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Not necessarily. It would be extremely good for Trump's popular support, but a conviction here would be used to buttress the efforts to take him off the ballot under Amendment XIV. Doesn't matter how many people support him if he can't be voted for.
Of course, that doesn't make it a good idea; the real result of taking Trump-as-Republican-nominee off the ballot isn't "Democrats win by default", but rather "civil war".
Honestly, I only see three ways out of this without Boogaloo: the Democrats can realise this is literal suicide and relent, the Republicans can nominate someone not Donald Trump Sr., or Trump is not able to run for reasons other than "banned" (e.g. being dead).
No, the Republicans will cave except a few hotheads, who will be shot to the approval of those who caved.
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I don't understand why the "boogaloo" option is being seen as suicide for Democrats. Rebellions frequently end extremely badly for the rebels.
Actual civil war in America would be suicide for the Democrats and Republicans both. The winners of Civil War 2 would be China and Russia, with Hamas getting a consolation prize as the flow of US aid to Israel gets turned off. The losers would be everyone who has to live in the country, as every pre-existing division in society gets thrown into stark relief by the breakdown of the infrastructure which supplies power, internet communication, water, oil and food. There's no real way to defend those in the US in the context of a civil war, and the nature of the conflict as rural food producing regions fighting against import-reliant cities portends an incredibly nasty fight for everyone involved.
Basically this.
To answer @AshLael's question, the problem for the Democrats/Professional Managerial Class is that "the rebels" are likely be in physical control of a lot of critical resources and infrastructure.
There's also the part where Reds and Blues value different elements of society in different amounts, and speaking very generally, a lot of the delicate, high-complexity parts are valued much more by blues than reds, while the more durable, lower-complexity elements are valued more by reds than by blues. If this is the case, then significant disruption of our current delicate, high-complexity society would tend to advantage Reds over Blues, all else being equal.
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My guess is it would end extremely badly for everyone. The things that make me call it suicide for Dems in at least a substantial chunk of possible worlds are the potential for the armed forces and police to split, the food issue with the countryside being Republican, and the "PRC opportunistically invades Taiwan" issue which quite likely means nuclear exchange.
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'Winning' a rebellion can be as suicidal, especially for the leadership. In the last decade we've seen rando schizophrenics hit both sides of the aisle at the Congressional level and only by grace of God and emergency medicine did they fail to kill. Garland has a home address, and he's given tacit 'moral' sanction for protests of homes, and the only reason that's not a day-by-day thing is that the sort of Red Triber who recognize his name knows the rule doesn't generalize.
Like, that's supposed to be one of the motivations for the gag order here.
((In practice, I think this is insufficiently cynical; if you start getting non-LARP non-schizo people devoted to hating you with every fibre of their being, there's a lot worse options that just being dead yourself.))
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The assumption is that most of the army and the cops are red. I personally believe they'll still mostly be on the establishment's side. You don't become a soldier to be a rebel.
The history of civil wars and military coups tells us that in conditions of political turmoil, military loyalty lies not in declared offices but in personal friendships and commands. Administrative leadership fades away in the confusion and what ends up mattering to who controls divisions is who actually leads the men.
This is why dictators so often bear the rank of colonel. The best position to hold if you want to take power by force is that of a relatively young, charismatic leader who has seen combat and is trusted by his troops. The man Burke calls "a charismatic lieutenant" in Reflections on the Revolution in France before his name came to be that of General Bonaparte.
In the context in question, the higher strata of officers are blue and the lower strata down to the troops are red. Which makes it difficult to see who would remain loyal to whom, especially without a particular circumstance. If the Joint Chiefs of Staff start ordering civilians rounded up and executed it's not the same as if they order a crackdown on a terrorist group, and yet in the conditions of confusion and disorder that usually lead to civil wars, the difference between these becomes extremely subjective.
But though as you say one shouldn't underestimate the loyalty that's been trained into these men (and the amazing inertia of power), one also shouldn't forget the special luster glory has to young military men. Many a rebel were soldiers.
To be honest, given the availability of weapons, military experience and defensible terrain, I predict a second american civil war would be an incomprehensible mess of warlords where distinctions like "democrat" and "republican" would soon become meaningless. That is how modern civil wars have looked like since the 50s, after all.
The conversation in JTarrou's infantry threads around the fact the in the modern military even very low-level officers rarely see combat seems relevant too -- I get the impression that the point of the spear sees the officer class in general as more something to be worked around than a group of people to whom they would feel personal loyalty.
The whole point of having a commissioned officer corps selected through a process other promoting from the ranks is to prevent large-scale organisation of the rank-and-file against the State. Even if JTarrou's Point of Empire crowd represent most of the combat power of the US military (as opposed to representing most of the type of combat power that happened to be most useful in Afghanistan and post-Saddam Iraq - note that the Point of Empire don't drive the tanks or fly the drones), they are split across multiple units (and even multiple armed services with different cultures) in different places such that they don't constitute an organised power bloc if the officer corps don't want them to.
FWIW, if the Boogaloo goes down, I don't think Red vs Blue is the right way of thinking about it. I think right now you have a 2x2 division in American politics - Right vs Left and pro vs anti establishment. The anti-establishment right is almost entirely Red, and the anti-establishment left is almost entirely Blue/Black, but there is much more crossover between tribe and politics when you look at the pro-establishment factions. The officer corps are mostly pro-establishment right, with a smattering of pro-establishment left in roles which are unlikely to involve commanding combat troops. It isn't clear how the infantry divide between pro-establishment right and anti-establishment right (not to mention that if things go down a lot of black soldiers will turn out to be aligned with the pro-establishment left) - the whole point of military culture is to make the grunts more obedient than they otherwise would be.
Right now, with the game played mostly through the ballot box, the pro-establishment right are getting creamed, both by the pro-establishment left and the anti-establishment right. But they still have c. 20% of the citizen population, c. 30% of the cash, c. 50% of the riflemen who can shoot straight (a group that, when it comes down to it, includes most but not all POGs), and the vast majority of the big guns. If the game is played through credible threats of political violence, then the pro-establishment right will be kingmakers.
You will notice that the I didn't mention the anti-establishment left. They only matter in that they can burn down buildings with the permission of the pro-establishment left, permission that will not be renewed any time soon because the pro-establishment left have realised that granting it was a mistake. Even though they have c. 25% of the population, they won't matter unless they wash, shave (both sexes), orient themselves to reality, and learn how to do at least one of make money, win elections, or shoot straight.
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