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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.
Yeah, but the scare tactics also energise the opposition base. If potential voters are seeing "Out of all our possible nominees, Trump is the one that scares the other bunch and they're afraid he's going to do all the policies when he gets into power", then if I am broadly in tune with what Trump is saying, or at the very least I feel that I'm not going to do well if Gavin Newsom becomes president, I'm going to go for Trump instead of Nikki or Vivek or whatever other 'let's pick a nice moderate centrist to cool down partisanship' person is put up.
If you really think Trump is going to End Democracy, then do the tar baby strategy (side note: is that acceptable reference or not, I have no idea what particular bee may be in any Anti-Evil bonnet about outdated references): go "Trump is all washed-up and useless, who we really don't want to see getting the nod is [Billy-Bob]". That throws support behind Billy-Bob and with any luck splits the opposition vote on polling day. At the very least, Billy-Bob should be the lesser of two evils.
Again, I agree this is a sensible type of strategy in general, I just think Trump has had too much of a lead for it to actually change the outcome of the Republican primary.
And if you try it and fail then you've potentially hurt your chances in the General by not activating your own base.
It's a strategic calculation with trade-offs. I think the strategic choice their making has better chances than the one you're proposing, but of course I could be wrong.
If your base has to be activated by a belief that this time for realsies the sky is falling, then you should instead invest in a bunch of cattle-prods to drive them to the voting booth. Cheaper and less wearing on the nerves for the rest of us who have to listen to the hyperventilating.
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