I cannot wait until Trump fades off in the sunset and we never have to hear about him ever again.
Make Politics Boring Again.
Iowa_Dave on
Everyone’s attention is on November, but we are looking at a possible 16-year window of opportunity for progressive policies and SCOTUS choices.
Go VOTE like your life and the country’s next decade and a half depend on it!
ranchoparksteve on
The problem Republicans will have post-Trump is that there is no default mode to return to. Republicans don’t value individual freedom, they don’t fight for small government, they aren’t fiscally conservative. Trump has destroyed all that.
OppositeDifference on
Their argument is that post Trump, there’s no reasonable successor who can replicate his bizarre grip on the psyche of the American right. I think to a degree that’s true. I have to disagree on a few fronts though. The assumption that seems to be baked in here that Trump will simply disappear if he doesn’t win seems a little naive. Maybe if he loses AND goes to jail, but I wouldn’t hold my breath there. Either for him going to jail, or dropping off into obscurity if he does. He’s going to try very hard to remain the center of attention and exert any power he can get people to give him until the day he dies.
However, what this article doesn’t discuss is that if Kamala is elected this time around, odds are she will be re-elected. That would be 12 straight years of democratic control counting Biden’s term. Hopefully enough time to put right a lot of the things that have gone wrong since 2016. Long enough for a whole new generation of voters to reach voting age remembering nothing but a Democratic Party President.
speekEZ52 on
no matter if he wins or loses. Jan 2025 will be the test of where we stand, and where we are headed as a country. Prepare for a ‘repeat’ if he loses, he’s already setting up the pins, just like last time. Admittedly, I am not optimistic about jan 2025 either way. the division is deep.
memphisjones on
Until another Far Right extremist runs. Look at the political landscape in Germany.
kingofthejungle223 on
This makes a lot of assumptions about the actions of individual political actors.
A large Trump loss COULD result in the stabilization of American politics, but it requires Republicans acting in a rational manner with the long term interests of the party in mind. We haven’t seen anything they’ve done in years that leads us to think that will happen.
Consider this: When Trump loses, every individual GOP elected official will face a choice. Do you go along with Trump, who will claim that it was “rigged”? Or do you tell his vitriolic supporters (whose votes you need) that no – he did, in fact, lose.
They were faced with this same choice last time. Few of them chose the latter, though it would have been clearly better for the long term health of the party and the country. Instead, they chose to humor him – and that’s exactly why he’s the nominee right now.
If they make the same choice this time, he will be the nominee in 2028 – whether he’s outside of a prison or not.
No. Nixon, Roger Stone, Newt Gingrich, Tea Party, Ted Cruz, Abbott, DeSantis, Trey Gowdy, Devin Nunes, Lee Atwater, Dick Cheney, all the Huckabees, Rupert Murdoch, and Boof O’Callahan are my counterpoint.
INCoctopus on
*SCOTUS enters the chat*
Shr3kk_Wpg on
This is wishful thinking. MAGA Christian populism controls the GOP right now. There is no reason to believe that will change once Trump dies. And there is no reason to think Trump’s hold of the party weakens if he loses in November. The majority of Republicans believe they are the majority party in America and only loses elections because Democrats cheat. A loss in November only sends the message that more restrictive voting measures are needed and local Republicam election officials need to have the legal authority to not certify election results.
JeffSpicolisBong on
The pessimist in me says Trump will live to be 96 and he will never shut up, never stop trying to tear America down. I’m prepared for another 15 years of this hateful motherfucker, Maga and his awful family. I hate it, but I see him as a cockroach that just won’t die and go away. The media treats him like OJ Simpson, it’s like a never ending Bronco chase circus. In fact, he’s like OJ, Manson, Morton Downey Jr, Rush Limbaugh, …. all wrapped up into one sociopathic, narcissistic terrorist and the media just can’t get enough.
Local-Ad-5170 on
A Trump loss will begin that stabilization; But it would take another one or two election cycles for that to come in to full fruition.
weluckyfew on
We’d need a blowout for that to happen (Dems get presidency/House/Senate) – but let’s not underestimate the power of the Right Wing media machine. Obama was swept into office as the entire economy melted down and we were mired in two hopeless wars – you would think that would be enough to bury Republican chances for a generation. And yet they still turned him into the background and we got slaughtered in the next midterm election.
jayfeather31 on
That seems overly optimistic…
BioDriver on
The Financial Times of all people saying this is extremely damning for the GOP.
