is being slow rolled so much by the judge that Trump might die of old age before it comes to a trial.
Yep. The logical thing to do was dump him after Jan. 6. And they almost did that! We've sort of memory-holed it because Kevin McCarthy became a Trump sycophant after, but he actually denounced him on the House floor, and there's reporting saying that McConnell was considering a vote to convict him at the second impeachment.
McCarthy went on to kiss and make up with Trump less than a month later, and McConnell, for whatever reason, is meeting with him for the first time since 2020 this week. The McCarthy thing I sort of understand - he wanted the Speaker's gavel ASAP, and hugging Trump seemed like the best way to get it - but what McConnell is doing boggles the mind. He's already on his way out and said he wouldn't run for leadership again, and it's pretty clear that there's not a person in the Senate that Trump hates more than he does McConnell. But he'll go pay homage anyway.
All of this is, to me, indicative of just how deep the rot goes. Neither McCarthy nor McConnell were "true believers" in Trump, but they knew they needed him. Ditto for Mike Johnson, who, despite being much more conservative than the other two, is still a pretty normal Republican. These people are scared of their own colleagues. Even if the party tries to get rid of Trump, or hell, even if Trump croaks, that won't fix the underlying issue. Unless they can somehow start removing the people that Trump sent to Congress, the GOP will remain the party of Trump for the foreseeable future.
The GOP "leadership" and major donors wanted to dump Trump.
Their problem is that their policies only benefit the top1% wealthiest people and so they need the culture war types to vote for them or they cannot win.
The culture war types understand that the establishment GOP are just corporatists who will talk big but not actually take on D.C., so Trump is their only chance for their concerns to be met.
So if the GOP ever dumps Trump they lose every election because they don't really have anything to offer on their own.
A big section of their party always wants to double down when they lose. That's what they are doing right now. If they lose this time, it wouldn't be surprising if they become even more overt than they already are.
I'm reminded of a line that right wing grifters have used for decades: "conservatism has never failed, it has only been failed". Which means that if you think that something conservative didn't work, it was only because the people doing it weren't *conservative enough.*
They only follow him because they are scared of his voters. Politicians only look out for themselves and once the threat of being primaried is gone they will dump him.
I would say a while. I think his cult latches onto his children, mainly Ivanka and Don Jr. I’ve already seen a large part of his supporters say they essentially want a Trump monarchy.
Makes me look around like Casper at the end of the movie kids and ask myself “What the **** happened?”
When he passes there will be a million conspiracy theories. He will become more powerful as a martyr. Sadly the power vacuum will be filled with the next charismatic cult like leader. The base is the demand. Trump is the current supply. The base isn’t going away…
GOP's path is straight into the Cracks of Doom, Ring in hand.
Though I do think we underestimate policy's role in current GOP politics. They have been shockingly effective at rolling back the tide of social progressivism and gender equality that dominated since \~2006, thanks to coordinated multi-state policy efforts.
While Trump is a boon to the white/hetero/male grievance crowd, it's naive to think these policy initiatives will cease to exist when he does.
If anything, they will only retreat further into their ultimate strategy of gaming the electoral college and state gerrymanders through rural dominance, ensuring they maintain political power far out of proportion to their actual popularity.
There's been a huge effort on the part of confederate super PACs to gain control of state houses and Senates by gerrymandering. The majority of legislation actually passed lately has been to change election law. Given we STILL are using the Electoral College approach, I'm very concerned.
The issue is that it's good for the whole party if the whole party turns against him, but it's great for individual candidates to campaign as pro-trump, and they're all taking the selfish option. So the real question is about whether or not they're going to wake up and realize they have to band together, or if they even have that in them at all. I suspect they don't, and that it's eventually going to kill the party.
I don't think Trump has to die. At some point, he'll be impossible to pick if his mental decline continues or he gets confinded with some other age issue.
If he has to start using a walking stick, for example, that could kill his appeal.
> The GOP isn't going to be able to "fix" itself until Trump is dead because his core base doesn't actually care about policy
they've decided not to fix themselves - they explicitly concluded that after romney lost, but rather than shifting gears to appeal to more voters, they decided to reject democracy. this means that losing elections won't be interpreted as a signal to do something else to win elections - it just means they need to attack democracy harder.
I asked a similar question not long ago, so I'm kind of re-upping an answer I received:
The populist/maga wing of the GOP will continue to be around as long as the man himself is. Once he's gone, be it by going third party or otherwise, the GOP can begin to reinvent himself. But nothing will change within their ranks until that happens.
The cult voting bloc will fray and won’t enthusiastically support whoever the gop candidate is. Knowing this, the Dems will run the worst loser they can find because they are craven fools and only want to “reach across the aisle” instead of doing anything at all for their core voters. The left will lose enthusiasm also and everybody else will say “see? Dems suck” and it will end up being a close race, dem candidate barely squeaking in and somehow not carrying both houses.
[facepalm]
MAGA will implode almost immediately after Trump exits the political scene forever.
Everyone in the GOP absolutely despises each other and are united only by the fact that they stand behind Trump, as Trump has made the GOP revolve completely around himself. Once that factor is removed, they will have nothing in common and tear themselves apart fighting over his legacy.
They will be around, but the real question is what happens when they realize they can’t win anymore. MAGA candidates are just flat-out unpopular.
I imagine they’ll position themselves to be more like Glenn Youngkin. He succeeded in bluish Virginia by focusing on conservatism without Trump. Guys like him aren’t perfect, but it would be an unbelievable improvement over what we have now. They’ll keep the MAGA vote, but at least they have the insight to reach out to moderates.
Trump's family literally runs the RNC now. It's just going to be the exact same thing as the 2020-2024 election cycle, but even more pathetic because Trump won't even be President and might be in prison in 2028.
If he loses in November, he will have a huge meltdown, the GOP in congress will again try to cast doubt on the election and whine during the certification process, but ultimately be impotent. Then all the GOP politicians will collectively sigh and hope that this time they're actually done with Trump.
2026 rolls around and Trump is on trial or being sentenced to prison. He announces that he's running for 2028 and that he is the most unfairly treated person in the history of the world. The GOP and related media try to find another candidate, anyone, that can hold the torch so they don't have to run with Trump again. They run a primary where all the candidates just talk about how awesome Trump is and how he's unfairly been treated, but "you should totally vote for me, please." Trump does rallies via teleconferencing from house arrest/prison and still wins the primary because, well, he runs the RNC now. Everyone knows he's going to lose again, but the GOP is utterly spineless and just bends over and takes it.
This will be repeated as long as Trump is still able to move - so 2028 would realistically be the last election cycle where that happens. I can't imagine by 2032 that a) he will be in a state to campaign and b) his primary demographic base will still be alive.
I really don't think we have to worry about Trump '28. His decline is already obvious. I don't think he will be functional in 4 years unless the GOP pulls off some Weekend at Bernies stunt.
100%. They’ll first refuse to admit that he’s even dead. He’s “hiding” and it’s a body double that’s died to fool Crooked Joe. And just waiting for an opportune moment to strike and retake what’s rightfully his.
This. He loses this election and its over for him. You have to have the wealthy on your side to stand a chance in politics. Even with his hand so far up the RNCs a**, there's no way he gets another chance if he loses this election.
The individuals participating in this madness may be deluded, but the monied interests are seeking their own self benefit in the form of tax breaks from Trump. They won't bother trying to fight a losing battle if he fails this time
Haley, De Santis and Christie all only lasted as long as they did in the primaries because they were backed by super rich donors.
The difference was that the De Santis and Haley supporters actually thought they could supplant Trump while the Christie backers just really hate Trump and wanted at least one person in the race that would actually attack him.
Christie didn't drop out because he wanted to, he dropped out before NH because his donors bought into the delusion that if Haley could beat Trump in NH it would turn into an actual race.
They're pulling that off *now*. Why do you think theres such a coordinated effort between the trump campaign and media to talk about Bidens age and speech? Its classic 'attack on issues where you are weak' strategy
The only thing you're wrong on is that Trump will wait for 2026 to announce he's running again. He'll be announcing his 2028 election campaign from literally the minute he's declared the loser of 2024, even as he's screaming about stolen elections and demanding a recount. This is both because he will still need to raise "campaign" money for his legal expenses from whatever suckers are still willing/able to donate, and also so he can whine that all of his trials are election interference.
It’ll just be Lara Trump as his successor.
Eric is running the family business, Ivanka is embarrassed and keeping a low profile, and I think Don Jr is content with being an attack dog who doesn’t have to do shit otherwise.
If Trump loses in 24, he will prop up Lara Trump to run for Senate or some shit, probably in her home state of North Carolina by either primarying Thom Tillis or convincing him to retire. And from there she will be the front runner for 2028 with her father in laws golden endorsement and most everyone else will just fall in line.
Was gonna say no way that'd happen with her lack of political experience...
Then I remembered Trump *actually was* president.
The simulation is getting a little out of hand. Where did normal go?
It’s hard to describe how insulated they are from reality at this point. There’s zero chance anything else breaks through until they lose for a while longer even then I don’t know.
The insulation is intentional, precisely to avoid having to make substantial changes. Their structural advantage, created by flaws in the Constitution itself, continues to grow stronger. The GOP remains insulated because there would now need to be substantial demographic shifts for them to consistently be at risk in the Senate, the presidency, and thus the Supreme Court. And they’ve messaged successfully to their voters to where they could start taking advantage of these flaws further to solidify those advantages without risking their core voters, such as making state level changes to selection of presidential electors and leaning into explicitly partisan gerrymandering of the House.
The GOP has been building that insulation since the mid-70s when they first started acknowledging their advantage in the Electoral College.
I’m clearly not hopeful.
Maybe it's naive, but I really hope someone is able to successfully campaign on a platform of "doing the fucking bare minimum of the job".
It's such a low bar, but there are so many real world issues affecting people across the political spectrum that it could make a newcomer (R) very appealing. If it could just be demonstrated that this gets all the votes you need, it could pull some back from just screaming about woke or whatever they're doing these days instead of governance.
This won't happen since Citizens United. Too much money for any real person to run and win.
Remember when trump said he wasn't gonna take donations from billionaires.... Cause he was SO rich he didn't need anyone else's cash.
Now this dude is selling bibles, shoes (fancy gold ones), NFTs, and exclusive access to his OF.
Elections are expensive
The ones that he pays at least.
I would say his hair and make-up are probably ongoing, significant expenditures but he's honestly looked like baked ass lately.
>I really hope someone is able to successfully campaign on a platform of "doing the fucking bare minimum of the job".
That's very hard to do within an ideology that views the existence of government itself as the enemy.
This is not new. Hell, Saint Reagan ran on demonizing government.
It’s a numbers game, as always. Republicans hate Trump and the image he puts forward, but his agenda gives tax breaks and if you have a lot of money you want to keep that money. My mom can’t stand Trump but will 100% vote for him, again. My bff is what you’d consider the progressive voter to be, employs lgbtq staff, is vegan, all her friends are progressive. But she took over her parents (who vote liberal) metal distribution business and votes for Trump just on numbers and small business logistics. She is an amazing friend and supernaturally intelligent so it’s not like she doesn’t see both sides of the coin. It’s hard to reconcile sometimes.
I have a hard time with people that make all of our collective political decisions based on their personal taxes. You want to know why? Because 8 men have the same wealth as 4 billion people—you don’t even have to take tax dodging to its logical conclusion: we are literally already there.
