I’m going to lay out some alternative outcomes for the US political situation over the next four years, with reasoning. Feel free to weigh in.
Trump is actually still inept. His handlers can’t control him the way they think. He bungles his appointments, and his picks are stymied by legal opposition, resistance inside the government bureacracies, and State opposition. The resulting chaos does get the attention of the American people, and his economic policy does not have the desired improvements that people expect. Midterm elections get a blue wave, and the 2028 goes Dem. There is still a fair amount of damage to the government, and some international repurcussions, especially in Ukraine and Gaza. But the worst outcomes are mitigated, and the world still feels basically normal, if a little shittier.
Trump gets most of what he wants, and the people he gets (first, second, third picks, whatever) execute his intentions. Immigrants are deported at scale, costing billions and with high levels of maliciousness, e.g. the child separation policy. The government bureacracies are stripped, civil servant protections removed, and cronyism and graft are rampant. The economic policy doesn’t do what people expect. Courts side with Trump. Elections continue, but Republican hijinks make Democrats highly disadvantaged. The country is a lot shittier, but gets stuck because the election process is mucked up.
The Christfascists that think they control Trump (Heritage Society, white nationalists, white conservative evangelicals etc) gain power and do actually take control. Hateful thug groups emerge with Presidential sanction, and oppression and violence against LGBTQ, racial minorities, and women rise. The religious faction gains control, and enact laws taking us backwards towards the 1950s. A more theocratic society cracks down in freedoms we currently enjoy, with a complicit Supreme Court.
The Rich Corporate faction under Musk and Vance actually take control. The federal government is vastly downsized, corporations get a lot more control over people, and a oligarchy similar to current Russia under Putin takes over.
Either case of religious nuts or rich oligarchs make enough social and political impacts to stir up resistance. The federal government cracks down, States resist, and we end up in a new Civil War.
Either case of distopic governments take control and things get bad. Social conflicts strengthen, and protests stir violence. A crackdown emerges, and things go the way of the Soviet Union style totalitarian government. Secret police enforcing thought monitoring for political compliance. Democracy in the US is dead.
Either distopia leads to a full scale violent retribution liberals. Politicians like Nancy Pelosi and AOC are the first to be strung up. The violence moves through society, coming after wider and wider targets. Neo-Hitler rules (maybe post Trump), and all of us are toast.
Obviously, I’m painting with some broad brushes. There are likely nuances and variations on these themes.
A lot of people are in some stage of dramatics, expecting some of the worst of these options, or something I haven’t guessed. These scenarios get to my fears about possibilities.
Liklihood, though, is a different story. My panic brain is giving the later scenarios too much credence, while my logic brain says we’ll get one of the first two options. But my panic brain keeps clubbing my logic brain from behind, so it’s in a daze.
Anyway, all of this is to ask, where do you think this country is going in the next four years? What hope do we have, and what bad things are almost certainty? What do you think is hyperbole, and what not taking the bad seriously enough?
Any alternative guesses?
Help me fight my panic brain. Or give it a bigger club to keep hitting my logic brain. Whichever.
Basically 2 but elections are still functional and there is still a backlash.
I think there’s an initial stage of what Trump wants to do that doesn’t really require competence. He can just use executive power on deportations and tariffs, and even if there is court opposition the courts move too slowly to actually constrain him. Basically ditto for using the DOJ for reprisals against people who wronged him, or even to intimidate opposition into compliance. The GOP will figure out the things he needs from congress - tax cuts, appointments and keeping the budget in place. Even if he loses a symbolic legislative fight over something like the wall it won’t hamper him in practice.
As for election subversion it’s tough to say. The voter suppression from the GOP-run states will probably be about the same. Going from that to full on sham elections (or some midpoint where elections become obviously unfair to the point where democrats can’t reasonably compete) I think that would mainly depend on Trump having widespread successful intimidation campaigns and being successful in destroying institutional credibility anywhere where he replaces civil servants with loyalists. I don’t know if he’ll actually try to break things to that extent, and I’m not sure he’ll actualy succeed in that. Also I know it sounds crazy after everything that didn’t tank his political career, but there’s still a universe where he gets to do the tariffs he promised and the economy is so bad that his support goes under 30, which would change a lot about general buy in including from the congressional GOP.
2 & 4-- basically Reaganism but much greater. Agencies neutered and regulations eliminated, lackeys installed, enough deportations to make it seem like Trump is following through. A continuum of right wing propaganda and mocking will not help Democrats in 2026.