YNot1989 on
That is the same wishful thinking that people made in 2020. The Republicans are only going to get crazier.
mywifesoldestchild on
Plenty of fascist chuckle-heads chomping at the bit to take over for Uncle Donnie after he has his fall.
Ok_Leading999 on
Trump is a symptom, he’s not the disease. The disease is the Republican Party which has no interest in a stable US. You want stability, eradicate Republicanism.
Remarkably_Dark21 on
If he wins there’s no hope for America. Everyone be sure to vote for kamala in November. Let’s keep the felon out.
Weekly-Somewhere-674 on
THIS is why it’s so important. I know there are a lot of leftist that still want to sit this one out. But that’s SUCH a bad idea. Take it from someone who sat out 2016 and regrets it constantly.
tonyjdublin62 on
Trump will run again if he loses the GE assuming he’s still alive in future cycles. His cult will demand it on threat of violence and RNC are simply MAGAt puppets.
Carthonn on
If Trump flees to Venezuela or whatever does he and should he still get Secret Service protection? This would be a great question for the debate.
gtpc2020 on
Nothing stable about his many, many lifetime judge appointees (cannon and the SCOTUS clown posse, for example) that are systematically screwing things up and will for more than a generation. Trump fanned the flames of hate, bigotry, and ignorance for a generation that won’t be ‘stabilized’ for years.
rockum on
Below is the full text of the article. Kinda lame IMHO and not as interesting as the headline suggests:
There is such a thing as an unimportant US presidential election. Had Bill Clinton lost to Bob Dole in 1996, or George W Bush to John Kerry the other side of the millennium, there is no reason to believe we would now inhabit a greatly different world. So when I suggest that November 5 2024 is a hinge moment in history, don’t murmur: “Journalists say this every damn time.”
What is the case for this election’s singular importance? If Donald Trump loses, there is an underrated chance that America and its politics will stabilise for a generation. “Stabilise” doesn’t mean “become Luxembourg”. Polarisation will endure. But the received wisdom that Trumpism will outlast Trump — that he is just the face and voice of deeper societal forces, liable to rock the republic for decades — is shakier than it was four years ago.
The lesson of 2024 so far is that American populism will find Trump hideously difficult to replace. In January, Ron DeSantis, who combined the gist of the Trump platform with executive competence, dropped out of the Republican primaries, having not done well enough to even state his case for 2028. In July, JD Vance clinched the title not just of running mate but of heir to the Maga movement. Nothing since then has suggested that he is up to it. Vivek Ramaswamy is another who might wonder if the high summer of his public career is already past.
Others who have a go in the years to come (Tucker Carlson, perhaps) will run into the same problem, which is that Trump has political superpowers almost unique to him. I count three.
The most obvious is star quality. In any country, one or two and sometimes zero politicians per generation have it. Forced to stand on its own terms, without the distracting presence of a charismatic leader, the hard-right agenda is too sharp-edged. Then there is what we might call emotional sunk cost. For voters who committed to Trump circa 2016, and who paid a toll for it among friends, relatives or social media sparring partners, abandoning him is a personal defeat. A new leader, however faithful to his ideas, can’t just inherit that support, hence the vibe of “you’re not my real dad” whenever someone tries to succeed him.
The last and most counter-logical of Trump’s advantages is his perceived incompetence. Some Republicans tell themselves he is too idle and chaotic to do irreparable harm. (And, until January 6 2021, had half a case.) A politician who pairs Trumpist views with operational grip would lose as well as gain support, would frighten as well as impress.
Note the connecting theme here: the near-irrelevance of ideas. The shocking thing about Trump was never that he could “shoot somebody” on the street without losing supporters. Lots of demagogues in the past might have claimed the same. If Trump represents something novel, it is that he can take almost any line on almost any issue — immigration might be the one exception — without losing them. (Which of his anti-vaccine fans minds that he recommended the Covid-19 jab?) Dictatorship in the 1930s, always the wrong lens through which to analyse Trump, was about something: communism, irredentism, and so on. The Trump phenomenon is much less doctrinal, and so much less transferable to another leader.
One cannot raise the prospect of post-Trump stabilisation in polite company without seeming unintellectual. Western elites aren’t Marxist, if that means eager for the end of capitalism, but are Marxian, in that their view of what makes the world go round tends to de-emphasise individuals. Larger forces are meant to be in charge. A culture in which it is normal to refer to the “wrong side of history” or the “arc of history” implicitly believes that events have been half-scripted already.