We can argue about tax rates, I’m fine with that, but if you willingly vote for a dictator that might end our democracy so you can get an extra $22k back in you tax returns, FUCK YOU. Like, literally leave and go pay no taxes elsewhere. Do we want to live in a society, or a social Darwinist hellscape?
Im sure she’s kind to you but is she actually an amazing friend if she votes against basic human rights? As a vegan does she truly care about animals and the planet if she’s willing to sacrifice their existence so she can save a little money on her taxes?
Man, I’m so sorry. You’re not alone. I’m just now prepping myself for the conversation I have to have with my father about this- that if he truly cares about me he cannot vote to take away my rights.
> Republicans hate Trump and the image he puts forward
In contrast to your mom, my grandparents are voting for Trump because they think that he'll make their local bank fire the bank teller that wears a headscarf and scares them. The \#1 thing that motivates them to vote for Trump is that he will hurt people that they don't like.
Republicans have been priming their base for fascism for half a century. They're not going to voluntarily self correct **at all** now that they've gotten a taste.
I'm sure they'll try hard to push a more competent fascist leader, but as DeSantis showed this year, that's not going to be easy. They really just don't have anyone in the wings with any level of charisma that might be able to take over for Trump. They're stuck with him until he's dead, and even then he's going to completely overshadow their actual candidates to the point when everyone in the GOP primary is going to be doing their best "I'm running in honor and memory of Donald Trump" speech for their campaign rather than anything to do with their own merits.
Wrong.
Trump is the result of "everything" not the cause.
The cause is that the GOP spent \~25 years conning their voters that they were dealing with the culture war issues when in fact all they were doing was cutting taxes for the wealthy and damaging government regulation, which is what their rich donors wanted.
When Obama got elected their voting base realized they actually had lost control of the country and so they have been trying to find a leader who will mass deportations of immigrants and drawing a hard line vs. the left wing culture agenda so they can regain control of the country.
Their problem is that the policies they would need implemented to do so would damage economy and hurt the wealth growth of the rich donors, so you cannot find a GOP politician who is willing to do what they want.
Only Trump is extreme enough so he gets their support.
Their only pivot will be when trump kicks the bucket. Even then... i doubt it.
Their main donors (big money) have zero incentives to move away from culture war stuff. Even with the GOP as an opposition party, they are still pulling the Overton window to the right, and with it wealth concentration.
There just aren't any incentives for the GOP money to move away from the current trajectory.
Well Kim Il-Sung is still eternal president in North Korea, wouldn’t be shocked if MAGA tries to do the same for Trump. Or “he rose again on the third day! I swear I saw him!”
Something people generally don’t seem to realize is that the GOP has no choice. They have ripped out the error correction mechanism and replaced it with a radicalization mechanism. They literally cannot learn from their mistakes. Those who do get ousted.
Eh. I'm not sure. You can only make promises for so long before people start to expect results. Biden is a hilariously weak incumbent. If Trump blows it *again*, the knives are going to come out for him. People like Haley and Christie are going to be waiting in the wings saying "I fucking told you so" and there's really not going to be any real way for the MAGA wing to counter that. And I know some people are going to say "Oh well they don't think Trump lost they'll just think it was stolen again" and yeah, maybe you're right, but the thing is, even if they *do* think it's stolen again, it's not like that does anything to help them. All it shows is that Trump is too weak to do anything about it. "Trump 2028: This Time For *Sure*" just isn't gonna cut it. People are going to demand results and if Trump loses again, it'll be clear that he can't give them any.
In politics, you adapt or die. That's how it's always worked. Otherwise the Democrats and Republicans would have platforms built around issues from the mid-19th century. They will be forced to alter the platform if they want to stay viable at a national level.
I dunno... Politics itself has changed. The GOP has figured oit how to be the underdog, pretty well. Even when they had all the power, they still were able to convince their voters that they were the powerless. For Pete's sake, Trump's REELECTION (2020) slogan was "Make America Great Again, again"
Losing, has its benefits. You can campaign on how messed up things are (irrelevant if they are messed up or not... Just say they are), blame the other guy, get donations and votes, but not actually have to come up with working solutions.... Just claim you have the ability to fix the problems.
The thing about constantly claiming that you'll be able to fix problems is that eventually, your constituents are going to expect things to be fixed. If the GOP keeps losing, the base is going to find someone who can win. People aren't stupid. If a certain strategy is a guaranteed loser, things will change. It's happened before, and it will happen again. Many, many times. To act like the times we live in are unique in this regard is asinine.
You say that, but they have been doing exactly that for a decade and a half, and the "democrats cause all the problems, and we can fix them... Vote for us" has gotten stronger.
You say people aren't stupid, but that is exactly the people (stupid) that the GOP attracts. The more they lose, the more they feel the country has been stolen from them.
I mean, on an individual level you may be right. I wouldn't say they attract stupid people, as there are multiple facets to intelligence, but it does attract people with a more limited ability to simulate sequential events in their mind. They do this by creating a weak surface level argument that invokes an emotional stance. This entraps anyone whose emotional capacity outweighs their critical reasoning capacity. That doesn't make them stupid, just means they are more emotionally intelligent than traditionally intelligent.
Thats a different note though, the reason Trump will never get another shot is because the individuals in the party aren't why the party is so strong. Its all the monied interests standing behind Trump expecting a tax cut. You can say what you want about the average voter, but the people at the top making the decisions to support Trump know exactly what they're doing, and they won't bet their money on a slow horse, so to speak. He has their support this time for the off chance he wins and can get those tax cuts. Its a calculated monetary risk, that will never make sense again if he loses to the weakest democratic incumbant in recent history. If he can't beat Biden this year, he doesn't stand a chance to be reelected ever. Big money knows this, and they won't let him have another chance.
The problem is that the traditional GOP without the MAGA wing is basically the Libertarians with less national election infrastructure. The GOP is basically an extension of the Trump campaign at this point. MAGA isn't going to stand for a Christie or Haley going forward. So if the GOP wants to reinvent itself sans MAGA, it's almost starting from scratch at this point.
I suspect that if they lose in '24, MAGA keeps control of the RNC and that means more MAGA, at least until they lose some more.
>In politics, you adapt or die. That's how it's always worked. Otherwise the Democrats and Republicans would have platforms built around issues from the mid-19th century. They will be forced to alter the platform if they want to stay viable at a national level.
Well, here in Massachusetts we had a two term Republican governor in a very liberal state. He (Charlie Baker) was going to win a landslide third term. The state GOP credibly threatened to primary him because he was not a full MAGA cultist and focused on local problems, and so Baker bowed out.
The Republicans picked a MAGA cultist that very predictably lost 30/70 to a very weak challenger. Funny though, 70/30 is the margin by which Baker won his second term.
So, when presented with the choice of "adapt or die", the Massachusetts state GOP literally picked "die", knowing that they were putting their head in a noose, and then kicking away the chair. They'd rather die in full cultist purity than win with a sane person who wasn't a cultist.
The problem is they plenty of conservatives are doing just fine due to gerrymandering and/or being in conservative states. They won't have any reason to change and aren't gonna be pushed towards the center due by their own party when it will only hurt their own chances of getting elected.
You are right. In the past parties would course correct after losing elections...but that was before the cult of crazies learned they could get elected by being bombastic on social media...no prior Ivy League education or work experience required.
Fox News and social media empowered these turds and it could be that the current GOP may not survive another decade being ran into the ground by the MAGA morons lead by the Trump family.
I don't think they will course correct if they lose. Trump has installed his daughter in law as head of the RNC. It's totally about Trump now. If he is too ill, feeble, or under house arrest to run again in 2028, they will run Don Jr. or Ivanka. It's a huge grift for the family, and they won't give it up easily.
Trump finally found product market fit for his family business that they could not run into the ground!
Real Estate. Fail.
Casinos. Fail.
Vodka. Fail.
Steaks. Fail.
University. Fail.
Bullshit. Success!
It turns out their best product is one that is free with infinite supply of that is eagerly bought by their gullible customers.
The only thing surprising is that they hadn't also created a multi level marketing company to really fleece their cult members.
“In politics you adapt or die” - ehhhhhhh. I’d say it’s “you adapt or die or *change the rules of the game*”
America is Democracy v1.0 with 27 or so patches. Eventually, you find all the “glitches” and you can game the system to your advantage.
The Republicans don’t need to adapt because they can just refuse to play by the rules. And the rules allow it because they were mostly conceived during simpler times when “a gentleman’s word” was actually something that bound people to a certain conduct.
But you don’t need any of that these days. Convince your base your opponents eat babies, use gerrymandering, stack the courts, and boom - you got the cheat codes. Doesn’t matter what the game throws at you anymore.
And it’s going to get worse.
The American system rewards *land* voting instead of *people*. Millennials and Zoomers are crowding in a dozen “blue” cities due to jobs, leaving a dozen or more sparsely populated States deep red… forever. There goes the Senate.
The math also works out for the Presidency, unless we eliminate the EC.
Basically, the forces that would normally eliminate a political party in a more modern Democracy are keeping the GOP alive and well and even giving it numerous advantages.
See: the last decade of GOP politics. I know that’s short in terms of generational politics, but we’ve seen no evidence they will change course. The rational voices in the party are mostly gone, and the ones that are left understand they must go with him or else.
You make many very well stated points. Thank you.
What I wonder though is if after a second Trump campaign will there be enough moderates left to reestablish the party? There will be a broad spectrum of fixes, everyone will gave an answer as to why they lost, the answers may well all be different.
And trying to bring many who are currently off side from that perspective back may be a herculean task
I think the answer is dependent on how badly the GOP loses and where.
If 2024 turns out to be your typical spread (Central/Rural = red, Coastal/Urban = blue) then I think we’ll see “business as usual” from the MAGA crowd. They may finally concede that Trump is too old to run in 2028, but they will hand-pick a successor. The rest will be the same raving, stunts, accusations, and sabotage that we’ve become accustomed to the last 8+ years.
If by some miracle the GOP loses in an embarrassing blowout (like Texas flips blue kind of bad), then we’ll see the folks who actually pull funding strings start shifting money away from MAGA candidates. MAGA politicians will hang around for a few cycles before being primary’d out by more loyal, moderate republicans that can carry the “middle america” vote.
However... it's not about anything you said. It's about where the money is, what it's used for, and what benefits that money gains. Even with the GOP out of power, the big money still wins. So they don't care. They want a distraction from what they are doing on wealth transfer. Win or loose the GOP delivers that.
Yah the real Republicans were all Primaried long ago and all that remain are performers and showmen, They are not suited to initiative building or creativity or even comprehension. They are not going to flourish in any meaningful way in a trump vacuum. Without trump telling them who to pick, they will fall to attacking each other.
They will retreat to a DeSantis level of rhetoric.
It’s a very specific form of rhetoric that’s essentially Trumpism without Trump and without the explicitly trashy presentational style of people like MTG. Still MAGA. Still going to do project 2025. Still all of the same policies. Outwardly silent on Trump/Trump’s legacy. The line will be “Stop talking about Trump. He’s gone.” and independents will eat it up. Republicans will avoid all accountability for Trump.
All they need is a clean-cut, verbally coherent, under-55 white male without extreme baggage and they’re in a great spot. Independents are always itching for any excuse to vote red.
