Taking the long view: Quo vadis, USA?

[Ser Reptitious]

I think this merits a separate thread outside of the day-to-day U.S. Politics thread, especially given that the question posed in the title will inevitably (unfortunately) affect the whole world. 

I don’t live in the U.S. and never have (and don’t ever plan to), yet (as pointed out above) the U.S.’s decisions on things like climate change, pandemic control (or lack thereof), upholding the rule of law, supporting democracies (or instead fascist dictatorships), nuclear war, etc. etc. will impact those of us who never get to cast a vote in any U.S. election all the same.

So (1) where do you see the the U.S. 10 and 20 years from now?

and perhaps what I’m even more interested in is (2) what realistic solution do you see for resolving the current extreme pendulum swing?

My answers:

(1) If nothing fundamentally changes, the Trumpists/Fascists will be firmly in charge (at least federally). They just came off a trial run to overturn democracy, and it went surprisingly well (from their point of view). They just need to weed out a few ‘traitors’ here and there in critically important positions, plus ‘tweak’ the electoral registrations a bit more. And voilá, they’re set! 

The people in the Democratic Party who clearly see the true danger are still too powerless, and Fox News and the rest of the rightwing biosphere will anyway ensure there is enough misinformation out there about who actually is the ‘bad guy’ that needs to be hunted down and eliminated.

(2) Texas seems to once again threatening secession (as it did when Obama won). I know that the (first?) civil war established that no state can secede unilaterally*, but at this point I think letting Texas and some of the other Deep South states go would be the lesser of the two evils (see my otherwise prediction in point 1). With those states gone, it would definitely eliminate the threat of Trumpism/dictatorship from the remaining U.S., which I think at this point needs to be the overriding concern! 

Yes, this will leave unhappy minorities in the other’s territory, but if the split is reasonably amicable enough (i.e. long before things reach civil war level), perhaps an EU-style compromise can be worked out where trade and movement of people is largely unrestricted, meaning that anyone who is feeling repressed (real or imagined) can move, no questions asked.

 

*I’m glad the Union won the first go-around, since the thought of slavery sticking around way beyond the mid-1860s (and possibly even until today *shudder*) is too evil to countenance,  but nowadays the bitterness of the losers seems to seriously threaten to undo everything that has been accomplished since at least the 1960s in ALL of the U.S.! Time, perhaps, to let the most extreme states leave peacefully so that the rest of the union can be saved, before it gets dragged down the road of democratic destruction?

[Altherion]

33 minutes ago, Ser Reptitious said:

So (1) where do you see the the U.S. 10 and 20 years from now?

and perhaps what I’m even more interested in is (2) what realistic solution do you see for resolving the current extreme pendulum swing?

Of course, everything ends eventually and the US might fall apart or be taken over by either left-wing or right-wing extremists, but, most likely, it will still be around in roughly the same form 10-20 years from now and will even be a bit less angry. The thing to remember about extreme polarization is that it has happened several times before and only once has it led to an actual armed conflict -- and even then, the winners did not permanently deprive the losers of political rights. Similarly, there have been many waves of immigration accompanied by rises in nativist sentiment and all of these have eventually faded away as the immigrants were assimilated.

I suspect that given the obvious viability of working from home, we'll see a slight shift away from the most expensive cities as people realize that they don't have to pay the absurd rents and such anymore. We will also see a slight rollback of globalization (at least for a while) as the people in charge realize that making N95 masks or computer chips for cars outside of the country means that should there be a global emergency, you're at the mercy of the places where the products are actually being made. Finally, there will be a new wave of industrial production as "green" technology becomes cost-competitive with the old, polluting alternatives. How much of this will help workers and how much will be offset by an increase in automation is difficult to say.

[Zorral]

Blood.  I see blood.  Nothing else will satisfy the white supremacist frothing hate cult mob.  They are going to drive us all off the cliff in their determination that until they can again beat up, torture, murder and steal the stuff of people who aren't white men without repercussion and call them whatever vile names to their faces and make them bow down on the ground while doing so, their lives are sheer hell not worth living.

[Kalbear]

What is likely to happen is a frog boil.

It's not super likely that we'll see another insurrection attempt like we did at the Federal capitol. But the threat will be ever present. The major issue is that for a variety of reasons the structure of the US heavily favors the GOP at basically all times, and once the GOP is in power it is easier to cement that power for a longer period of time. The Democratic party is not willing to cement their power with asymmetrical changes to the system, so the end result is that Democrats keep the status quo and Republicans end up gaining.

Example: the court system. SCOTUS is a 6-3 conservative majority, one that is unlikely to change any time soon and may last for the next 15 years. This will dramatically affect anything in the US worth, well, anything, and will be there regardless of POTUS or congress. There are plenty of other examples like this - the senate filibuster, gerrymandering in the House, the court system in general, the use of funding in general, the Electoral College, the asymmetry of things like fox news - but the end result is likely the same: a minority governance with largely no real resistance to speak of.