Was Trump’s rise to power a personal feat or historically ordained by decades of deindustrialisation, porous borders and other provocations that were due an electoral revolt? “Both”, no doubt: it takes a remarkable individual to capitalise on structural trends. The breakthrough of populism in other democracies suggests something deep is at work. In the end, though, especially in a presidential system, the individual is the catalyser, and American populists don’t have one on the horizon.
Lots of Trump-loathing conservatives are reluctant to vote for Kamala Harris. Rather than sell them on a woman who is, it is true, laughably under-scrutinised right now, Democrats should argue that the prize is not just four years of respite for the republic, but conceivably much longer. Perhaps another Trump is inevitable. But voters can oblige history to go find one.
Gloria_S_Birdhair on
He will grift up all the money before he goes. Then the Republican Party won’t have anything to campaign with. They will be set back for decades to come.
AntOk4073 on
You all act like he is really in charge. This MAGA stuff isn’t going to end with him. There are many more politicians to take his place and so much money to fund them.
blackmobius on
Trump will continue to be a major fixture of the gop until they fully revolt and throw him out, or he dies. Even in jail/house arrest, he will continue to use truth social as his mouthpiece for his ranting tantrum throwing.
Maga have to be soundly rejected from the party or a new third party of moderate rep must emerge.
This isnt over anytime soon
TheBestermanBro on
Not sure how we stabilize unless the entire GOP decides to act like a decent political party, and not a terrorist organization overnight. There’s a chance to make a new left dawn happen in the US, but the GOP is always going to try to underhand is all with shady tactics and cheating.
duckduckduckgoose_69 on
This is essentially a useless conversation until Trump loses.
There’s a very good chance he could pull off a win- we CANNOT get complacent.
Harris 2024
CaseyAnthonyIsHot on
The election is 50/50 and the Republican candidate is about to receive over 70M votes either way, but also the Republican Party is in shambles and will be hopeless if he loses.
Republicans will march to the polls for absolutely anyone with (R) next to their name. If you expect anything else by now, you’re not getting it.
aircooledJenkins on
While Harris winning would be an aboslute boon to the country, the true stabilizing factor is if both the House and Senate are convincingly controlled by the Democrats.
FlatulenceConnosieur on
It’s always worth noting- we don’t have a left and a right party in America. We have a far far right party and a centrist party. Democrats aren’t leftists, they’re centrists. Republicans aren’t conservatives, they’re reactionary far right.
BeeLuv on
Yes, please. I yearn for some nice boring stability. I want to be bored by politics, dammit!
defnotajournalist on
No, a Trump loss followed by a lengthy Trump incarceration could (and might still not, without shoring up the Supreme Court) stabilize US Politics for a generation.
Dry_Yam_8049 on
Just reading the headline this is what is needed
XennialBoomBoom on
THAT’S LITERALLY WHAT WE’RE HOPING FOR. (sorry for the all-caps)
I pine for the days that I can look at a ballot and *consider* the candidates on it (and I don’t just mean for President) without having a visceral reaction, even with someone like W.
That said, the Harris/Walz campaign has actually caused me to smile more than I have in quite some time 🙂
Geektime1987 on
No shit
krismitka on
Thus making America great again…
Steelo43 on
The destabilization is already started. Trump and the GOP are trying to control vote counts, trying to win either in election or in the courts. trying to gain minority control.
reddit_clone on
Here is to hoping !
blue-eyes-bob on
Without understanding why half our country thinks Trump is a good man, nothing in America will ever be stable again.
Ut_Prosim on
That would be soooo nice.
For younger folks it must be hard to even imagine a scenario where you’re only mildly invested in the election. Where you think “*yeah, I’d much rather candidate X over Y, but whatever, Y would be alright I guess.*”
W had a lot of screw-ups, especially Iraq, but he seemed alright in 2000 (dumb, but not a monster). After 9/11 most of America was onboard with invading Iraq, including most Dem politicians, and it’s not like Kerry would have immediately gotten out of the war had he won. W winning in 2004 was a “*LOL, are people stupid, I can’t believe we reelected that idiot after so many failures, pfft, whatever, we’ll smoke them in 2008…*” moment, not a sky falling moment. Obama was exciting af, but if it wasn’t for Palin, McCain would have been totally fine, same with Romney in 2012, GHW Bush in 1992, Dole in 1996. It isn’t so much a catastrophe as it is boring policy disagreements.
Trump was totally novel. Uniquely unworthy of the office, uniquely shitty, uniquely dangerous. There’s never been anything like him in my lifetime. He’s an existential threat, and I think that’s his main appeal to his base.