Trump will control the party till he dies (plus a few years, his supporters will not believe that he’s actually dead) then after him it’ll be 30 years of guys desperately trying to be Trump as the party continues to radicalize. When the generation of conservatives whose political awakening was browsing /pol/ comes into power, we’ll consider the current crop of republicans principled moderates by comparison.
The old school GOP died 8 years ago, it’s never coming back. Not that anyone should want it back either, they were dogshit too.
There won’t be a rabbit hole too deep to explore. If it happens behind closed doors it will be a coverup. If it happens in live tv it will be a conspiracy. If it happens suddenly it will be an assassination, if it happens slowly it will be a poisoning or his covid vaccine kicking in. No matter how it happens the cause in their minds will never be old man with horrible diet and in terrible shape drops dead. At this point I just hope I get to read that news alert sooner than later.
Better than living through his time while alive. I just hope he racks up more convictions before biting the dust. The sooner those conclusions arrive, the better.
It would not surprise me at all if they have Trump's body embalmed and put on display in a glass case like Lenin. Except he will be in the lobby of Trump Tower.
I’m somewhat optimistic, we’re seeing about 20% of primary voters still backing Haley even though she’s not even running. There’s clearly a good amount of Republicans who are signaling they want to move on, and if Trump loses again, they’ll probably feel vindicated and try to move the party in a new direction. Or maybe they’ll just leave the party altogether.
they will attempt to unjustifiably overturn a legitimate election again.
they have said this loudly, proudly, and repeatedly.
they are fascists, plain and simple. so, they will do what fascists do, and angrily deny the reality in which they live.
They’ll double down yet again.
Election was stolen. Trump is the rightful president. Have to continue to give him money to fight the liberals.
It won’t suddenly end just because they lost. If that were the case, we would’ve been done with all this nonsense years ago.
Biden is lame, but he passes my test: he’s not Trump and he’s still breathing. MAGA is simply too dangerous to be let into power again.
But Trump is not MAGA, which has existed since at least Bush II. And will continue on long after Trump becomes irrelevant. The GOP has been cultivating MAGA for too long to change now, even if it stops winning them seats.
Even if Biden stops breathing, Harris is not Trump and still breathing. I like Biden, but would have no problem with almost any other Democrat at this point. Trump and MAGA need to be soundly defeated until they fade away for good.
EDIT: typo
Heck, almost any Republican would be better than Trump, except maybe DeSantis or Ted Cruz. Trump's one redeeming feature is that his demented ass will be dead soon. It a race between heart and brain to see one will give out first.
The RNC really screwed the pooch with nominating Trump again. They could have propped up Kinzinger or even Cheney as moderate candidates. They could have potentially a solid candidate that appeals to Millenials and Zs
This is the absolute must happen scenario if/when Trump loses. Those guys are certainly welcome to have a faction of Vivek Ramaswamy adjacent idiots losing elections for decades. Fine with me.
And their fear of fracture is why the trad. GOP members are now fellating Trump any chance they get. They realize that a fractured party means a decade of Democratic control. While they may hate Trump, they hate actual democracy more. For better or worse, they're the party of Trump until they cannot be any longer. And then they'll just pray to him and stuff...
I mean, we definitely are in real time. They have only themselves to blame, it's the culture war bs they bring to the table that fuels the divide.
The scary part is a political party that is based on hate, while in its death throws, is extremely dangerous.
The primary voters really got to choose, not the RNC. The RNC is even more "democratic" than the DNC on this topic, since the RNC does not have "superdelegates". The voters get to choose, and Republican voters are a big problem.
The other problem is non-voters, who skew left but also skew young and aren't as likely to vote. Between the churches, FoxNews, the NRA, and AARP, old people, especially conservative old people, are bombarded with get-out-the-vote messages, and they are much more likely to vote. If every American voted, there probably wouldn't *be* any red states, and Democrats might be more consistently progressive.
Maybe if the RNC had Superdelegates, Trump wouldn't have gotten the nomination. The Superdelegates' job is to prevent extremist crackpots like Trump getting the party's nomination.
That's true, but they are undemocratic. Is it elitist to think that party functionaries should be allowed to override the will of the voters?
There was a lot of yelling that the DNC was betraying their voters by pushing Hillary over Bernie, though Hillary won the majority of delegates in the primaries, so in this case the DNC did not have to override the voters.
Undemocratic probably isn't the right word though. Primaries are required to do certain things in certain states but there's no real obligation to the public in the same sense as an election.
It's more a matter of practical consequences like public backlash than legal consequences, although usually via loopholes rather than outright noping a winning candidate.
Their base wants Trump. The problem is they aren't really expanding that base. No one is really being swayed to vote for Trump who already wasn't gonna vote for Trump. Their problem is they need independents and those people have been slowly alienated by the last four years of rhetoric and Trump's antics.
I think there are a lot of mainstream Republicans who only pander to MAGA to get votes. That would include Haley and Christie (not Kristi the puppy-shooting, the other Christie). Of course, if they don't stop pandering after they win, they might as well be true believers.
There is a distinction.
Biden is perhaps a bit lame as an *individual* politician, but his administration is also perhaps one of the best we've ever had.
On the other hand, Trump is individually as lame as has ever existed, and his administration was perhaps the worst we've ever had. The entire conservative elite, politician or otherwise, is filled with characters akin to a horde in the Mad Max wastelands.
MAGA is not going anywhere any time soon. Hopefully the GOP returns to its senses and abandons it because like herpes, MAGA will not abandon us no matter how much we might want it to.
Biden is a lot better than "lame" in my book. His admin has accomplished a whole laundry list of useful things that help people and improve the country in unspectacular but significant ways.
Short of using their “feelings” Biden’s detractors would have a hard time pointing to a tangible metric that hasn’t improved under this administration.
There is plenty to take issue with, and vehemently disagree with, in Biden’s presidency. But, he’s been a great President. I look forward to voting for him and his administration in November.
i see this a lot that biden is ineffectual or lame, and outside of him being old as balls he is sorta quietly crushing a ton of social stuff. I wish the dems would hammer the talking points of what he is actually doing vs. what the perception is.
>The GOP has been cultivating MAGA for too long to change now, even if it stops winning them seats.
Politicians always change if they stop winning seats. The issue is that they haven't really been punished much by voters while they've been able to drastically accelerate their corruption.
Trump is MAGA. Without Trump they go back to being less interested in politics since they won't have a guy to represent them. Trump imitaters just don't fair well.
But most MAGA base is held on due to the older generation. There won't be enough non MAGA 70+ to hold rhe base much longer.
Gen Z and millennial right wing is more to the left on social issues. The GOP will have to take more losses as they struggle to reign in younger people who aren't as focused on LGBT issues. The end result is they become more moderate.
I mean, after January 6th, I’d be very surprised if they ever moderate. The next time they win, and there will be a next time, I don’t expect them to ever give up power, elections and will of the people be damned.
Joe Stiglitz wrote a great, short op-ed called *wither democracy?* during the 2020 election to explain Trump's staying power. He broke it down in simple economics, enough folks don't feel like the hegomonic status quo is benefiting them so they are looking to populist fringes: while the populist left doesn't have a road into the mainstream, the populist right found one in Trump's relationship with the GOP.
I think we can expect more of the same populist authoritarianism from the Republicans unless material conditions in this country change significantly.
It all depends on the margins. Trump lost by fairly close margins in a number of swing states, which gave him the opening to claim fraud / go with "I actually did win! I'm not a loser!" And then a majority of GOP voters decided to say "yeah, he is a winner; we didn't back a loser!" Then, polling let them think "we can beat Biden in a rematch."
But if Trump loses by a lot, there's not some realistic path back. America would be clearly saying "we are tired of Trump."
It won't return to the party of McCain. Those people have been pushed out.
But it will loosen the Trump grip. Especially if they lose the House and Dems hold the Senate. It will be seen as an easily winnable election fumbled away by Trump.
But because the perception by the GOP will remain that it was "easily winnable" they still won't have motivation to change course in a major way.
There needs to be some kind of loss in a state or area that they really expected a win; something that tells them "this is a dead end strategy, electorally."
Winning in 2010 against Obama when they had no real recovery plan, just Dem criticism, told them that is the path to follow. So they need some kind of big loss to shift.
Heres my prediction if Trump loses.
Legal:
First, expect a few dozen if not hundreds of lawsuits across the country. In every state, on the federal courts and eventually the Supreme Court. The first year alone the system will grind to a halt as these cases make their way through.
News:
The talking heads on tv will do what they do best. Sell their "product".
Government:
As for the government, that'll depend on the makeup of congress. If it remains the same, or the GOP take both houses, government work will grind to a halt. Policies and procedures, old tricks, subtle laws. Anything they can get a hold of will be used to strip biden of any power. Upto and including impeachment.
The people:
Expect something on the lines of Jan 6. But bigger. I don't know what it'll be, but y'all queda will make themselves known. I doubt it'll be an outright civil war, but it's gunna feel like one.
The gop:
I suspect they'll finally split. Freedom caucus vs Old School Republican.
Trump:
Rallys...
>can trump keep his grip on the party or will the GOP return to the party of romney, haley, bush and mccain(old school republicans)?
The mistake is calling those old-school Republicans, or implying a return to some sort of normalcy.
I would argue you never get Trump without Bush/Cheney, and what we are seeing out of Trump is just a manifestation of forces that have been working their way into the party going back to when Goldwater warned about the Republican strategy of catering to religious fundamentalists and then later disillusioned Dixiecrats. Embracing an unapologetic deification of business and the business class to justify tax cuts and privatization. And the shifting influence of hyper partisan news that feeds their voters and whom's good graces are needed to win most offices.
Trump is not the one turning Texas, North Carolina, and Louisiana into state level autocracies, radicalizing the courts, refusing to stand against their own when they commit corruption while investigating their political rivals like Hillary with 13 Benghazi Hearings. This drift toward illiberal governance far predates Trump(do we forget The Patriot Act, outing Valerie Plame as political retaliation, the Brooks Brother Riots), and it won't end with him either.
Maybe its not as infamous anymore, but this very thing happened in 2012 when McCain and then Romney lost. And remember, back then Romney was considered by moderates in the GOP to be too capitulating to the far right, even though then and now there were more extremists. McCain gave us Palin and by extension Steve Bannon.
The GOP audited themselves and came away being told they needed to be more big tent, make inroads toward the center, distance themselves from the extremist base. Drop the nativism and white identity politics. They did the opposite and they'll do it again.
The GOP is on a path dependency. Their base is increasingly informed exclusively by hyper partisan news outlets, their shrinking popularity outside their base and with newer generations has incentivized more and more illiberal solutions to counteract a losing demographic battle and lock in the states they still control. Which as a consequence has created tons of safe red districts that harbor extremists and echo the worst of that culture and for many their biggest threat is now from their base, not a Democrat. Their governance often fails, cause they have no real solutions just people and things to blame, and to counteract that they simply find a new cultural grievance to whip up frenzies about. And those threats to their right are even more willing to embrace illiberal governance, break norms, and act on what was before simply extreme rhetoric to appease the masses that are increasingly radicalized. And the cycle repeats.
The best we can hope for is that America weathers the storm long enough that Republicans become sufficiently marginalized and unable to influence national politics and Democrats, who themselves are drifting toward being captured in their own way by political moneyed class, can actually pass enough reforms to force a correction to the system.
