Well, there is a way around that (“oh, no, not this again”) - see any of my numerous SDMB posts about how Trump can be elected Vice-President (here is one) in 2028; all the Republicans need now is a Presidential candidate they are convinced would resign pretty much immediately after being sworn in (and, presumably, most people who vote for him would be doing so under the impression that he would resign and Trump would become President, so they are casting de facto votes for Trump for President).
Don’t be too sure about that. It looks like the Republicans will end up with 52 plus the tiebreaker. Aren’t two of the three Senators that voted against “Repeal and Don’t Replace” still in the Senate? It only takes one of the other 50 to be the next John McCain.
Trump is actuarially unlikely to make it to a third term, but a radicalized GOP in control of Congress and a favorable Supreme Court, along with the large number of statehouses effectively controlled by hard-right MAGA sympathizers may make it possible to subvert future elections. This is now a real possibility (and an analogue to the rise of the Nazi Party in post-1932 Germany, for which there are stark parallels to current developments) however much people want to deny that it could happen here. It is happening right now, with the election of a would-be demagogue who has pledged to be a dictator “only on Day One” (as if modern dictators ever voluntarily relinquish their power) and most of the guard rails already removed or soon in the process of being dismantled.
It is already on record that Trump discussed invading Mexico to stop illegal immigrants from reaching the border. In a second term I see this as pretty much guaranteed to happen.
The one thing I am specifically not doing today is making a list of all the crazy stuff the next administration might do.
The list of whatever happens will be fucking scary. It won’t include everything you imagine today, but it will include things you didn’t imagine.
The last Trump admin did some permanent, irretrievable damage, yet we survived it. This one will be the same but more intense. One day at a time is the only way we get through this.
Not everything is going to be OK. But we will make it.
Well, Trump does live on a steady diet of junk food, little sleep, and meanness. What’s left of his brain is crumbling. I doubt that he will last four years.
Vance, though… Shudder. He is rotten, but his brain appears functional, much to my distress.
Well, you can tell the “truth” as much as you like, but I just don’t see the point in just prognosticating the worst and letting that circulate and stew. If you think there isn’t any hope, I think it’s respectful to at least say so directly. If you think there is, then it’s more productive to find and work towards achieving it than wallowing in a self-fed cycle of despair (at least in this forum; it’d probably be more appropriate in MS or the Pit).
There is not a lot of hope in the near term that courts, or Congress, or the normals of democratic governance will restrain Trump and his Heritage Foundation backers. In the longer term, these people will fail because they are inept and will succumb to infighting irrespective of external forces. But the notion that the current Republicans will be pressured or shamed into better behavior, or that they will relinquish power and allow actually fair and competitive elections without gerrymandering and media manipulation is just toxic optimism. They’ve been angling to get this kind of control and implement a Project 2025-like platform for decades, and now that they have it they aren’t going to give it up out of some sense of fair play.
Okay, then, we’re dead. There’s nothing to be done. The lives of your children are over now. They will never grow up with happiness, just a long miserable life of fascist tyranny. Who’s buying the cyanide?
If that’s what you believe, then sure, a thread of nothing but posters trading terrifying speculation about the inevitable worst to come and feeding on each other’s despair will create that atmosphere. I just don’t see the point. My brain can do that just fine on its own.
If Trump and his horde of crazies are going to usher in this Brave New World, they’re going to have to develop a level of competence that at no point in the last nine years have they displayed any indication of possessing.
This is not what I said or implied, but the notion that normal political or legislative means of correction or control are going to have any effect over a Trump Administration are just false. They’ll eventually burn themselves out because autocracies do, but in the interim we can’t just rely on legal protections or public shaming to have great efficacy. More affirmative measures will have to be taken to protect the vulnerable and effect changes.
But it isn’t just “Trump and his horde of crazies” this time; it is the Heritage Foundation brain trust (who are “crazy, not stupid”) and other concerted anti-democratic interests like Peter Thiel looking to drive the bus, and they are far more competent at manipulating the public than Kellyanne Conway (who got far more credit for getting lucky than she should have). These are people who are making actual plans to be around after 2028 even if Trump isn’t.
I’ve already explained that that was never the point of this thread, and FWIW is certainly not what I believe. I think the next four years are going to be rough, and depending on how things develop there may be longer-term politicization of institutions like the Supreme Court and the federal civil service.
I must admit that after I started this thread I did have some regrets that it might by amplifying the pessimism we’re all feeling right now, but it seems to have sparked a productive discussion. Reality has to be faced if there’s to be any useful insight into the future. This forum is not supposed to be limited to just good news. The thing about discussing bad news is, among other things, an opportunity to see that it might not be as bad as we fear.
For example, one of my big fears is over the future of Ukraine. Now, I don’t know whether Putin is engaged in political posturing here, but as world leaders rushed to congratulate Trump on his win, Putin was notably one of the last to do so. Russian media doesn’t seem to be particularly ebullient; the sentiment in Russia seems to be that Trump has his own agenda and is not to be trusted. This could all be just the clever political gamesmanship that Putin is known for, but who knows. Meanwhile EU leaders have been meeting to discuss strategies related to bolstering support for Ukraine and to dealing with possible tariffs.
Prognostication is perilously unreliable now. The guy who famously predicted every US presidential election for the last 40 years got this one wrong, and it wasn’t even close.
