So how long will The Don be with us?
Nov. 10th, 2020 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteOr more specifically: How long of a shadow will Trump cast over the Republican party? Will the next round of candidates need to seek his blessing when they run for office?
Actually I think by the time 2024 rolls around, Trump's star will be so diminished that Republican candidates will actively contrast themselves with him.
The sticking point being this: Rounding error or no, Trump is a loser now. That is the one - and possibly the only - unforgivable sin for the gatekeepers of the party he crashed five years ago. The confessional prayer of Republicans - the litany they would whisper to each other in dark corners while they pondered the fate of their souls for the last four years - was always "stand by Trump through the madness and we will win, and that's what matters."
With winning denied them, what matters now?
Answer: Winning.
The man lost the popular vote last time, and lost it by a wider margin this time. That's a trend in the wrong direction. Trump wasn't very engaged with politics before office and wasn't very engaged during it. (Showmanship? Absolutely. Politics? Meh.) All signs point to him not being very engaged after it too. The Republican party, meanwhile, will be casting around for someone to turn the numbers around. Someone who can take a bigger bite from that popular vote. Someone who can win "bigly" in fact and not just in rhetoric.
Not so much the case for the voters who followed Trump; the people who really believed in him. What matters to them is more specific. They want the insecurity to go away: Jobs that won't evaporate. Health care that won't bankrupt them or be administered by an incompetent federal bureaucracy. A popular culture that isn't a constant screaming match between "influencers" peddling crap and calling each other racists. Big banks, big pharma, big tech, big government; brought to heel. These are things that can slot comfortably into the Republican party platform and are not owned by Trump.
They aren't owned by the Democrats either. I've been voting Democrat for 20 years, and I care about these issues and would love to see them championed by either party. Sadly, any rebirth of the Republican party that might inspire me to vote for them in the next cycle would still be tethered to the anti-choice religious right. I don't care what great place the Republican bus is headed for; I'm not wiling to throw uncountable numbers of working class women under it to get there. And there are hordes of people in the Republican party who have an equivalent opposite view, about aborted fetuses, so this impasse will remain. The Republican party will build a solid platform for followers of Trump to rally behind, and find a champion for it who isn't coated with the stink of losing, but it still won't be broad enough for enough people in the middle to step onto. And our elections will continue to be swayed by a rounding error, and the Republicans will remain at a disadvantage.
I find it deeply amusing that the party prohibiting abortion is the one shrinking demographically ... but it's not small enough yet for the party to push the religious fundamentalists out from the center of the solar system, and orbit around some less polarizing group. Give it another eight, twelve, maybe even sixteen years. Until then it's going to be secular urbanites against catholic suburbans, forever and ever, amen.
Unless the Republican party really wants to legitimately win. Bigly.
That's the really interesting question for me this time around: If the Republican party dropped the religious right, what new forces would emerge? What would a modern, challenging version of that party look like? I'd really like to find out. ... If I can live that long.
Actually I think by the time 2024 rolls around, Trump's star will be so diminished that Republican candidates will actively contrast themselves with him.
The sticking point being this: Rounding error or no, Trump is a loser now. That is the one - and possibly the only - unforgivable sin for the gatekeepers of the party he crashed five years ago. The confessional prayer of Republicans - the litany they would whisper to each other in dark corners while they pondered the fate of their souls for the last four years - was always "stand by Trump through the madness and we will win, and that's what matters."
With winning denied them, what matters now?
Answer: Winning.
The man lost the popular vote last time, and lost it by a wider margin this time. That's a trend in the wrong direction. Trump wasn't very engaged with politics before office and wasn't very engaged during it. (Showmanship? Absolutely. Politics? Meh.) All signs point to him not being very engaged after it too. The Republican party, meanwhile, will be casting around for someone to turn the numbers around. Someone who can take a bigger bite from that popular vote. Someone who can win "bigly" in fact and not just in rhetoric.
Not so much the case for the voters who followed Trump; the people who really believed in him. What matters to them is more specific. They want the insecurity to go away: Jobs that won't evaporate. Health care that won't bankrupt them or be administered by an incompetent federal bureaucracy. A popular culture that isn't a constant screaming match between "influencers" peddling crap and calling each other racists. Big banks, big pharma, big tech, big government; brought to heel. These are things that can slot comfortably into the Republican party platform and are not owned by Trump.
They aren't owned by the Democrats either. I've been voting Democrat for 20 years, and I care about these issues and would love to see them championed by either party. Sadly, any rebirth of the Republican party that might inspire me to vote for them in the next cycle would still be tethered to the anti-choice religious right. I don't care what great place the Republican bus is headed for; I'm not wiling to throw uncountable numbers of working class women under it to get there. And there are hordes of people in the Republican party who have an equivalent opposite view, about aborted fetuses, so this impasse will remain. The Republican party will build a solid platform for followers of Trump to rally behind, and find a champion for it who isn't coated with the stink of losing, but it still won't be broad enough for enough people in the middle to step onto. And our elections will continue to be swayed by a rounding error, and the Republicans will remain at a disadvantage.
I find it deeply amusing that the party prohibiting abortion is the one shrinking demographically ... but it's not small enough yet for the party to push the religious fundamentalists out from the center of the solar system, and orbit around some less polarizing group. Give it another eight, twelve, maybe even sixteen years. Until then it's going to be secular urbanites against catholic suburbans, forever and ever, amen.
Unless the Republican party really wants to legitimately win. Bigly.
That's the really interesting question for me this time around: If the Republican party dropped the religious right, what new forces would emerge? What would a modern, challenging version of that party look like? I'd really like to find out. ... If I can live that long.