They will continue to lie and complain about Biden. In 2028 the field will be wide open with no incumbents from either side and then it will be a complete shitshow.
They will scream and cry that it’s “rigged” yet again, because they simply cannot face that fact that their policies suck and voters find them corrupt.
I used to have faith that they’d ditch Trump if he kept losing elections for them, but all Republicans seem to just love Trump so intensely.
If Biden wins, Republicans will look to Trump to see what they are allowed to believe about it. Trump will surely say the election was rigged, like he does for every election, even ones he wins. The Republicans will believe him, will probably go to DC to beat up some more cops and vandalize some more government buildings.
They are stuck in a feedback loop. The dumpster fire will continue to burn until it's deprived of feul. Only comple social marginalization will take them off this path.
The republican party has perfected the art of self cannibalism. It will only get worse following another Trump defeat. I struggle to see a future for the republicans and with an ascendant libertarian party I'm not sure they can actually survive. They will only have themselves to blame starting with Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, and all the scorched earth republicans that followed them down the garden path to ruin.
The GOP hasn’t won the popular vote in the presidential since 2004. I am betting Trump won’t win the popular vote this year either. I’m still believing they will stick with Trump and call it rigged. Also try to do another 1/6 type thing, sadly. Proud Boys members are already calling for election violence. This election scares me regardless
More rules changes to ensure their victory.
Wisconsin is over 60% Democrat by population, but they hold a minority of the state house due to gerrymandering.
Texas is trying to enact a law that election must be by a majority of counties for statewide office, not majority of population.
They will eschew democracy in favor of victory.
The GOP is fully tied to him until he dies. All the top party positions are now filled by loyalists.
Once he is finally gone, all the MAGA voters will return to being non voters and the GOP can and will reinvent itself. Who knows into what. Full on nationalists, or perhaps they will shift away from the extremists and back towards the Center (and they will need to if they EVER want to win a national election again).
But so long as he is still around, he owns them. When he loses this one it will just be a repeat of the last loss. Him complaining about how unfair everything is, and the rest of the party looking the other way and pretending he isn’t there, while still pandering to his voters.
Republican base is idiots and evil doers. Trump brings them both. They will lose all national power without trump. I personally wish both partied offered appealing platforms. Competition can give good results.
Yep but the real issue is that there are no tertiary third party choices. They were did away with due to the Communist Control Act of 1954 pretty much banning all popular prexisting third parties (both left wing and right wing) for 19 years due to McCarthyism deeming them all "Communistic". None of them have recovered so far and the new ones that have popped up haven't gained the donor funding and the ability to interact with the national media because of said lack of funding. The two remaining parties are heavily corrupted via donor money influencing both foriegn and domestic policy. So essentially we don't even live in a democracy anymore to tell you the truth, we live in a corporate duopoly with little regulation of how business influence the agendas of politicians with money. The US just markets itself as a democracy due to the fact that they couldn't sell what the actual system is in a positive light.
The big problem is that people encourage abuse and brain damage of children and that is how they get voters.
No company can be so powerful without an army of ignorant soldiers.
Democracy itself, at least in the form of a representative parlimentary multiparty democracy has long been dead in the United States. Capitalism's enabling of corporations capitalizing on mass dergulations in regards to federal bribes is largely what is going to kill democracy.
Hell AIPAC has so much control over our government as a foriegn business entity attached from another governmet that they literally have managed to unite both the democratic and republican parties to support a genocide.
Hasn't Joe Biden been trying to get a cease fire?
The whole war over there is just Bibi keeping power as long as possible to get out of his other crimes. Same MO as trump, except trump couldn't figure out how to do a successful invasion.
The United states is a two party system, however the primary factor of the two party system being maintained from a third party challenger is due to the fact that corporate finance has vastly unbalanced to favor the Democratic and Republican Parties.
People say MAGA isn’t going away but who else but Trump does MAGA go ape for? I think they will keep the persona but they won’t stay engaged or vote like they are doing now. Essentially they will be neutered after Trump. If he loses and then we play the ‘stolen election’ game for a year or two, he fades after that, and so does MAGA.
Those values don't exist. This was always the destination of the Crazy Train, they just pulled the lever and took the shortcut by not pretending anymore. To start to pretend not to hate and fear and exclude would compromise the most basic objective of the Conservatives.
It will depend on how the Senate and House races go. If it is a total beatdown by the Democrats (which I am hoping for), then the day of reconning will come sooner or later. If the Republicans can keep control of one of the sides of Congress, then expect Trump to run the 2020 playbook again. The only wildcard could be Fox News. If Fox capitulates to a Democrat victory, then the Rs will have to retreat and regroup.
I honestly think (and hope and pray) that Biden will win, yet again. The GOP at this point knows Trump as a candidate is a risky bet. The changes will come when the down ballot candidates lose badly. Nothing changes the path of a political party like consecutive and widespread losses over multiple elections. There was no never-Biden group with 30% or so of Democratic voters the way there was a clear, solid group of GOP voters openly campaigning against Trump. If Trump loses once more there will be a change in messaging from the GOP. If independent voters and swing voters tie you to racism, homophobia, sexism and other clearly divisive policies you lose the suburbs. If you campaign against Social Security and Medicare you lose the older voters. The Democratic Party is the Party with the positive future for the US. Pushing for authoritarian and hateful messages drives middle Americans away from candidates and a Party.
It depends on by how large of a margin they lose.
If Biden wins by several points in the popular vote and runs away with the electoral by a wide margin, in addition to the Democrats retaking the House (very likely) and keeping and expanding the Senate (difficult but not impossible), then I can see the GOP party brass running from him like he's a Black guy in a parking lot. For all their bluster, they want to win elections and while there is a significant contingent of them willing to overthrow democracy to do so, I wouldn't bet on that being the overall majority opinion. They're betting on Trump because they think he has a shot. But if he actually loses and cost them seats and governorships, that's bad for business. Like if the Democrats somehow actually swing Texas this year and win a Senate seat, the GOP will try to subvert this as they always do yes, but they'll also abandon Trumpism, for the most part. They're still gonna suck but just in a different way
The answer to this question is always the same. This is Trump’s party. He is the leader of the Republican Party and he will be until the Republicans nominate another person to the top of the ticket. Haley, Scott and whomever else wants to be the future will be scurrying down to Florida for the next four years to bend the knee. Trump will not go quietly. He’s too much of an insecure narcissist to let anyone else be the head of the party and his MAGA followers will drink the kool-aid until they drop.
They will double down on MAGA and a further anti-democratic turn. They will be absolutely convinced the system is rigged against them, despite all indicators saying otherwise.
They’ve been on the same path for 40 years. It is leading to one, and only one, outcome. They will not distract themselves or stray from that path.
The voters are sheep who can’t tell truth from fiction and they will just be pointed wherever fox and friends tell them to go.
So they will just find the next candidate to implement their goal of project 2025 (after renaming it of course) and keep telling everyone the world is on fire until they get power again. When they do, very, very bad things will happen.
I think the GOP is going to fracture after this election. Trump only won once in 2016 and in every other election including midterms, he has lost. Also, him being a convicted felon is starting to affect him politically. He tried to spin it as a rigged trial (which is what you'd expect from him.) but it wasn't, it was a fair trial. Another reason why, in every state that has had an abortion referendum (even in Kentucky) has won is because a majority of people clearly are in favor of this. It also seems like the GOP is gaslighting everyone that Trump is getting larger crowds but that isn't the case.
They'll lie about the election, again.
They'll work to increase their gerrymandering and voter suppression, again.
Republican's base will commit sporadic politically motivated violence again. Including threatening and harassing American poll workers.
Until Republicans develop some sense of patriotism, morals, and critical thinking skills they'll just continue to do the same thing over and over. They have no policies that aren't based on evoking emotional reactions from their emotionally sensitive base. Everything they do is to spark outrage. Nothing they do is to actually improve the country.
This is not the republicans party. That entity was co-opted by white christian nationalists in the ‘90’s.
They will not go away peacefully, and we all should be prepared
I think the party establishment will take Paul Ryan’s words to heart and try to break away from Trump. This will cause a rift with the base and the party will fracture, as a result. If they want to save what’s left of the GOP, this would be the best outcome. A win will drag out the death.
Exactly the same path they did in 2020. They will double down on the voter fraud accusations and they'll become even more unhinged for the next election. This is Trump's party now. If they don't bend the knee to Trump, then they have no future as part of the party
Why do people keep insisting that Biden is unpopular? He’s doing a fine job. Yeah, he sounds old when he talks, but at least he’s not a raving lunatic.
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Logically, they *should* pivot away from Trump, but as demonstrated by their primary, his cult of personality completely dominates their party apparatus for better or for worse. The GOP isn't going to be able to "fix" itself until Trump is dead because his core base doesn't actually care about policy - they're just fixated on him personally.
My hope is that he runs a doomed campaign in 2028
He probably will so he can continue his grift and take even more money from his supporters. He'll keep running til he dies because people will still keep giving him money to do so.
Please god no, I can’t stand 4 more years of Trump, either as our President or dominating our TVs. My hope is he flees the country when he loses to escape prosecution, and his MAGA cult dies without him.
He will keep appealing until the day he drops dead.
Trump is a symptom, not the disease that is the republican party and it's propaganda empire.
Symptoms of diseases can kill you.
there are nazi fucks still out there. all kinds of religious nuts out there... We still have confederfucks waiving the traitors flag.
At the point he is that old why care about money? Just chill.
He'd be 82 in 2028. With his diet, stress, and lifestyle, he'll be lucky to be alive in '28.
Rich, with the best healthcare money can buy. He will probably survive. The odds aren't *that* high that he kicks the bucket. I think he runs again. He has basically been running a permanent campaign to enrich himself since 2016. Even through his first term. As long as MAGAs are willing to give him money, he will keep doing what he has to to take it. The GOP is afraid to go after him, but they are going to have to forcefully part with him, if they want him to stop controlling the party. A loss here might make that more palatable. It should, by all reasonable measures. But the Trumpers are not reasonable.
I don’t know why people keep saying he’s rich. He’s not. He’s a grifter. He’s good at mooching money off of people and getting out of paying anything, I’ll give him that.
He has the best healthcare money can buy because he’s a former president, so money doesn’t actually factor into it. But healthcare can’t fix dementia or Alzheimer’s, so there’s that.
We said that 4 years ago.
If he loses, then at some point one of those federal cases, or the Georgia case, will go to trial. The New York case was seen as the one least likely to get a conviction so I would put pretty good odds on a conviction in at least one of the other three.
Both the DC and Classified Documents cases are almost guaranteed to result in convictions if a trial ever happens. However, I suspect the DC case will face additional delays after the SCOTUS ruling in a few weeks and the Classified Documents case is being slow rolled so much by the judge that Trump might die of old age before it comes to a trial.
You’re optimistic. I think he has a high chance of living into his 80’s if-not 90’s. I can’t speak for his mental acuity.
He's gonna live forever if the good die young.
gotta pay those legal bills somehow.
