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I think the case for hope, and the reason I've never been much of a doomer about Trump, is that he's taking up oxygen that could be going to an actual fascist, or some other effective representative of the forces of evil. My bitterest political opponents have decided to spend all their energies pumping up a petulant old windbag who's all bark and hardly any bite. Not to mention his cult of personality becoming synonymous with their values means that his death - which is, in the grand scheme of things, imminent - will deal a tremendous blow to the entire way the Red Tribe is organized. Trump is not Hitler, and to the extent that one is worried about the prospect of an American Hitler in principle, one should therefore be very thankful that Trump is hogging the spotlight. He's like a kind of tyranny lightning-rod, collecting the loyalty of everyone who'd support an actual dictator while having very low odds of actually declaring a dictatorship. Long may he continue to do so.
Trump has also dismantled the democrat’s base, however. How the Trump realignment shakes out is ultimately unknown but it doesn’t thus far look like bad news for republicans or good news for democrats.
This doesn't matter if his death just totally disengages and fractures the entire MAGA coalition. If this occurs the Dems basically win by default.
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I think this is fair. He's a powerful disruptor, but not a builder. It is safe to say, I think, that the old GOP is dead and gone, but Trump provides no central ideas or organising principles for the new one. The centre of Trump's movement is Trump himself, and his most distinctive policy preferences (e.g. tariffs) seem idiosyncratic to Trump, rather than penetrating more widely into the base. My biggest concern with the GOP or Red Tribe is what they will become after Trump. There is clearly a lot of energy and organisational power there, even if there is a void of actual beliefs. If anyone, after Trump, is capable to capture most of that energy - and that's a big if - then whatever direction it goes in will reshape America again.
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