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Depending how much Trump chickens out of his favorite policies, this may actually be enough to win the elections.
In the past, the US has profited immensely both from free trade and from attracting the best and the brightest people of the world to their universities.
Trump's zero-sum mentality (roughly: "If we don't fuck over our trade partners, we are the ones getting fucked over") towards trade and the general xenophobia of the his administration both harm the US in this regard. Investment is kinda risky if you do not know if Trump will put immense tariffs on your raw materials. And if I wanted to study abroad, I would think twice before going to the US, which very much makes it clear that they do not want me to stay there. Canada, the UK, or China also have decent universities, and at least the first two are much less likely to cancel my visa over political views expressed online. And while a few professors might be DEI hires, their governments are not waging a war on the university system to get them to DEI-hire 50% Trumpists.
The lack of international students will only be felt in 10-15 years, but I think the tariffs are already felt. If the AI bubble bursts by 2028, and it becomes apparent that the Stargate money went down the drain, that will likely spell a recession.
In such an environment, the Democrats only will have to say "our economic policies are mainstream, like under Clinton, Obama, GWB", and that will be enough to attract voters.
Voting based on the positions on transgenders in bathrooms is something you can only afford to do if both parties have sane economic policies, after all.
LOL no the UK seems much more likely to do that; they throw people in jail for tweets longer than they do for rape.
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Note that Canada is changing policies to reduce the number of student visas issued going forward, and the UK is considering some similar changes.
University profitmaxxing has had extremely negative soxial and economic externalities due to the cost of bad faith exploiters being borne by the general public, and leftists (which university admin overwhelmingly is) either ignore the costs or revel in the local proles being culturally enriched.
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