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Its frankly hilarious to me that the Dems are basically stuck with the coalition they built and all its dysfunction because they elevated the AOCs, Kamala Harris', Jasmine Crocketts and Stacey Abrams amongst them, and the most motivated and active parts of their base are all-in on identity politics, so trying to wrest back the controls will require exercises of raw, naked power that is just as likely to bite them in the ass as it is to select a viable candidate.
My biggest fear for the GOP is post-Trump (or the small chance Trump simply declines to leave the stage) power struggles and the constant tendency at infighting at the most inopportune times.
But the GOP now has a deep qualified leadership bench by comparison, and one that isn't (as far as I can tell) beholden to constituencies that will demand the faucet of grift, graft and fraud be kept all the way open or they'll revolt. Which is to say, a GOP official can actually try things that might make things better.
The alternative to all-in on identity politics is all-in on socialism, communism, redistribution -- the DSA, basically. Mandami won NYC handily, Katie Wilson has Seattle, Washington State has its new millionaire tax and California its proposed wealth tax which has already driven several billionaires out. At the national level this is mostly represented by fossils like Warren and Sanders, but AOC could make a return to relevance. They've got allies here with some of the anti-boomer right, which would like nothing more than to redistribute the spoils of dispossessing old people of their homes.
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There's certainly quite a bit of dark humor to be found in the fact that the DEI party is willing to hurt itself as a way to provide a costly signal that it really does believe in DEI. I just can't help but keep thinking of the trolley problem meme "You can stop the trolley at any time, but in doing so you need to admit that you made a mistake."
The best thing about DEI in my entirely uncharitable opinion is the selection pressure is non-meritocratic. So the more DEI initiatives in politics and corpos succeed, the more unstable and brittle the DEI machine itself will become.
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Oh absolutely, the GOP could easily lose the presidency, important races, etc though infighting. But it's unlikely to cede a trifecta to democrats; the GOP coalition is not very ideologically coherent, but it's very suited to the political system we exist in.
From where im standing the GoP seems to have a much more coherant idea of both what it believes and desired path forward than the Democrats do.
They're a center-right populist party with mercantilist tendencies.
Meanwhile the Democrats are currently stuck trying to square the circle of being the party of "anti-racism" and "punch a nazi" with also being the party of art school socialists who believe in the primacy of race and blame Jews/Isreal for all the worlds ills.
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