I guess now we know we need to always worry about the Heritage Foundation’s scheming, but if in 2028 the GOP runs Youngkin or Haley or Rubio, we go back to boring policy disagreements, instead of fears of a coup and the end of democracy or the selling out of our allies to our enemies.
starion832000 on
A Trump win will destabilize US politics for GENERATIONS
razors_so_yummy on
No shit sherlock
MikeN22 on
Anything is better than the weird world we are in now
47 Comments
I cannot wait until Trump fades off in the sunset and we never have to hear about him ever again.
Make Politics Boring Again.
Everyone’s attention is on November, but we are looking at a possible 16-year window of opportunity for progressive policies and SCOTUS choices.
Go VOTE like your life and the country’s next decade and a half depend on it!
The problem Republicans will have post-Trump is that there is no default mode to return to. Republicans don’t value individual freedom, they don’t fight for small government, they aren’t fiscally conservative. Trump has destroyed all that.
Their argument is that post Trump, there’s no reasonable successor who can replicate his bizarre grip on the psyche of the American right. I think to a degree that’s true. I have to disagree on a few fronts though. The assumption that seems to be baked in here that Trump will simply disappear if he doesn’t win seems a little naive. Maybe if he loses AND goes to jail, but I wouldn’t hold my breath there. Either for him going to jail, or dropping off into obscurity if he does. He’s going to try very hard to remain the center of attention and exert any power he can get people to give him until the day he dies.
However, what this article doesn’t discuss is that if Kamala is elected this time around, odds are she will be re-elected. That would be 12 straight years of democratic control counting Biden’s term. Hopefully enough time to put right a lot of the things that have gone wrong since 2016. Long enough for a whole new generation of voters to reach voting age remembering nothing but a Democratic Party President.
no matter if he wins or loses. Jan 2025 will be the test of where we stand, and where we are headed as a country. Prepare for a ‘repeat’ if he loses, he’s already setting up the pins, just like last time. Admittedly, I am not optimistic about jan 2025 either way. the division is deep.
Until another Far Right extremist runs. Look at the political landscape in Germany.
This makes a lot of assumptions about the actions of individual political actors.
A large Trump loss COULD result in the stabilization of American politics, but it requires Republicans acting in a rational manner with the long term interests of the party in mind. We haven’t seen anything they’ve done in years that leads us to think that will happen.
Consider this: When Trump loses, every individual GOP elected official will face a choice. Do you go along with Trump, who will claim that it was “rigged”? Or do you tell his vitriolic supporters (whose votes you need) that no – he did, in fact, lose.
They were faced with this same choice last time. Few of them chose the latter, though it would have been clearly better for the long term health of the party and the country. Instead, they chose to humor him – and that’s exactly why he’s the nominee right now.
If they make the same choice this time, he will be the nominee in 2028 – whether he’s outside of a prison or not.
[Free archived version](https://archive.ph/7S7Ve)
No. Nixon, Roger Stone, Newt Gingrich, Tea Party, Ted Cruz, Abbott, DeSantis, Trey Gowdy, Devin Nunes, Lee Atwater, Dick Cheney, all the Huckabees, Rupert Murdoch, and Boof O’Callahan are my counterpoint.
*SCOTUS enters the chat*
This is wishful thinking. MAGA Christian populism controls the GOP right now. There is no reason to believe that will change once Trump dies. And there is no reason to think Trump’s hold of the party weakens if he loses in November. The majority of Republicans believe they are the majority party in America and only loses elections because Democrats cheat. A loss in November only sends the message that more restrictive voting measures are needed and local Republicam election officials need to have the legal authority to not certify election results.
The pessimist in me says Trump will live to be 96 and he will never shut up, never stop trying to tear America down. I’m prepared for another 15 years of this hateful motherfucker, Maga and his awful family. I hate it, but I see him as a cockroach that just won’t die and go away. The media treats him like OJ Simpson, it’s like a never ending Bronco chase circus. In fact, he’s like OJ, Manson, Morton Downey Jr, Rush Limbaugh, …. all wrapped up into one sociopathic, narcissistic terrorist and the media just can’t get enough.
A Trump loss will begin that stabilization; But it would take another one or two election cycles for that to come in to full fruition.
We’d need a blowout for that to happen (Dems get presidency/House/Senate) – but let’s not underestimate the power of the Right Wing media machine. Obama was swept into office as the entire economy melted down and we were mired in two hopeless wars – you would think that would be enough to bury Republican chances for a generation. And yet they still turned him into the background and we got slaughtered in the next midterm election.