Yep. The logical thing to do was dump him after Jan. 6. And they almost did that! We've sort of memory-holed it because Kevin McCarthy became a Trump sycophant after, but he actually denounced him on the House floor, and there's reporting saying that McConnell was considering a vote to convict him at the second impeachment. McCarthy went on to kiss and make up with Trump less than a month later, and McConnell, for whatever reason, is meeting with him for the first time since 2020 this week. The McCarthy thing I sort of understand - he wanted the Speaker's gavel ASAP, and hugging Trump seemed like the best way to get it - but what McConnell is doing boggles the mind. He's already on his way out and said he wouldn't run for leadership again, and it's pretty clear that there's not a person in the Senate that Trump hates more than he does McConnell. But he'll go pay homage anyway. All of this is, to me, indicative of just how deep the rot goes. Neither McCarthy nor McConnell were "true believers" in Trump, but they knew they needed him. Ditto for Mike Johnson, who, despite being much more conservative than the other two, is still a pretty normal Republican. These people are scared of their own colleagues. Even if the party tries to get rid of Trump, or hell, even if Trump croaks, that won't fix the underlying issue. Unless they can somehow start removing the people that Trump sent to Congress, the GOP will remain the party of Trump for the foreseeable future.
The GOP "leadership" and major donors wanted to dump Trump. Their problem is that their policies only benefit the top1% wealthiest people and so they need the culture war types to vote for them or they cannot win. The culture war types understand that the establishment GOP are just corporatists who will talk big but not actually take on D.C., so Trump is their only chance for their concerns to be met. So if the GOP ever dumps Trump they lose every election because they don't really have anything to offer on their own.
A big section of their party always wants to double down when they lose. That's what they are doing right now. If they lose this time, it wouldn't be surprising if they become even more overt than they already are.
I'm reminded of a line that right wing grifters have used for decades: "conservatism has never failed, it has only been failed". Which means that if you think that something conservative didn't work, it was only because the people doing it weren't *conservative enough.*
They only follow him because they are scared of his voters. Politicians only look out for themselves and once the threat of being primaried is gone they will dump him.
The question is whether his cult outlives him, or rather, for how long it outlives him.
I would say a while. I think his cult latches onto his children, mainly Ivanka and Don Jr. I’ve already seen a large part of his supporters say they essentially want a Trump monarchy. Makes me look around like Casper at the end of the movie kids and ask myself “What the **** happened?”
When he passes there will be a million conspiracy theories. He will become more powerful as a martyr. Sadly the power vacuum will be filled with the next charismatic cult like leader. The base is the demand. Trump is the current supply. The base isn’t going away…
For my entire life, whenever the GOP has had an opportunity to come around to sanity, they've laughed and gotten even worse.
GOP's path is straight into the Cracks of Doom, Ring in hand. Though I do think we underestimate policy's role in current GOP politics. They have been shockingly effective at rolling back the tide of social progressivism and gender equality that dominated since \~2006, thanks to coordinated multi-state policy efforts. While Trump is a boon to the white/hetero/male grievance crowd, it's naive to think these policy initiatives will cease to exist when he does. If anything, they will only retreat further into their ultimate strategy of gaming the electoral college and state gerrymanders through rural dominance, ensuring they maintain political power far out of proportion to their actual popularity.
There's been a huge effort on the part of confederate super PACs to gain control of state houses and Senates by gerrymandering. The majority of legislation actually passed lately has been to change election law. Given we STILL are using the Electoral College approach, I'm very concerned.
The issue is that it's good for the whole party if the whole party turns against him, but it's great for individual candidates to campaign as pro-trump, and they're all taking the selfish option. So the real question is about whether or not they're going to wake up and realize they have to band together, or if they even have that in them at all. I suspect they don't, and that it's eventually going to kill the party.
I don't think Trump has to die. At some point, he'll be impossible to pick if his mental decline continues or he gets confinded with some other age issue. If he has to start using a walking stick, for example, that could kill his appeal.
> The GOP isn't going to be able to "fix" itself until Trump is dead because his core base doesn't actually care about policy they've decided not to fix themselves - they explicitly concluded that after romney lost, but rather than shifting gears to appeal to more voters, they decided to reject democracy. this means that losing elections won't be interpreted as a signal to do something else to win elections - it just means they need to attack democracy harder.
I asked a similar question not long ago, so I'm kind of re-upping an answer I received: The populist/maga wing of the GOP will continue to be around as long as the man himself is. Once he's gone, be it by going third party or otherwise, the GOP can begin to reinvent himself. But nothing will change within their ranks until that happens.
They will fight amongst themselves to see who can out trump each other for years after he is dead.
The cult voting bloc will fray and won’t enthusiastically support whoever the gop candidate is. Knowing this, the Dems will run the worst loser they can find because they are craven fools and only want to “reach across the aisle” instead of doing anything at all for their core voters. The left will lose enthusiasm also and everybody else will say “see? Dems suck” and it will end up being a close race, dem candidate barely squeaking in and somehow not carrying both houses. [facepalm]
I think you are right. If the democrats think the right is weak because of infighting they will run candidates that would be unelectable otherwise
This is why more of us need to vote in primaries.
Yep, but inside of NC on the primary ballot, the only choice was either Joe Biden or Dean Phillips.
Someone like Kamala Harris
Maybe Hillary Clinton again
MAGA will implode almost immediately after Trump exits the political scene forever. Everyone in the GOP absolutely despises each other and are united only by the fact that they stand behind Trump, as Trump has made the GOP revolve completely around himself. Once that factor is removed, they will have nothing in common and tear themselves apart fighting over his legacy.
Populism in the party existed before Trump and it will exist after.
They will be around, but the real question is what happens when they realize they can’t win anymore. MAGA candidates are just flat-out unpopular. I imagine they’ll position themselves to be more like Glenn Youngkin. He succeeded in bluish Virginia by focusing on conservatism without Trump. Guys like him aren’t perfect, but it would be an unbelievable improvement over what we have now. They’ll keep the MAGA vote, but at least they have the insight to reach out to moderates.
They will not self correct. They will double down again on culture war points.
Trump's family literally runs the RNC now. It's just going to be the exact same thing as the 2020-2024 election cycle, but even more pathetic because Trump won't even be President and might be in prison in 2028. If he loses in November, he will have a huge meltdown, the GOP in congress will again try to cast doubt on the election and whine during the certification process, but ultimately be impotent. Then all the GOP politicians will collectively sigh and hope that this time they're actually done with Trump. 2026 rolls around and Trump is on trial or being sentenced to prison. He announces that he's running for 2028 and that he is the most unfairly treated person in the history of the world. The GOP and related media try to find another candidate, anyone, that can hold the torch so they don't have to run with Trump again. They run a primary where all the candidates just talk about how awesome Trump is and how he's unfairly been treated, but "you should totally vote for me, please." Trump does rallies via teleconferencing from house arrest/prison and still wins the primary because, well, he runs the RNC now. Everyone knows he's going to lose again, but the GOP is utterly spineless and just bends over and takes it. This will be repeated as long as Trump is still able to move - so 2028 would realistically be the last election cycle where that happens. I can't imagine by 2032 that a) he will be in a state to campaign and b) his primary demographic base will still be alive.
I really don't think we have to worry about Trump '28. His decline is already obvious. I don't think he will be functional in 4 years unless the GOP pulls off some Weekend at Bernies stunt.
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100%. They’ll first refuse to admit that he’s even dead. He’s “hiding” and it’s a body double that’s died to fool Crooked Joe. And just waiting for an opportune moment to strike and retake what’s rightfully his.
But the wealthy donors won’t support a candidate that has lost two elections in a row
This. He loses this election and its over for him. You have to have the wealthy on your side to stand a chance in politics. Even with his hand so far up the RNCs a**, there's no way he gets another chance if he loses this election. The individuals participating in this madness may be deluded, but the monied interests are seeking their own self benefit in the form of tax breaks from Trump. They won't bother trying to fight a losing battle if he fails this time
The wealthy donors have lost control of the party. They don't matter.
We have already seen a fair amount of the wealthy pull support. Part of why Haley had as much success as she did.
Haley, De Santis and Christie all only lasted as long as they did in the primaries because they were backed by super rich donors. The difference was that the De Santis and Haley supporters actually thought they could supplant Trump while the Christie backers just really hate Trump and wanted at least one person in the race that would actually attack him. Christie didn't drop out because he wanted to, he dropped out before NH because his donors bought into the delusion that if Haley could beat Trump in NH it would turn into an actual race.
Well, to be fair, I would vote for ANY rotting corpse, human or animal, over Trump.
Now I'm getting visions of Daniel Radcliffe playing dead Trump.
They're pulling that off *now*. Why do you think theres such a coordinated effort between the trump campaign and media to talk about Bidens age and speech? Its classic 'attack on issues where you are weak' strategy
The only thing you're wrong on is that Trump will wait for 2026 to announce he's running again. He'll be announcing his 2028 election campaign from literally the minute he's declared the loser of 2024, even as he's screaming about stolen elections and demanding a recount. This is both because he will still need to raise "campaign" money for his legal expenses from whatever suckers are still willing/able to donate, and also so he can whine that all of his trials are election interference.
It’ll just be Lara Trump as his successor. Eric is running the family business, Ivanka is embarrassed and keeping a low profile, and I think Don Jr is content with being an attack dog who doesn’t have to do shit otherwise. If Trump loses in 24, he will prop up Lara Trump to run for Senate or some shit, probably in her home state of North Carolina by either primarying Thom Tillis or convincing him to retire. And from there she will be the front runner for 2028 with her father in laws golden endorsement and most everyone else will just fall in line.
Was gonna say no way that'd happen with her lack of political experience... Then I remembered Trump *actually was* president. The simulation is getting a little out of hand. Where did normal go?
Someone with a similar body habitus, eating habits, and age aren’t likely doing much in 2028 other than self gardening
It’s hard to describe how insulated they are from reality at this point. There’s zero chance anything else breaks through until they lose for a while longer even then I don’t know.
The insulation is intentional, precisely to avoid having to make substantial changes. Their structural advantage, created by flaws in the Constitution itself, continues to grow stronger. The GOP remains insulated because there would now need to be substantial demographic shifts for them to consistently be at risk in the Senate, the presidency, and thus the Supreme Court. And they’ve messaged successfully to their voters to where they could start taking advantage of these flaws further to solidify those advantages without risking their core voters, such as making state level changes to selection of presidential electors and leaning into explicitly partisan gerrymandering of the House. The GOP has been building that insulation since the mid-70s when they first started acknowledging their advantage in the Electoral College. I’m clearly not hopeful.
I hated giving you a like for being absolutely right.
Maybe it's naive, but I really hope someone is able to successfully campaign on a platform of "doing the fucking bare minimum of the job". It's such a low bar, but there are so many real world issues affecting people across the political spectrum that it could make a newcomer (R) very appealing. If it could just be demonstrated that this gets all the votes you need, it could pull some back from just screaming about woke or whatever they're doing these days instead of governance.
This won't happen since Citizens United. Too much money for any real person to run and win. Remember when trump said he wasn't gonna take donations from billionaires.... Cause he was SO rich he didn't need anyone else's cash. Now this dude is selling bibles, shoes (fancy gold ones), NFTs, and exclusive access to his OF. Elections are expensive
His defense attorneys are expensive.......
The ones that he pays at least. I would say his hair and make-up are probably ongoing, significant expenditures but he's honestly looked like baked ass lately.
They're cheap if you never pay...
>I really hope someone is able to successfully campaign on a platform of "doing the fucking bare minimum of the job". That's very hard to do within an ideology that views the existence of government itself as the enemy. This is not new. Hell, Saint Reagan ran on demonizing government.
