Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it…but the devil is in the details.
By the way, I don’t care about what you want to happen, or even what should happen. This thread is about what you think is actually going to happen, and that (unfortunately) includes the possibility that the election process will be messed up so bad that it is put on hold, or even eliminated. You don’t even need to get into who the Democratic candidate will be.
Right now I am leaning towards there not being another Democratic President being elected in the next national election, if it is held at all.
If he’s alive, Trump will win his third term and there will not be another fair national election in the near future. The Supreme Court, just today, ruled that national injunctions are out. Republicans will pass bullshit bills just before elections in every swing state that can’t be dealt with in time to matter. Mid-terms next year will be a dress rehearsal.
They did not launch an authoritarian takeover to hand it back after 4 years when it’s just starting to bear the fruit they really want, not just laying the groundwork.
Further, a still significant portion of the Right is still totally stoked on Faux et al’s propaganda. Which may not always be adulatory of trump himself, but is always, always, 100% blisteringly critical of everything the Ds are or stand for.
A couple nights ago Faux was on in the bar I was attending. This was just after Mamdani won the D primary in NYC. Faux was blathering on that this is proof, proof I tell you, that Hamas controls the Democratic party, and their sole goal as a party is to destroy the USA.
One hell of a lot of Americans listen to that stuff several hours every day. And believe it. And act on their beliefs. That is their version of reality and there is no other.
They will not sit out if told the Democrats Hamas is about to take over their country once and for all.
My bottom line:
Here in the post-truth world, the most important influences on voter behavior are not policies, they are not parties, they are not personalities, nor platforms. They aren’t even former or currently sitting Presidents. They are the hermetic fact-indifferent propaganda mouthpieces. Of which Faux is primer inter pares. They control everything; like Rod Serling used to say: “We control the horizontal; we control the …”. But now it’s more like “We control the agenda. We control the narratives. We control the ‘facts’. So we control the populace.”
The Ds need something as loud, as persuasive; something their ever-growing band of adherents will happily listen to 10 hours a day and be mad as hell about all day every day. Or they will lose, and lose bigly. And that’s before we get into any voter suppression or other RW skullduggery.
The only ways the Rs lose 2028 is if they usher in a nuclear war or a severe depression along the lines of 1929.
There will be no 2028 presidential election due to a national emergency/war coincidentally happening at the same time. Trump’s presidency/power grab will be extended until he eventually gets bored and passes it down to one of his sons ad infinitum. Long live the king.
Yeah, this. If the midterms go blue in a landslide, that’s what awaits the Pubbies in the next presidential. UNLESS: they somehow pass laws that negate whatever happened in the midterms. Don’t ask me what that would be, as my crystal ball is broken. OR if they nominate some hopeless goober again. If somehow Trump is allowed to run for a third, that would mean that Obama would also be eligible to run for a third, and I’d pay good money to watch that collision.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. It makes me laugh when I see headlines like “Crockett humilities Trump in Blistering Speech” - stuff like that doesn’t matter anymore. 50% of the population will never, ever hear about it, and if they happen to, it will be Fox, et al., saying “watch Crockett foam at the mouth”. Nothing is going to get through to those voters until things get undeniably bad for them personally. A thousand stories of how it is already bad for “others” won’t make a bit of a difference.
Bannon and his minions are working on a plan that would only apply to Trump. So, only presidents that served two non-consecutive terms or presidents that had an election stolen from them will be eligible for a third term. It will be complete nonsense, but Thomas and Alito will say something like “the 22nd Amendment didn’t apply in the Virginia Territory in 1684, so it’s a violation of state’s rights to enforce it” or some mental gymnastics that are equally as stupid.
Yep. trump is killing the economy, and his lies will catch up with him, just as they did in 2020.
I wasnt. I gave it about 50/50.
Yep, and pundits say the Dems will take the House back. Maybe the senate.
Since trump can still veto anything and the senate may still be red (altho likely less red) it is unlikely the Dems will be able to pass anything they really want.
It’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty. If Trump keeps going the way he is now, he won’t make it to 2026, and that will completely throw everything out of whack.
I have concerns that the 2028 election might not happen, but I think the likelihood of that happening are very low. Still low but more plausible is that the 2026 elections happen but are rigged in a way that causes the GOP candidate to win with like 90% of the popular vote.
I still think that the most likely scenario is that a Democrat wins in 2028, but they have to be careful. I think the best candidate the Democrats have right now is someone who doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, and his name is Pete Buttigieg.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe people will truly start to see how horrible some of the MAGA talking points are in that scenario and be fed up. But I also thought that claiming immigrants eat pets was way beyond the tipping point.
They might be technically elected, but a Democrat will never again be allowed to actually take office as President. Even if the Republicans fail to rig the election, they will simply declare they won anyway and dare anyone to do something about it; the Republicans have figured out that facts and laws don’t matter if you simply ignore them and nothing is willing or able to stop you.
And long before their regime finally collapses from its own self destructiveness or a nuclear war, they’ll have rounded up and killed the Democrats as America transitions fully to fascism. So there won’t be any of them left to win even if elections exist after the collapse.
Cynical pessimism is easy. The countries that have become fully fascist in the past have been ethnically homogenous, which is not a feature of America. Yes, the administration is fighting to subdue the brown-skinned threat, but that is a pretty small fraction of the diversity in the country.
There will be non-trivial opposition to the fascist transition, and it is likely to increase. In other countries, it was more practical to put down the dissidents, but that seems to be somewhat more problematic in the US.
Which is to say that we are looking at the possibility of a second civil war, and it is likely to be much uglier than the one that started 8 score and six years ago. The problem for the administration is that they are facing growing disapproval, and a lot of Americans will be willing to help bring it down – probably more than actually support it. Felon-ONE’s various attempted reichstag fire events will almost certainly be total fuck-ups, each weaker than the last.
Almost half the population, actually. Also women, who are half the population. The main difference being that the fascists can’t simply kill all the women off since they are needed to produce children; so they’ll be reduced to slavery, instead.
As for a civil war, when one side has the world’s most powerful military and nuclear weapons and the other doesn’t, there won’t be much of a war. Just a massacre.
And yes, I do think that the Right would be willing to use nuclear weapons on American cities. Enthusiastically so, in fact. Once the killing gets going I expect they’ll kill off most of California’s population that way.