That seems overly optimistic…
The Financial Times of all people saying this is extremely damning for the GOP.
That is the same wishful thinking that people made in 2020. The Republicans are only going to get crazier.
Plenty of fascist chuckle-heads chomping at the bit to take over for Uncle Donnie after he has his fall.
Trump is a symptom, he’s not the disease. The disease is the Republican Party which has no interest in a stable US. You want stability, eradicate Republicanism.
If he wins there’s no hope for America. Everyone be sure to vote for kamala in November. Let’s keep the felon out.
THIS is why it’s so important. I know there are a lot of leftist that still want to sit this one out. But that’s SUCH a bad idea. Take it from someone who sat out 2016 and regrets it constantly.
Trump will run again if he loses the GE assuming he’s still alive in future cycles. His cult will demand it on threat of violence and RNC are simply MAGAt puppets.
If Trump flees to Venezuela or whatever does he and should he still get Secret Service protection? This would be a great question for the debate.
Nothing stable about his many, many lifetime judge appointees (cannon and the SCOTUS clown posse, for example) that are systematically screwing things up and will for more than a generation. Trump fanned the flames of hate, bigotry, and ignorance for a generation that won’t be ‘stabilized’ for years.
Below is the full text of the article. Kinda lame IMHO and not as interesting as the headline suggests:
There is such a thing as an unimportant US presidential election. Had Bill Clinton lost to Bob Dole in 1996, or George W Bush to John Kerry the other side of the millennium, there is no reason to believe we would now inhabit a greatly different world. So when I suggest that November 5 2024 is a hinge moment in history, don’t murmur: “Journalists say this every damn time.”
What is the case for this election’s singular importance? If Donald Trump loses, there is an underrated chance that America and its politics will stabilise for a generation. “Stabilise” doesn’t mean “become Luxembourg”. Polarisation will endure. But the received wisdom that Trumpism will outlast Trump — that he is just the face and voice of deeper societal forces, liable to rock the republic for decades — is shakier than it was four years ago.
The lesson of 2024 so far is that American populism will find Trump hideously difficult to replace. In January, Ron DeSantis, who combined the gist of the Trump platform with executive competence, dropped out of the Republican primaries, having not done well enough to even state his case for 2028. In July, JD Vance clinched the title not just of running mate but of heir to the Maga movement. Nothing since then has suggested that he is up to it. Vivek Ramaswamy is another who might wonder if the high summer of his public career is already past.
Others who have a go in the years to come (Tucker Carlson, perhaps) will run into the same problem, which is that Trump has political superpowers almost unique to him. I count three.
The most obvious is star quality. In any country, one or two and sometimes zero politicians per generation have it. Forced to stand on its own terms, without the distracting presence of a charismatic leader, the hard-right agenda is too sharp-edged. Then there is what we might call emotional sunk cost. For voters who committed to Trump circa 2016, and who paid a toll for it among friends, relatives or social media sparring partners, abandoning him is a personal defeat. A new leader, however faithful to his ideas, can’t just inherit that support, hence the vibe of “you’re not my real dad” whenever someone tries to succeed him.
The last and most counter-logical of Trump’s advantages is his perceived incompetence. Some Republicans tell themselves he is too idle and chaotic to do irreparable harm. (And, until January 6 2021, had half a case.) A politician who pairs Trumpist views with operational grip would lose as well as gain support, would frighten as well as impress.
Note the connecting theme here: the near-irrelevance of ideas. The shocking thing about Trump was never that he could “shoot somebody” on the street without losing supporters. Lots of demagogues in the past might have claimed the same. If Trump represents something novel, it is that he can take almost any line on almost any issue — immigration might be the one exception — without losing them. (Which of his anti-vaccine fans minds that he recommended the Covid-19 jab?) Dictatorship in the 1930s, always the wrong lens through which to analyse Trump, was about something: communism, irredentism, and so on. The Trump phenomenon is much less doctrinal, and so much less transferable to another leader.
One cannot raise the prospect of post-Trump stabilisation in polite company without seeming unintellectual. Western elites aren’t Marxist, if that means eager for the end of capitalism, but are Marxian, in that their view of what makes the world go round tends to de-emphasise individuals. Larger forces are meant to be in charge. A culture in which it is normal to refer to the “wrong side of history” or the “arc of history” implicitly believes that events have been half-scripted already.