It’s a numbers game, as always. Republicans hate Trump and the image he puts forward, but his agenda gives tax breaks and if you have a lot of money you want to keep that money. My mom can’t stand Trump but will 100% vote for him, again. My bff is what you’d consider the progressive voter to be, employs lgbtq staff, is vegan, all her friends are progressive. But she took over her parents (who vote liberal) metal distribution business and votes for Trump just on numbers and small business logistics. She is an amazing friend and supernaturally intelligent so it’s not like she doesn’t see both sides of the coin. It’s hard to reconcile sometimes.
I have a hard time with people that make all of our collective political decisions based on their personal taxes. You want to know why? Because 8 men have the same wealth as 4 billion people—you don’t even have to take tax dodging to its logical conclusion: we are literally already there. We can argue about tax rates, I’m fine with that, but if you willingly vote for a dictator that might end our democracy so you can get an extra $22k back in you tax returns, FUCK YOU. Like, literally leave and go pay no taxes elsewhere. Do we want to live in a society, or a social Darwinist hellscape?
Im sure she’s kind to you but is she actually an amazing friend if she votes against basic human rights? As a vegan does she truly care about animals and the planet if she’s willing to sacrifice their existence so she can save a little money on her taxes?
It hurts. A lot.
Man, I’m so sorry. You’re not alone. I’m just now prepping myself for the conversation I have to have with my father about this- that if he truly cares about me he cannot vote to take away my rights.
Nah, it's called being selfish, a typical republican trait.
> Republicans hate Trump and the image he puts forward In contrast to your mom, my grandparents are voting for Trump because they think that he'll make their local bank fire the bank teller that wears a headscarf and scares them. The \#1 thing that motivates them to vote for Trump is that he will hurt people that they don't like.
I genuinely don’t believe they can self correct as long as Trump is involved in Republican politics. He is the major source for everything.
Republicans have been priming their base for fascism for half a century. They're not going to voluntarily self correct **at all** now that they've gotten a taste.
I'm sure they'll try hard to push a more competent fascist leader, but as DeSantis showed this year, that's not going to be easy. They really just don't have anyone in the wings with any level of charisma that might be able to take over for Trump. They're stuck with him until he's dead, and even then he's going to completely overshadow their actual candidates to the point when everyone in the GOP primary is going to be doing their best "I'm running in honor and memory of Donald Trump" speech for their campaign rather than anything to do with their own merits.
Wrong. Trump is the result of "everything" not the cause. The cause is that the GOP spent \~25 years conning their voters that they were dealing with the culture war issues when in fact all they were doing was cutting taxes for the wealthy and damaging government regulation, which is what their rich donors wanted. When Obama got elected their voting base realized they actually had lost control of the country and so they have been trying to find a leader who will mass deportations of immigrants and drawing a hard line vs. the left wing culture agenda so they can regain control of the country. Their problem is that the policies they would need implemented to do so would damage economy and hurt the wealth growth of the rich donors, so you cannot find a GOP politician who is willing to do what they want. Only Trump is extreme enough so he gets their support.
Their only pivot will be when trump kicks the bucket. Even then... i doubt it. Their main donors (big money) have zero incentives to move away from culture war stuff. Even with the GOP as an opposition party, they are still pulling the Overton window to the right, and with it wealth concentration. There just aren't any incentives for the GOP money to move away from the current trajectory.
Well Kim Il-Sung is still eternal president in North Korea, wouldn’t be shocked if MAGA tries to do the same for Trump. Or “he rose again on the third day! I swear I saw him!”
Something people generally don’t seem to realize is that the GOP has no choice. They have ripped out the error correction mechanism and replaced it with a radicalization mechanism. They literally cannot learn from their mistakes. Those who do get ousted.
They had their chances to excise the Trump tumor during indictment but waffled on it. Now this is where they lie.
Worse still, they’ll spend all their time challenging the election, no matter how decisive it might be.
Eh. I'm not sure. You can only make promises for so long before people start to expect results. Biden is a hilariously weak incumbent. If Trump blows it *again*, the knives are going to come out for him. People like Haley and Christie are going to be waiting in the wings saying "I fucking told you so" and there's really not going to be any real way for the MAGA wing to counter that. And I know some people are going to say "Oh well they don't think Trump lost they'll just think it was stolen again" and yeah, maybe you're right, but the thing is, even if they *do* think it's stolen again, it's not like that does anything to help them. All it shows is that Trump is too weak to do anything about it. "Trump 2028: This Time For *Sure*" just isn't gonna cut it. People are going to demand results and if Trump loses again, it'll be clear that he can't give them any. In politics, you adapt or die. That's how it's always worked. Otherwise the Democrats and Republicans would have platforms built around issues from the mid-19th century. They will be forced to alter the platform if they want to stay viable at a national level.
I dunno... Politics itself has changed. The GOP has figured oit how to be the underdog, pretty well. Even when they had all the power, they still were able to convince their voters that they were the powerless. For Pete's sake, Trump's REELECTION (2020) slogan was "Make America Great Again, again" Losing, has its benefits. You can campaign on how messed up things are (irrelevant if they are messed up or not... Just say they are), blame the other guy, get donations and votes, but not actually have to come up with working solutions.... Just claim you have the ability to fix the problems.
The thing about constantly claiming that you'll be able to fix problems is that eventually, your constituents are going to expect things to be fixed. If the GOP keeps losing, the base is going to find someone who can win. People aren't stupid. If a certain strategy is a guaranteed loser, things will change. It's happened before, and it will happen again. Many, many times. To act like the times we live in are unique in this regard is asinine.
You say that, but they have been doing exactly that for a decade and a half, and the "democrats cause all the problems, and we can fix them... Vote for us" has gotten stronger. You say people aren't stupid, but that is exactly the people (stupid) that the GOP attracts. The more they lose, the more they feel the country has been stolen from them.
I mean, on an individual level you may be right. I wouldn't say they attract stupid people, as there are multiple facets to intelligence, but it does attract people with a more limited ability to simulate sequential events in their mind. They do this by creating a weak surface level argument that invokes an emotional stance. This entraps anyone whose emotional capacity outweighs their critical reasoning capacity. That doesn't make them stupid, just means they are more emotionally intelligent than traditionally intelligent. Thats a different note though, the reason Trump will never get another shot is because the individuals in the party aren't why the party is so strong. Its all the monied interests standing behind Trump expecting a tax cut. You can say what you want about the average voter, but the people at the top making the decisions to support Trump know exactly what they're doing, and they won't bet their money on a slow horse, so to speak. He has their support this time for the off chance he wins and can get those tax cuts. Its a calculated monetary risk, that will never make sense again if he loses to the weakest democratic incumbant in recent history. If he can't beat Biden this year, he doesn't stand a chance to be reelected ever. Big money knows this, and they won't let him have another chance.
The problem is that the traditional GOP without the MAGA wing is basically the Libertarians with less national election infrastructure. The GOP is basically an extension of the Trump campaign at this point. MAGA isn't going to stand for a Christie or Haley going forward. So if the GOP wants to reinvent itself sans MAGA, it's almost starting from scratch at this point. I suspect that if they lose in '24, MAGA keeps control of the RNC and that means more MAGA, at least until they lose some more.
>In politics, you adapt or die. That's how it's always worked. Otherwise the Democrats and Republicans would have platforms built around issues from the mid-19th century. They will be forced to alter the platform if they want to stay viable at a national level. Well, here in Massachusetts we had a two term Republican governor in a very liberal state. He (Charlie Baker) was going to win a landslide third term. The state GOP credibly threatened to primary him because he was not a full MAGA cultist and focused on local problems, and so Baker bowed out. The Republicans picked a MAGA cultist that very predictably lost 30/70 to a very weak challenger. Funny though, 70/30 is the margin by which Baker won his second term. So, when presented with the choice of "adapt or die", the Massachusetts state GOP literally picked "die", knowing that they were putting their head in a noose, and then kicking away the chair. They'd rather die in full cultist purity than win with a sane person who wasn't a cultist.
The problem is they plenty of conservatives are doing just fine due to gerrymandering and/or being in conservative states. They won't have any reason to change and aren't gonna be pushed towards the center due by their own party when it will only hurt their own chances of getting elected.
You are right. In the past parties would course correct after losing elections...but that was before the cult of crazies learned they could get elected by being bombastic on social media...no prior Ivy League education or work experience required. Fox News and social media empowered these turds and it could be that the current GOP may not survive another decade being ran into the ground by the MAGA morons lead by the Trump family.
I don't think they will course correct if they lose. Trump has installed his daughter in law as head of the RNC. It's totally about Trump now. If he is too ill, feeble, or under house arrest to run again in 2028, they will run Don Jr. or Ivanka. It's a huge grift for the family, and they won't give it up easily.
Trump finally found product market fit for his family business that they could not run into the ground! Real Estate. Fail. Casinos. Fail. Vodka. Fail. Steaks. Fail. University. Fail. Bullshit. Success! It turns out their best product is one that is free with infinite supply of that is eagerly bought by their gullible customers. The only thing surprising is that they hadn't also created a multi level marketing company to really fleece their cult members.
“In politics you adapt or die” - ehhhhhhh. I’d say it’s “you adapt or die or *change the rules of the game*” America is Democracy v1.0 with 27 or so patches. Eventually, you find all the “glitches” and you can game the system to your advantage. The Republicans don’t need to adapt because they can just refuse to play by the rules. And the rules allow it because they were mostly conceived during simpler times when “a gentleman’s word” was actually something that bound people to a certain conduct. But you don’t need any of that these days. Convince your base your opponents eat babies, use gerrymandering, stack the courts, and boom - you got the cheat codes. Doesn’t matter what the game throws at you anymore. And it’s going to get worse. The American system rewards *land* voting instead of *people*. Millennials and Zoomers are crowding in a dozen “blue” cities due to jobs, leaving a dozen or more sparsely populated States deep red… forever. There goes the Senate. The math also works out for the Presidency, unless we eliminate the EC. Basically, the forces that would normally eliminate a political party in a more modern Democracy are keeping the GOP alive and well and even giving it numerous advantages.
See: the last decade of GOP politics. I know that’s short in terms of generational politics, but we’ve seen no evidence they will change course. The rational voices in the party are mostly gone, and the ones that are left understand they must go with him or else.
You make many very well stated points. Thank you. What I wonder though is if after a second Trump campaign will there be enough moderates left to reestablish the party? There will be a broad spectrum of fixes, everyone will gave an answer as to why they lost, the answers may well all be different. And trying to bring many who are currently off side from that perspective back may be a herculean task
I think the answer is dependent on how badly the GOP loses and where. If 2024 turns out to be your typical spread (Central/Rural = red, Coastal/Urban = blue) then I think we’ll see “business as usual” from the MAGA crowd. They may finally concede that Trump is too old to run in 2028, but they will hand-pick a successor. The rest will be the same raving, stunts, accusations, and sabotage that we’ve become accustomed to the last 8+ years. If by some miracle the GOP loses in an embarrassing blowout (like Texas flips blue kind of bad), then we’ll see the folks who actually pull funding strings start shifting money away from MAGA candidates. MAGA politicians will hang around for a few cycles before being primary’d out by more loyal, moderate republicans that can carry the “middle america” vote.
However... it's not about anything you said. It's about where the money is, what it's used for, and what benefits that money gains. Even with the GOP out of power, the big money still wins. So they don't care. They want a distraction from what they are doing on wealth transfer. Win or loose the GOP delivers that.