So what I suspect will happen is not blood in the streets. That's bad for business. What I predict will happen is a strong trend towards authoritarian single-party rule similar to outcomes in Hungary and Poland. Press will be marginalized or sometimes phased out entirely aside from certain groups which will be allowed. The internet will be enforced to allow or require certain policies to be displayed. Courts will be even more heavily weighted in the favor of conservatives, and liberal judges will be forced out or retired via senior judge status. Congress will continue to cede more power to executive branches, and the courts will mostly allow it. States which are heavily Democratic will find themselves having to acquiesce to federal requirements or lose funding for various things. The US will likely continue to withdraw from world politics except as something of a bully. The authoritarian values here are not going to be 'repress those who are innocent'; it will be more close to 'coddle those who are guilty and are part of the ingroup'. You will see rampant, open corruption and graft and the government will be used far more openly to fill the banks of the conservative rich elite who are sponsoring things.

Note that I've not said a single thing about Trump; Trump isn't a requirement for these things, and is in some ways a major detriment. Trump's main value is showing the GOP exactly what the public will put up with, and it turns out that's an awful lot. There were a lot of things the GOP was afraid to try - things like naked nepotism, emoluments, businessmen running the US, outright lying repeatedly to the people, even threats of impeachment. Turns out none of that matters that much to most people in the US provided they're not getting hurt personally.  

And by the time we start hitting the really serious emergencies caused by climate and lack of resources and overpopulation, the US  will be happy to tell everyone else to fuck off, build that wall to keep the hordes out, and hunker down, and most everyone will thank the policy makers for it.

[S John]

No state will secede. Eventually I do think that Trump and Trumpism will fade. Things got pretty hairy there, and the partisan divide is as real as ever - but you have to look at the scoreboard.

Trump generated a massive amount of unexpected enthusiasm but conservatives in this country have always been more reliable voters. An important lesson that we should also be taking from this is that Trump also galvanized the typically less reliable voters to come out in droves to defeat him. Places like Georgia have now laid out a playbook for how Dems can be competitive in all sorts of unexpected, traditionally conservative places.

Trump kept touting that 74 million people voted for him and that it is a record of some kind. Great. 81 million voted for Biden. If the Dems can keep most of those 81 million engaged, its goodnight Republican Party in its current form of maximum shittyness. No matter how enthusiastic Trumpers are and no matter how low Republican elected officials are willing to go out of fear of that group, they will tire of losing at the national level and begin to revert back toward the mean.

This is absolutely what McConnell and a lot of other national Republicans are thinking even though most didn’t have the stones to vote for a conviction. Trump brought enthusiasm, yes, Bigly. He also lost the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. He lost them Georgia, for Christ sake. Sure he appointed conservatives to the Supreme Court, but any R President would have done that and McConnell is more responsible for the conservative court majority than anyone.

Trump’s legacy for the Republican Party, eventually, will be one of missed opportunities. A man who couldn’t get out of his own way. I don’t doubt that there are other Republicans out there looking to ride Trump’s coattails or recreate his formula, but tweak it in a way that they don’t flame out as he did - and nobody will be able to do it. You have to acknowledge all the things Trump had going for him - he was an outsider, but one who was also a household name because he’d been in the news and on TV shows for decades, and he has a showman’s personality. I just don’t see anyone recreating the juice that Trump had - and if the Dems can keep their voters engaged the outcome of all this has every chance of being a positive one.

just thought I’d bring that perspective in what I’m sure will be a mostly gloom and doom thread. There will be major challenges ahead, we need climate, infrastructure, and healthcare reform badly and are unlikely to get what we need out of those things even though we are totally capable. But Im not ready to chalk up a descent into authoritarianism as a foregone conclusion. I don’t think it is.

[Altherion]

4 hours ago, Karlbear said:

What I predict will happen is a strong trend towards authoritarian single-party rule similar to outcomes in Hungary and Poland. Press will be marginalized or sometimes phased out entirely aside from certain groups which will be allowed. The internet will be enforced to allow or require certain policies to be displayed.

I have seen the idea of single party rule similar to Hungary mentioned a few times, but I really don't see why people think the US will go this way. It is very much a two-party state and is extremely stable in this configuration. The parties take turns at being in power and the design of the system makes it very difficult for a third party to break in. Of course, it is true that when a party has united control of government (and this happens fairly often over the course of decades), it can, in theory, take measures to keep the other party out of power. For example, despite having the narrowest possible majority in the Senate and a fairly narrow one in the House, the Democrats currently could, if all of them wanted to, abolish the filibuster, pack the courts, engineer reliable Senate seats for themselves by admitting new states made from either existing territories or splitting an existing state into multiple new ones, and so on and so forth. Similarly, Republicans had the chance to do all of these these things in 2016... but neither the Democrats or Republicans are willing to rock the boat in this way. It's a stable, risk-averse system where the rules barely change over time.

