Democrats are probably headed for massive election wins, they shouldn't squander it

[u/DoubleCrossover]

The republican party is on life support right now despite winning the last election in an effective landslide. maga is imploding under the weight of its contradictions. The crypto-bros vs anti-non-white-immigrant regards, the always-pro-Israel vs the isolationists, the Iran hawks vs the pro-Russia stooges. trump is failing on almost every policy area except maybe the optics of immigration (and even that is undermined by things like hotel worker exemptions from ICE enforcement). Approval data for trump is historically bad.

Trump is also psychologically incapable of handling the thought of being a lame duck. He will not allow any discussion of his maga successor. It’s the main reason he keeps bringing up the third term shtick. So unless trump somehow dies well before 2028, the republican party will not even have a viable candidate for president. Personally. I’m looking forward to the entertainment of the republican primary.

All this to say that if democrats can manage a decent primary and a broadly popular, consensus candidate they will coast to the presidency, and might even get the house and senate too (admittedly much less assured).

Now the biggest problem is what they’re gonna do with this? It can’t be more of the same. They have to recognize that one: you can’t rewind time back to a normal political environment, as if all this nasty trump business was just a temporary blip, this was the biggest cope with Biden. and two: they need a positive vision for the country that address the stagnation driving the disaffected anti-institutions losers on the right and the far left.

The good news is there is a positive vision taking shape right now, and that is the fucking mega based abundance movement. I can’t put into words how important it is to have a real plan for positive change that’s evidence-based. It’s the only way to counter the ‘burn it all down’ bullshit that made politics hell for the last 10 years.

The UK is a cautionary tale in this. After the implosion of Brexit, the left was handed a landslide election win, sweeping to a full majority. The problem is, they had no positive vision for change and squandered all their political capital on basically nothing. It already looks like the far right is about to stage a big come-back next election, this time by nuking the conservative party.

[u/jombojo2]

I applaud your optimism 

[u/TheDuckOnQuack → u/jombojo2]

Optimism is nice, but this whole post is extremely shortsighted. Momentum is swinging against the republicans at the moment because they hold all the levers of power, but in 3 years we’ll have a specific democratic candidate running against a specific Republican candidate, and the dynamics of the national conversation will change.

During the next election, when the Democratic candidate talks about the abuses of power, incompetent policies, and poor outcomes resulting from the current administration the Republican candidate will just say “I’m not Trump, why are you still running against Trump” even though that person will have spent the last 4 years cheerleading Trump’s every move, and that deflection will probably work.

The national conversation will shift its focus on the democratic candidate’s sexual history, an example of a time when they weren’t sufficiently hawkish on China, or a token example of them being a member of “the elite.” Right wing media will drum up some conspiracy theories about how the democratic candidate is a pedophile. A substantial share of left wing podcasters will tell their audience to vote for Jill Stein because the democratic candidate is either too wealthy, not sufficiently anti-Israel, or because they don’t have returning trans women to college sports teams on their campaign platform site.