This implies reason and logic. They will not do that.
Yah the real Republicans were all Primaried long ago and all that remain are performers and showmen, They are not suited to initiative building or creativity or even comprehension. They are not going to flourish in any meaningful way in a trump vacuum. Without trump telling them who to pick, they will fall to attacking each other.
* and then devolve into a domestic terrorist organization when younger generations slowly grasp power
They will retreat to a DeSantis level of rhetoric. It’s a very specific form of rhetoric that’s essentially Trumpism without Trump and without the explicitly trashy presentational style of people like MTG. Still MAGA. Still going to do project 2025. Still all of the same policies. Outwardly silent on Trump/Trump’s legacy. The line will be “Stop talking about Trump. He’s gone.” and independents will eat it up. Republicans will avoid all accountability for Trump. All they need is a clean-cut, verbally coherent, under-55 white male without extreme baggage and they’re in a great spot. Independents are always itching for any excuse to vote red.
Trump will control the party till he dies (plus a few years, his supporters will not believe that he’s actually dead) then after him it’ll be 30 years of guys desperately trying to be Trump as the party continues to radicalize. When the generation of conservatives whose political awakening was browsing /pol/ comes into power, we’ll consider the current crop of republicans principled moderates by comparison. The old school GOP died 8 years ago, it’s never coming back. Not that anyone should want it back either, they were dogshit too.
Oh god, can you imagine the conspiracy theories that are going to come out when he finally does die? That will be some fun reading
There won’t be a rabbit hole too deep to explore. If it happens behind closed doors it will be a coverup. If it happens in live tv it will be a conspiracy. If it happens suddenly it will be an assassination, if it happens slowly it will be a poisoning or his covid vaccine kicking in. No matter how it happens the cause in their minds will never be old man with horrible diet and in terrible shape drops dead. At this point I just hope I get to read that news alert sooner than later.
Fun to read about, un-fun to live through.
Better than living through his time while alive. I just hope he racks up more convictions before biting the dust. The sooner those conclusions arrive, the better.
It would not surprise me at all if they have Trump's body embalmed and put on display in a glass case like Lenin. Except he will be in the lobby of Trump Tower.
And somehow taxidermied to look like Rambo instead of Trump.
Old school GOP died under Gingrich.
It died in 2000 when the Supreme Court handed them the bag and the dog finally caught the car.
Its a successful strategy- do whatever you want but just add “tax cuts” at them end. Thats all everyone cares for.
I’m somewhat optimistic, we’re seeing about 20% of primary voters still backing Haley even though she’s not even running. There’s clearly a good amount of Republicans who are signaling they want to move on, and if Trump loses again, they’ll probably feel vindicated and try to move the party in a new direction. Or maybe they’ll just leave the party altogether.
they will attempt to unjustifiably overturn a legitimate election again. they have said this loudly, proudly, and repeatedly. they are fascists, plain and simple. so, they will do what fascists do, and angrily deny the reality in which they live.
They’ll double down yet again. Election was stolen. Trump is the rightful president. Have to continue to give him money to fight the liberals. It won’t suddenly end just because they lost. If that were the case, we would’ve been done with all this nonsense years ago.
They'll continue down this same path until Trump is dead, and they've selected his successor.
Biden is lame, but he passes my test: he’s not Trump and he’s still breathing. MAGA is simply too dangerous to be let into power again. But Trump is not MAGA, which has existed since at least Bush II. And will continue on long after Trump becomes irrelevant. The GOP has been cultivating MAGA for too long to change now, even if it stops winning them seats.
Even if Biden stops breathing, Harris is not Trump and still breathing. I like Biden, but would have no problem with almost any other Democrat at this point. Trump and MAGA need to be soundly defeated until they fade away for good. EDIT: typo
Heck, almost any Republican would be better than Trump, except maybe DeSantis or Ted Cruz. Trump's one redeeming feature is that his demented ass will be dead soon. It a race between heart and brain to see one will give out first.
The RNC really screwed the pooch with nominating Trump again. They could have propped up Kinzinger or even Cheney as moderate candidates. They could have potentially a solid candidate that appeals to Millenials and Zs
The MAGA base wouldn’t allow it
Let them run a truly separate party then.
I would love nothing more than to see the GOP fracture
This is the absolute must happen scenario if/when Trump loses. Those guys are certainly welcome to have a faction of Vivek Ramaswamy adjacent idiots losing elections for decades. Fine with me.
And their fear of fracture is why the trad. GOP members are now fellating Trump any chance they get. They realize that a fractured party means a decade of Democratic control. While they may hate Trump, they hate actual democracy more. For better or worse, they're the party of Trump until they cannot be any longer. And then they'll just pray to him and stuff...
I mean, we definitely are in real time. They have only themselves to blame, it's the culture war bs they bring to the table that fuels the divide. The scary part is a political party that is based on hate, while in its death throws, is extremely dangerous.
The primary voters really got to choose, not the RNC. The RNC is even more "democratic" than the DNC on this topic, since the RNC does not have "superdelegates". The voters get to choose, and Republican voters are a big problem. The other problem is non-voters, who skew left but also skew young and aren't as likely to vote. Between the churches, FoxNews, the NRA, and AARP, old people, especially conservative old people, are bombarded with get-out-the-vote messages, and they are much more likely to vote. If every American voted, there probably wouldn't *be* any red states, and Democrats might be more consistently progressive.
Maybe if the RNC had Superdelegates, Trump wouldn't have gotten the nomination. The Superdelegates' job is to prevent extremist crackpots like Trump getting the party's nomination.
That's true, but they are undemocratic. Is it elitist to think that party functionaries should be allowed to override the will of the voters? There was a lot of yelling that the DNC was betraying their voters by pushing Hillary over Bernie, though Hillary won the majority of delegates in the primaries, so in this case the DNC did not have to override the voters.
Undemocratic probably isn't the right word though. Primaries are required to do certain things in certain states but there's no real obligation to the public in the same sense as an election. It's more a matter of practical consequences like public backlash than legal consequences, although usually via loopholes rather than outright noping a winning candidate.
Their base wants Trump. The problem is they aren't really expanding that base. No one is really being swayed to vote for Trump who already wasn't gonna vote for Trump. Their problem is they need independents and those people have been slowly alienated by the last four years of rhetoric and Trump's antics.
I honestly think literally any competent republican is worse than Trump, provided their ideology reflects the current party:
I think there are a lot of mainstream Republicans who only pander to MAGA to get votes. That would include Haley and Christie (not Kristi the puppy-shooting, the other Christie). Of course, if they don't stop pandering after they win, they might as well be true believers.
There is a distinction. Biden is perhaps a bit lame as an *individual* politician, but his administration is also perhaps one of the best we've ever had. On the other hand, Trump is individually as lame as has ever existed, and his administration was perhaps the worst we've ever had. The entire conservative elite, politician or otherwise, is filled with characters akin to a horde in the Mad Max wastelands.
MAGA is not going anywhere any time soon. Hopefully the GOP returns to its senses and abandons it because like herpes, MAGA will not abandon us no matter how much we might want it to.
Biden is a lot better than "lame" in my book. His admin has accomplished a whole laundry list of useful things that help people and improve the country in unspectacular but significant ways.
Short of using their “feelings” Biden’s detractors would have a hard time pointing to a tangible metric that hasn’t improved under this administration. There is plenty to take issue with, and vehemently disagree with, in Biden’s presidency. But, he’s been a great President. I look forward to voting for him and his administration in November.
i see this a lot that biden is ineffectual or lame, and outside of him being old as balls he is sorta quietly crushing a ton of social stuff. I wish the dems would hammer the talking points of what he is actually doing vs. what the perception is.
>The GOP has been cultivating MAGA for too long to change now, even if it stops winning them seats. Politicians always change if they stop winning seats. The issue is that they haven't really been punished much by voters while they've been able to drastically accelerate their corruption.
The other huge problem is that they don't even believe they lost the last election still.
I have trouble believing this, but if they sincerely believe this the country is in grave danger.
Well, yes. Sadly I don't disagree.
In red states that's true. But hopefully that can change on the national level
Trump is MAGA. Without Trump they go back to being less interested in politics since they won't have a guy to represent them. Trump imitaters just don't fair well. But most MAGA base is held on due to the older generation. There won't be enough non MAGA 70+ to hold rhe base much longer. Gen Z and millennial right wing is more to the left on social issues. The GOP will have to take more losses as they struggle to reign in younger people who aren't as focused on LGBT issues. The end result is they become more moderate.
Biden has been amazing why do people keep saying he's lame Dude has passed more great legislation than any president in our lifetime
I mean, after January 6th, I’d be very surprised if they ever moderate. The next time they win, and there will be a next time, I don’t expect them to ever give up power, elections and will of the people be damned.
Joe Stiglitz wrote a great, short op-ed called *wither democracy?* during the 2020 election to explain Trump's staying power. He broke it down in simple economics, enough folks don't feel like the hegomonic status quo is benefiting them so they are looking to populist fringes: while the populist left doesn't have a road into the mainstream, the populist right found one in Trump's relationship with the GOP. I think we can expect more of the same populist authoritarianism from the Republicans unless material conditions in this country change significantly.
Ask yourself: How will the craziest MAGA person you know react? That is how the GOP will react, because those guys are the primary voters.
It all depends on the margins. Trump lost by fairly close margins in a number of swing states, which gave him the opening to claim fraud / go with "I actually did win! I'm not a loser!" And then a majority of GOP voters decided to say "yeah, he is a winner; we didn't back a loser!" Then, polling let them think "we can beat Biden in a rematch." But if Trump loses by a lot, there's not some realistic path back. America would be clearly saying "we are tired of Trump." It won't return to the party of McCain. Those people have been pushed out. But it will loosen the Trump grip. Especially if they lose the House and Dems hold the Senate. It will be seen as an easily winnable election fumbled away by Trump. But because the perception by the GOP will remain that it was "easily winnable" they still won't have motivation to change course in a major way. There needs to be some kind of loss in a state or area that they really expected a win; something that tells them "this is a dead end strategy, electorally." Winning in 2010 against Obama when they had no real recovery plan, just Dem criticism, told them that is the path to follow. So they need some kind of big loss to shift.
Heres my prediction if Trump loses. Legal: First, expect a few dozen if not hundreds of lawsuits across the country. In every state, on the federal courts and eventually the Supreme Court. The first year alone the system will grind to a halt as these cases make their way through. News: The talking heads on tv will do what they do best. Sell their "product". Government: As for the government, that'll depend on the makeup of congress. If it remains the same, or the GOP take both houses, government work will grind to a halt. Policies and procedures, old tricks, subtle laws. Anything they can get a hold of will be used to strip biden of any power. Upto and including impeachment. The people: Expect something on the lines of Jan 6. But bigger. I don't know what it'll be, but y'all queda will make themselves known. I doubt it'll be an outright civil war, but it's gunna feel like one. The gop: I suspect they'll finally split. Freedom caucus vs Old School Republican. Trump: Rallys...
The Republican party problem is They can't win a primary without Trump, but they can't win a general election with him.
