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I find myself increasingly perplexed by the people who think a second Trump term would be any kind of a big deal; that there’s anything he’d be able to do in a second term he wasn’t able to do in the first. It’s primarily in fellow right-wingers that I find this attitude most vexing, but it also holds to a lesser degree for the people on the left who hyperbolically opine in outlets like Newsweek and The Economist about how a second Trump term would “end democracy” and “poses the biggest danger to the world.”
Really, it’s not even about Trump for me, either. I don’t really see how a DeSantis or a Ramaswamy presidency would amount to anything either. What can they possibly accomplish, except four years of utterly futile attempts at action that are completely #Resisted by the permanent bureaucracy? Giving “orders” to “subordinates” that prove as efficacious as Knut the Great’s famous command to the tides?
I hear about how the president can do this or that, according to some words on paper, and I ask “but can he, really?” Mere words on paper have no power themselves, and near as I can tell, the people in DC haven’t really cared about them for most of a century now, nor is there any real mechanism for enforcing them.
If I, a random nobody, come into your workplace and announce that you’re fired, of course you still have your job. Security will still let you in when you show up each day, you can still log in and out of whatever, your coworkers will treat you the same, and you’ll still keep getting paid. Now, suppose your boss announces that you’re fired… but everyone else there treats that the same as the first case? You still show up, you still do the work, you still get paid. Are you really fired, then?
The problem is, Trumpism and MAGA have now had 8 years to take over the Republican party, and have efficiently marginalized all other factions of the party.
Much more of the permanent bureaucracy is now on Trump's side and comfortable with his tactics and ambitions, than were 3 years ago. The same is true for his Republican colleagues in Congress, the Judiciary, and various state and local governments.
There's every reason to think he will get much more cooperation from the rest of the government than he did during his last term. Bureaucratic turnover is slow for sure, but it does happen, especially when an insurgent movement in one of the parties is chasing out non-believers. This has absolutely been happening to Republican offices for the last 8 years.
Whether the process has proceeded far enough for him to accomplish any of the horror scenarios Dems are predicting is probably impossible to tell. But the odds are definitely much higher than they were 3 years ago, people are not wrong to notice that and point it out.
Status quo bias is ussually correct, and probably will be again; but it's still just a heuristic, you can actually notice things about your environment and reason about whether they undermine it this time.
What, we're not going to get the concentration camps? But I am assured that there will be concentration camps!
I honestly don't understand why the strategy has been to build Trump up as this massive threat with power, influence, and a horde of fanatically devoted followers who will vote for him no matter what. Wouldn't it have been better to insist that he was a has-been, washed-up, useless and incapable? Couldn't do anything while in power, so why vote for him again? Instead, everyone is leaping up on chairs drawing their skirts about their knees shrieking that he's going to be Literally Hitler when he gets back into power in 2024.
Partisanship is at very high levels historically, convincing people not to vote for their party's candidate is a losing battle (and correctly so, the most consequential thing Trump did was appoint Supreme Court justices and that was an astronomically huge win for his base even though literally anyone in his chair with a R by their name would have done the same thing).
The way you win is by driving up turnout for your own base. Which is what the scare tactics are for.
Agree and disagree. I don’t think the right needed huge turnout for Desantis to win. Enough median voters would be turned off by Biden and be fine with Desantis as more of an institutionalist GOP who also bashes a bunch of the left but I don’t think the average voter super cares about trans rights and many are fine with just interpreting them as mentally ill males. But those voters would turn up to vote against Trump.
Trump campaign big turning point was all the charges; before that Desantis was making ground. The charges did two things - 1. Got trump in the news cycle after he was in blackout and 2. Trigger a protect your flank movement with conservatives like myself who rightfully know you can’t abandon a third of your vote.
In the end the left locked in the nomination for Trump who for many seems more unstable than Desantis.
I can see the sense in that narrative, but I don't think it quite lines up with the reality of the modern Republican party.
Trump's popularity among Republicans has been hovering steadily in the 75%-85% range for years, Desantis never got above 65%.
Maybe Democrats could have socially engineered Republican's loyalties by continuing to ignore Trump and acting really scared of Desnatis, but that's giving them a lot of credit to be able to control their opponent's actions. I doubt it would have worked.
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