Or an unforeseen disaster like Covid will show how inept nor willing he and his installed lackeys are at managing Americans.
A mix of 3, 4, 6, 7. Starting with the corporate/christofascist takeover, ending with a large movement towards the totalitarian/genocidal scenarios. Four years is likely too short for a full playout of the collapse, probably.
A combination of 2, 3 (but only at the statehouse level in certain regions of the country), and maybe 6 (depending on how bad climate-induced natural disasters and economic unrest from deglobalization and deporting crucial elements of the labor force become).
4 is already an effective reality as anyone paying attention to the 2007/8 financial crisis and #Occupy movement can attest to save that corporate oligarchs haven’t actually tried to downsize the government or dismantle bureaucracy because it was far easier to just defang it though legal machinations and lobbying. Frankly, all Elon and Ramaswamy are going to do is further jam up the works while discovering that they can’t actually fire most civil serve]ants without cause (although Congress can defund their agencies and furlough them) and quickly realize that there isn’t US$2T of discretionary spending to cut, and also all the Trumpy veterans are going to do an about face if they actually make real efforts to shut down the Veterans Administration and take away long-standing services and favored policies for military veterans.
There are definitely aspects like crypto where the government hasn’t (yet) bent to the billionaires invested in them, but almost certainly will under Trump.
Marc Andreessen (cofounder of Netscape and since then billionaire VC/grift peddler) went on Rogan and complained about the consumer financial protection bureau strongarming banks to debank conservatives when they literally do the opposite. He and other gop donors are likely expecting Trump to neuter the cfpb and/or use it as a political arm against liberals due to the reality that cfpb has been very effective to this point of punishing actual scammers and Trumps backers are actually against its legitimate function to make their grifts tougher to pull off.
The 3 vote margin in the house means he accomplishes nothing destructive via congress. All the judges appointed to district and appellate courts by Obama and Biden block a lot of his agenda. I think the SCOTUS turns down 99% of cases brought to them.
Meanwhile hopefully the democrats win both houses of congress in 2026 and refuse to confirm any judges in the senate.
On number 4, that is going to have the longest consequences. Mike Johnson will get some of the small government things through. It will be very hard to reverse some, as the Supreme Court will claim the federal gov’t no longer has that power.
lol…I haven’t been here in awhile…
Too busy celebrating the massive mandate from…well…Us!
just keep pontificating and projecting, then patting yourselves on the back…
I’ll tell ya what’s gonna happen, 4 years of massive economic gains, employment, and drastic reduction in inflation.
Not a chance. Even with normal Republicans the result is economic downturn, because their polices are stupid and self destructive for the nation. And Trump is even worse, he consistently ruins everything he touches.
What do you think “massive mandate” means? If you think a 49.9 to 48.3 popular vote differential is a “massive mandate”, well, you might need to do a bit of recalibration.
Best-case realistic outcome: Trump keeps on trumpin’, and remains a deeply polarizing figure, juicing Democratic turnout in downballot elections. Somehow, either he manages to get through four years without a major crisis, or the first one he faces is something that makes him seriously unpopular but doesn’t lend itself to a response that includes retaliation against a particular group or massive infringement of civil liberties. A botched natural disaster response, for example, or the crypto bubble exploding and leading to economic meltdown. Trump and his supporters make vague noises about repealing the 22nd Amendment and running for a third term, but nothing is actually done on this front, and he exits the political stage on January 20, 2029, or perhaps earlier if he has a bona fide health crisis. The next president is either a Democrat or a normal Republican.
Worst-case realistic outcome: Trump and his team of boot-lickers spectacularly botch a crisis in ways that have permanent, lasting consequences for the world, up to and including nuclear annihilation.
Moderately bad realistic outcome: Trump makes genuine dictatorial moves – e.g., trying to order mass arrests of his political “enemies,” declare martial law, or run for a third term in defiance of the Constitution – but it backfires. The guardrails mostly hold, Trump backs off, and then spends a great deal of time whining loudly about how he’s being persecuted. About 40% of the population listens, leading to sporadic incidents of violence of the Charlottesville / J6 variety. Rinse and repeat. Trump’s time in office, or on earth, expires before he can actually do any permanent damage to the system, but that very angry and galvanized 40% is a problem for years to come.
Very bad, but probably unrealistic outcome: Trump actually succeeds in becoming a dictator. (I don’t really think he knows how, and also, he would need the cooperation of far too many people who have a vested interest in the current system, and a lot to lose if he tries and fails.)