# What Comes After Trump? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [April 7, 2023, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-trump/982335 "2023-04-07T19:52:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-trump/982335/81 "2023-04-19T17:45:51Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But yeah, ‘normal’ politics doesn’t mean going back to the old policies, both for Republicans and Democrats. If both parties got rid of 20% of their fringiest members, they’d both become more ‘moderate’, but ‘moderate’ will be a new equilibrium, not a repeat of the old one. It may skew left, or right. > > … > > So I’m hoping that the Republicans find a new ‘normal’ that is acceptable to the majority of Americans, and the Democrats do the same, and they can get back to debating real policy and having an actually effective government again, rather than the poo-flinging hordes we see in politics in Congress and around the world. > > … > > But now that the hate is flowing, even with him gone I’m worried that both parties will continue their march to the extremes. Sam, you’re making a “both-sides” argument here: that both sides are increasingly radical, moving away from the centre, and the solution is for both parties to dump their fringe elements and move back to the centre. But that’s not supported by political science research into the US party system, and comparing it to parties in other countries. That research shows that the Republican party has been on a steady march away from the centre and to more extremist positions, while the Democratic party is still in roughly the same spot as it was 40 years ago. From an Economist article at the last presidential election: > **[The Republican Party has lurched towards populism and illiberalism](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/31/the-republican-party-has-lurched-towards-populism-and-illiberalism)** > > Its rhetoric now resembles that of Europe’s most extreme parties > [@](#): > > According to [new research](https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data/v-party-dataset/) by the V-Dem Institute, a think-tank based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, Republicans have become more populist and less liberal under Mr Trump’s leadership than at any time in recent history. > … > According to the V-Dem Institute’s metrics, Mr Trump’s party is now more similar to Europe’s most right-wing parties, such as Law and Justice in Poland or Fidesz in Hungary, than to any mainstream political group in western Europe. The Democratic Party has also flirted with populism in recent years—but not nearly to the same extent as the Republicans. And the article has a the chart showing that march to extremism by the Republicans It shows that the Republicans are past the UKIP and National Front (France) and are getting close to AfD (Germany) and Fidesz (Hungary) The Dems, meanwhile, have moved up a bit on the populism axis, but are still bopping around roughly the same spot as the were in the early 80s. [![](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=960,quality=80,format=auto/sites/default/files/20201031_WOC907.png) ](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=960,quality=80,format=auto/sites/default/files/20201031_WOC907.png) And a similar article and chart in the NYT: > **[Opinion | What Happened to America’s Political Center of Gravity? (Published...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html)** > > The Republican Party is farther right than U.K.I.P. and France’s National Rally, according to an analysis of their platforms. Maybe this is an example of the Overton window: as the Republicans move to an extreme, that may make the centre move towards that extreme, even if the Dems haven’t actually moved much. But that’s not the case of the Dems becoming more extreme: it’s that the more extreme Republicans become, the greater they (correctly) perceive the difference is between them and the Democrats. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-trump/982335.md?page=4)