Was Trump’s rise to power a personal feat or historically ordained by decades of deindustrialisation, porous borders and other provocations that were due an electoral revolt? “Both”, no doubt: it takes a remarkable individual to capitalise on structural trends. The breakthrough of populism in other democracies suggests something deep is at work. In the end, though, especially in a presidential system, the individual is the catalyser, and American populists don’t have one on the horizon.
Lots of Trump-loathing conservatives are reluctant to vote for Kamala Harris. Rather than sell them on a woman who is, it is true, laughably under-scrutinised right now, Democrats should argue that the prize is not just four years of respite for the republic, but conceivably much longer. Perhaps another Trump is inevitable. But voters can oblige history to go find one.
He will grift up all the money before he goes. Then the Republican Party won’t have anything to campaign with. They will be set back for decades to come.
You all act like he is really in charge. This MAGA stuff isn’t going to end with him. There are many more politicians to take his place and so much money to fund them.
Trump will continue to be a major fixture of the gop until they fully revolt and throw him out, or he dies. Even in jail/house arrest, he will continue to use truth social as his mouthpiece for his ranting tantrum throwing.
Maga have to be soundly rejected from the party or a new third party of moderate rep must emerge.
This isnt over anytime soon
Not sure how we stabilize unless the entire GOP decides to act like a decent political party, and not a terrorist organization overnight. There’s a chance to make a new left dawn happen in the US, but the GOP is always going to try to underhand is all with shady tactics and cheating.
This is essentially a useless conversation until Trump loses.
There’s a very good chance he could pull off a win- we CANNOT get complacent.
Harris 2024
The election is 50/50 and the Republican candidate is about to receive over 70M votes either way, but also the Republican Party is in shambles and will be hopeless if he loses.
Republicans will march to the polls for absolutely anyone with (R) next to their name. If you expect anything else by now, you’re not getting it.
While Harris winning would be an aboslute boon to the country, the true stabilizing factor is if both the House and Senate are convincingly controlled by the Democrats.
It’s always worth noting- we don’t have a left and a right party in America. We have a far far right party and a centrist party. Democrats aren’t leftists, they’re centrists. Republicans aren’t conservatives, they’re reactionary far right.
Yes, please. I yearn for some nice boring stability. I want to be bored by politics, dammit!
No, a Trump loss followed by a lengthy Trump incarceration could (and might still not, without shoring up the Supreme Court) stabilize US Politics for a generation.
Just reading the headline this is what is needed
THAT’S LITERALLY WHAT WE’RE HOPING FOR. (sorry for the all-caps)
I pine for the days that I can look at a ballot and *consider* the candidates on it (and I don’t just mean for President) without having a visceral reaction, even with someone like W.
That said, the Harris/Walz campaign has actually caused me to smile more than I have in quite some time 🙂
No shit
Thus making America great again…
The destabilization is already started. Trump and the GOP are trying to control vote counts, trying to win either in election or in the courts. trying to gain minority control.
Here is to hoping !
Without understanding why half our country thinks Trump is a good man, nothing in America will ever be stable again.
That would be soooo nice.
For younger folks it must be hard to even imagine a scenario where you’re only mildly invested in the election. Where you think “*yeah, I’d much rather candidate X over Y, but whatever, Y would be alright I guess.*”
W had a lot of screw-ups, especially Iraq, but he seemed alright in 2000 (dumb, but not a monster). After 9/11 most of America was onboard with invading Iraq, including most Dem politicians, and it’s not like Kerry would have immediately gotten out of the war had he won. W winning in 2004 was a “*LOL, are people stupid, I can’t believe we reelected that idiot after so many failures, pfft, whatever, we’ll smoke them in 2008…*” moment, not a sky falling moment. Obama was exciting af, but if it wasn’t for Palin, McCain would have been totally fine, same with Romney in 2012, GHW Bush in 1992, Dole in 1996. It isn’t so much a catastrophe as it is boring policy disagreements.
Trump was totally novel. Uniquely unworthy of the office, uniquely shitty, uniquely dangerous. There’s never been anything like him in my lifetime. He’s an existential threat, and I think that’s his main appeal to his base.
I guess now we know we need to always worry about the Heritage Foundation’s scheming, but if in 2028 the GOP runs Youngkin or Haley or Rubio, we go back to boring policy disagreements, instead of fears of a coup and the end of democracy or the selling out of our allies to our enemies.
A Trump win will destabilize US politics for GENERATIONS
No shit sherlock
Anything is better than the weird world we are in now
Gonna have to fix the education system, though.