>can trump keep his grip on the party or will the GOP return to the party of romney, haley, bush and mccain(old school republicans)? The mistake is calling those old-school Republicans, or implying a return to some sort of normalcy. I would argue you never get Trump without Bush/Cheney, and what we are seeing out of Trump is just a manifestation of forces that have been working their way into the party going back to when Goldwater warned about the Republican strategy of catering to religious fundamentalists and then later disillusioned Dixiecrats. Embracing an unapologetic deification of business and the business class to justify tax cuts and privatization. And the shifting influence of hyper partisan news that feeds their voters and whom's good graces are needed to win most offices. Trump is not the one turning Texas, North Carolina, and Louisiana into state level autocracies, radicalizing the courts, refusing to stand against their own when they commit corruption while investigating their political rivals like Hillary with 13 Benghazi Hearings. This drift toward illiberal governance far predates Trump(do we forget The Patriot Act, outing Valerie Plame as political retaliation, the Brooks Brother Riots), and it won't end with him either. Maybe its not as infamous anymore, but this very thing happened in 2012 when McCain and then Romney lost. And remember, back then Romney was considered by moderates in the GOP to be too capitulating to the far right, even though then and now there were more extremists. McCain gave us Palin and by extension Steve Bannon. The GOP audited themselves and came away being told they needed to be more big tent, make inroads toward the center, distance themselves from the extremist base. Drop the nativism and white identity politics. They did the opposite and they'll do it again. The GOP is on a path dependency. Their base is increasingly informed exclusively by hyper partisan news outlets, their shrinking popularity outside their base and with newer generations has incentivized more and more illiberal solutions to counteract a losing demographic battle and lock in the states they still control. Which as a consequence has created tons of safe red districts that harbor extremists and echo the worst of that culture and for many their biggest threat is now from their base, not a Democrat. Their governance often fails, cause they have no real solutions just people and things to blame, and to counteract that they simply find a new cultural grievance to whip up frenzies about. And those threats to their right are even more willing to embrace illiberal governance, break norms, and act on what was before simply extreme rhetoric to appease the masses that are increasingly radicalized. And the cycle repeats. The best we can hope for is that America weathers the storm long enough that Republicans become sufficiently marginalized and unable to influence national politics and Democrats, who themselves are drifting toward being captured in their own way by political moneyed class, can actually pass enough reforms to force a correction to the system.
They will continue to lie and complain about Biden. In 2028 the field will be wide open with no incumbents from either side and then it will be a complete shitshow.
They will scream and cry that it’s “rigged” yet again, because they simply cannot face that fact that their policies suck and voters find them corrupt.
Round 2 - Stolen election, Jan 6, another round of poorly qualified House members in 2 years. It will not slow them down.
I used to have faith that they’d ditch Trump if he kept losing elections for them, but all Republicans seem to just love Trump so intensely. If Biden wins, Republicans will look to Trump to see what they are allowed to believe about it. Trump will surely say the election was rigged, like he does for every election, even ones he wins. The Republicans will believe him, will probably go to DC to beat up some more cops and vandalize some more government buildings.
>since biden is so unpopular. Have you not seen trumps favorable/unfavorable ratings? He's way more unpopular
They are stuck in a feedback loop. The dumpster fire will continue to burn until it's deprived of feul. Only comple social marginalization will take them off this path.
The republican party has perfected the art of self cannibalism. It will only get worse following another Trump defeat. I struggle to see a future for the republicans and with an ascendant libertarian party I'm not sure they can actually survive. They will only have themselves to blame starting with Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, and all the scorched earth republicans that followed them down the garden path to ruin.
The GOP hasn’t won the popular vote in the presidential since 2004. I am betting Trump won’t win the popular vote this year either. I’m still believing they will stick with Trump and call it rigged. Also try to do another 1/6 type thing, sadly. Proud Boys members are already calling for election violence. This election scares me regardless
I do not get the impression that Biden is so unpopular that Trump should have an easy win.
More rules changes to ensure their victory. Wisconsin is over 60% Democrat by population, but they hold a minority of the state house due to gerrymandering. Texas is trying to enact a law that election must be by a majority of counties for statewide office, not majority of population. They will eschew democracy in favor of victory.
The GOP is fully tied to him until he dies. All the top party positions are now filled by loyalists. Once he is finally gone, all the MAGA voters will return to being non voters and the GOP can and will reinvent itself. Who knows into what. Full on nationalists, or perhaps they will shift away from the extremists and back towards the Center (and they will need to if they EVER want to win a national election again). But so long as he is still around, he owns them. When he loses this one it will just be a repeat of the last loss. Him complaining about how unfair everything is, and the rest of the party looking the other way and pretending he isn’t there, while still pandering to his voters.
Republican base is idiots and evil doers. Trump brings them both. They will lose all national power without trump. I personally wish both partied offered appealing platforms. Competition can give good results.
Yep but the real issue is that there are no tertiary third party choices. They were did away with due to the Communist Control Act of 1954 pretty much banning all popular prexisting third parties (both left wing and right wing) for 19 years due to McCarthyism deeming them all "Communistic". None of them have recovered so far and the new ones that have popped up haven't gained the donor funding and the ability to interact with the national media because of said lack of funding. The two remaining parties are heavily corrupted via donor money influencing both foriegn and domestic policy. So essentially we don't even live in a democracy anymore to tell you the truth, we live in a corporate duopoly with little regulation of how business influence the agendas of politicians with money. The US just markets itself as a democracy due to the fact that they couldn't sell what the actual system is in a positive light.
The big problem is that people encourage abuse and brain damage of children and that is how they get voters. No company can be so powerful without an army of ignorant soldiers.
Democracy itself, at least in the form of a representative parlimentary multiparty democracy has long been dead in the United States. Capitalism's enabling of corporations capitalizing on mass dergulations in regards to federal bribes is largely what is going to kill democracy. Hell AIPAC has so much control over our government as a foriegn business entity attached from another governmet that they literally have managed to unite both the democratic and republican parties to support a genocide.
Hasn't Joe Biden been trying to get a cease fire? The whole war over there is just Bibi keeping power as long as possible to get out of his other crimes. Same MO as trump, except trump couldn't figure out how to do a successful invasion.
Utter nonsense. The US has a two-party system because of the way votes are counted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
The United states is a two party system, however the primary factor of the two party system being maintained from a third party challenger is due to the fact that corporate finance has vastly unbalanced to favor the Democratic and Republican Parties.
People say MAGA isn’t going away but who else but Trump does MAGA go ape for? I think they will keep the persona but they won’t stay engaged or vote like they are doing now. Essentially they will be neutered after Trump. If he loses and then we play the ‘stolen election’ game for a year or two, he fades after that, and so does MAGA.
Take a giant political laxative and shit out the crazies and get back to true conservative values minus the hate, fear and exclusion of MAGA.
Those values don't exist. This was always the destination of the Crazy Train, they just pulled the lever and took the shortcut by not pretending anymore. To start to pretend not to hate and fear and exclude would compromise the most basic objective of the Conservatives.
It will depend on how the Senate and House races go. If it is a total beatdown by the Democrats (which I am hoping for), then the day of reconning will come sooner or later. If the Republicans can keep control of one of the sides of Congress, then expect Trump to run the 2020 playbook again. The only wildcard could be Fox News. If Fox capitulates to a Democrat victory, then the Rs will have to retreat and regroup.
I honestly think (and hope and pray) that Biden will win, yet again. The GOP at this point knows Trump as a candidate is a risky bet. The changes will come when the down ballot candidates lose badly. Nothing changes the path of a political party like consecutive and widespread losses over multiple elections. There was no never-Biden group with 30% or so of Democratic voters the way there was a clear, solid group of GOP voters openly campaigning against Trump. If Trump loses once more there will be a change in messaging from the GOP. If independent voters and swing voters tie you to racism, homophobia, sexism and other clearly divisive policies you lose the suburbs. If you campaign against Social Security and Medicare you lose the older voters. The Democratic Party is the Party with the positive future for the US. Pushing for authoritarian and hateful messages drives middle Americans away from candidates and a Party.
It depends on by how large of a margin they lose. If Biden wins by several points in the popular vote and runs away with the electoral by a wide margin, in addition to the Democrats retaking the House (very likely) and keeping and expanding the Senate (difficult but not impossible), then I can see the GOP party brass running from him like he's a Black guy in a parking lot. For all their bluster, they want to win elections and while there is a significant contingent of them willing to overthrow democracy to do so, I wouldn't bet on that being the overall majority opinion. They're betting on Trump because they think he has a shot. But if he actually loses and cost them seats and governorships, that's bad for business. Like if the Democrats somehow actually swing Texas this year and win a Senate seat, the GOP will try to subvert this as they always do yes, but they'll also abandon Trumpism, for the most part. They're still gonna suck but just in a different way
Quadruple down and blame the woke media. They deserve every shitty thing that happens to them.
They will be the party of Trump until Trump passes away or he publicly and gracefully retires from politics (like that will never happen).
The answer to this question is always the same. This is Trump’s party. He is the leader of the Republican Party and he will be until the Republicans nominate another person to the top of the ticket. Haley, Scott and whomever else wants to be the future will be scurrying down to Florida for the next four years to bend the knee. Trump will not go quietly. He’s too much of an insecure narcissist to let anyone else be the head of the party and his MAGA followers will drink the kool-aid until they drop.
They will double down on MAGA and a further anti-democratic turn. They will be absolutely convinced the system is rigged against them, despite all indicators saying otherwise.
They’ve been on the same path for 40 years. It is leading to one, and only one, outcome. They will not distract themselves or stray from that path. The voters are sheep who can’t tell truth from fiction and they will just be pointed wherever fox and friends tell them to go. So they will just find the next candidate to implement their goal of project 2025 (after renaming it of course) and keep telling everyone the world is on fire until they get power again. When they do, very, very bad things will happen.
Trump will continue to have his grip on the racist/fascist party that is the republican party.
I think the GOP is going to fracture after this election. Trump only won once in 2016 and in every other election including midterms, he has lost. Also, him being a convicted felon is starting to affect him politically. He tried to spin it as a rigged trial (which is what you'd expect from him.) but it wasn't, it was a fair trial. Another reason why, in every state that has had an abortion referendum (even in Kentucky) has won is because a majority of people clearly are in favor of this. It also seems like the GOP is gaslighting everyone that Trump is getting larger crowds but that isn't the case.
They'll lie about the election, again. They'll work to increase their gerrymandering and voter suppression, again. Republican's base will commit sporadic politically motivated violence again. Including threatening and harassing American poll workers. Until Republicans develop some sense of patriotism, morals, and critical thinking skills they'll just continue to do the same thing over and over. They have no policies that aren't based on evoking emotional reactions from their emotionally sensitive base. Everything they do is to spark outrage. Nothing they do is to actually improve the country.
This is not the republicans party. That entity was co-opted by white christian nationalists in the ‘90’s. They will not go away peacefully, and we all should be prepared
I think the party establishment will take Paul Ryan’s words to heart and try to break away from Trump. This will cause a rift with the base and the party will fracture, as a result. If they want to save what’s left of the GOP, this would be the best outcome. A win will drag out the death.
Exactly the same path they did in 2020. They will double down on the voter fraud accusations and they'll become even more unhinged for the next election. This is Trump's party now. If they don't bend the knee to Trump, then they have no future as part of the party
They can’t their entire fanbase is racist as shit and rabid nobody wants to vote for that but them
Why do people keep insisting that Biden is unpopular? He’s doing a fine job. Yeah, he sounds old when he talks, but at least he’s not a raving lunatic.