Sunday, July 18, 2021

Are we doomed for a second Donald Trump term?

 So, scary thought. But the republican base loves Trump. At the recent CPAC conference, he won an easy majority for 2024 choices, with the only other candidate of note being Ron Desantis. The party is very united around him, and many still believe Trump was cheated out of the presidency. 

On the flip side, democratic support of Biden is a lot more tepid, with the numbers quickly declining from his honeymoon period as we enter the period in which we realize nothing is getting done. Normally, when we see trends like this, it spells out bad news for the upcoming 2022 mid terms, and could make 2024 a very close race.

Which brings me to another question, what is 2024 going to look like? It's too early to tell, but odds are, Trump is going to win the republican primary if he's healthy enough to run. Meanwhile Biden will have the power of incumbency if he runs, or we will likely end up with Kamala Haris, as she's being groomed as Biden's soccessor. But, Harris is questionable. No one really likes her, she's being propped up by the DNC in the same way HRC was, and some wonder if she can really beat a republican. Even Biden vs Trump again is scary. As we say, 2020 followed the same trends as 2016, with only a handful of voters really swinging the election either way. It took a global pandemic, and intense hatred for Trump uniting democrats behind Biden, and if morale is lower for dems in 2024, well, we could see 2016 flip back the other way. After all, anyone thinking 2016 was a fluke at this point is delusional. No, the public liked Trump, and it took record turnout on the democratic side just to oust him. And I'm not sure a lot of 2020 voters will be willing to support him again, especially those more marginally attached to the party like me and other progressives and independents. 

This is a nightmare, and is actually what Ive been wanting to avoid. The reason I stanned for Bernie so hard was because I understand the importance of morale in elections. We are in a sensitive moment of party realignment. Elections now will influence American politics over the next 40 years. The reason I went so hard for Bernie was because I understood if the democrats were to sieze the moment and be successful, they would have to unite behind a candidate with a vision, like Bernie. Bernie was never perfect for me, he was just a vehicle to destroy the conservative hegemony and shift the overton window. But the democrats, in pursuing the centrist route, ceded all of the populist energy to Trump, and doubled down on their boring moderate strategy. And now the village idiots in the GOP found their idiot king and practically deify the guy. Now we got half the country willing to fall on their sword for Trump, and a flundering democratic party that will only win elections, kinda, when the GOP really flops. Because no one actually likes the democrats. They tolerate the democrats. 

Was my choice to not vote blue no matter who wrong? I wouldnt even say it was. While I clearly miscalculated the idea that people would actually LIKE trump so much despite him being such a horrifically bad president (I thought they would recoil in horror and move left en masse like I did in 2012), honestly, the failure here is on the dems. If Hillary won, the GOP would have had a stronger argument in 2020 for the dems being bad, and they would've won then. Because the dems would have no morale. Ultimately, it really comes down to that. The dems are hell bent on remaining a boring centrist party no one likes, and they're hell bent on driving others who could propell them to ideological hegemony away, because they refuse to embrace ideas and policies that people actually want. And the GOP is always going to, by comparison, rile up their base and win independents who see the democrats aren't doing anything of note. It's a structural problem related to the party leaderships and demographics that they're pursuing. Even if elections flip here and there it's not gonna change the big trends, it would just cause the same events to happen in a different order. Dems win 2016, then lose in 2020 for the same reasons. And from there things play out similarly. The fact is until thee's a progessive movement with balls, rather it be of the Bernie variety, the Yang variety, or something else that resonates with people, the democrats are just destined to remain the "moon" party, because the party leadership sure as hell isn't willing to fight for anything, rather than remaining in charge and denying others the opportunity to change the country for the better. 

So thanks Hillary, thanks Chuck Schumer, thanks Obama. You blew it. You screwed this generation out of their chance at actually changing american society for the better and dragging us kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Because of you guys, Trump is the kingmaker of the GOP, he has the populist energy, and we never got anywhere, because we get stuck with boring and milquetoast candidates no one actually wants. Unless something changes, we're gonna be stuck doing this for 40 years. The democrats might have won the battle in 2020, but they're losing the war. It's like 1976 all over again. Dems saved their floundering coalition only to blow it in 1980. And while Biden isn't anywhere near as inept as carter, he's not exactly effective either. The effect may be the same. People want action, they don't wanna hear that you can't doo this or can't do that because blah blah blah Manchin, blah blah blah,, parliamentarian. They want action and outside of the child tax credit (aka knock off UBI for kids) and some executive orders, he hasn't done much of note.

That said, I expect 2022 to be a bloodbath for the democrats, with 2024 being a 2020 rematch, with the emergy going the opposite way. This doesn't look good. 

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