Likewise, I don't see much in the current system that suggests the press will change much from what it is now. That is, each of the parties has has its mainstream media and in addition, there is a variety of niche groups of various sizes and persuasions including (but certainly not limited to) Breitbart, The Federalist, Reason, Slate, Jacobin and many others. The mainstream press is mostly owned by a small number of very large corporations and is fairly tightly controlled, but almost nothing is actually censored and stories from the niche sites will migrate to the mainstream media if they're interesting enough.

Basically, I just don't see anything in the US system that leads to a plausible chance of a single-party state.

[Rippounet]

12 hours ago, Ser Reptitious said:

I think this merits a separate thread outside of the day-to-day U.S. Politics thread, especially given that the question posed in the title will inevitably (unfortunately) affect the whole world. 

I don’t live in the U.S. and never have (and don’t ever plan to), yet (as pointed out above) the U.S.’s decisions on things like climate change, pandemic control (or lack thereof), upholding the rule of law, supporting democracies (or instead fascist dictatorships), nuclear war, etc. etc. will impact those of us who never get to cast a vote in any U.S. election all the same.

So (1) where do you see the the U.S. 10 and 20 years from now?

The US will be a rogue state, the main obstacle to collective solution-seeking and promotion of democratic/liberal values around the world.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the US itself will no longer be a "democracy" (perhaps we should say, "republic" ;) ). But quite obviously, it will keep promoting its interests (/the interests of its corporations) first, and given the fact that its economic power will decrease and the attractiveness of its institutional/ideological "model" wane, will be increasingly tempted to rely on its "hard power," i.e. its massive military.
That's not to say that it will necessarily commit to a world war, but I would expect it to go back to instigating numerous "proxy wars," especially since conflicts for resources will multiply in the context of global warming. In other words, a return to the darkest of Cold War realpolitik, except this time the US will barely have any soft power and reliable allies left, which means the brutality of its foreign policy will be cranked up a notch.

And to be clear, from an outsider's perspective, there's little difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. If anything, the historical record shows Republicans can be both highly cynical and surprisingly flexible in their approach to foreign policy (they're less afraid of appearing "soft").

And of course, anyone well-informed knows that there's no solid reason to use the future tense here. The US has been a rogue state for decades now, and is widely considered as a terrorist state and a major source of instability around the world in many (if not most ?) developing countries and intellectual circles.

The only real difference to be expected is of tone rather than substance. As the effects of climate change intensify, one can expect the US to drop any kind of pretense and openly defend its interests in the most aggressive possible way. For instance, I would totally not rule out nuclear blackmail and limited nuclear strikes (the Republicans have been pushing for the development of "usable" "small-scale" nuclear weapons for decades).

From an outsider's perspective, one can only hope American liberals can prevent the worst excesses. In the long run though, I expect they won't. As our planet starts burning (or close enough), everyone will "rally-round-the-flag" and adhere to some version of "America First." All nations will fall back to their own version of exceptionalism to attempt to shield their citizens from the worst (i.e. thirst and starvation).
It's just that the US will have the biggest military, so will be the greatest threat to everyone else.

[Ser Reptitious]

11 hours ago, S John said:

just thought I’d bring that perspective in what I’m sure will be a mostly gloom and doom thread. There will be major challenges ahead, we need climate, infrastructure, and healthcare reform badly and are unlikely to get what we need out of those things even though we are totally capable. But Im not ready to chalk up a descent into authoritarianism as a foregone conclusion. I don’t think it is.

I wouldn't consider it a foregone conclusion either, but the danger of it happening is very real, and that alone is already deeply frightening. Hence the need to take action before it's too late. 

I appreciate your more optimistic outlook and hope you will turn out to be right. But the U.S. truly stands at a crossroads at the moment, and Americans wanting to avoid a slide into authoritarianism can't be complacent and expect things to somehow automatically sort themselves out. You will have to fight like hell to preserve the democracy you have. The fact that it lasted two and a half centuries so far is no guarantee in itself that it will continue. Trump was the first to so brazenly (and thankfully rather incompetently) test the system, and it barely held. Just him somehow getting re-elected to another four year term probably would have been enough to destroy it.

[tzanth]

I've lived in the US most of my life and I've never understood what keeps this country together. Why in the world should someone from a place like California be in the same country with folks from places like Alabama or Mississippi? There is no shared culture, sense of value, cuisine, or really anything else that usually makes up a nation. And to make it worse, the bigger and more wealthy states are actively marginalized by the country's completely byzantine, outdated, and impossible to change political system. I guess the only reason for a state to stick around is to have free access to the world's largest consumer market, but I don't see that bonus outweighing all the many negatives over the long run. I'm not sure about the next 10 or 20 years, but I don't think the US will still be around in it's current form by 2050. 

[maarsen]

2 minutes ago, tzanth said:

I've lived in the US most of my life and I've never understood what keeps this country together. Why in the world should someone from a place like California be in the same country with folks from places like Alabama or Mississippi? There is no shared culture, sense of value, cuisine, or really anything else that usually makes up a nation. And to make it worse, the bigger and more wealthy states are actively marginalized by the country's completely byzantine, outdated, and impossible to change political system. I guess the only reason for a state to stick around is to have free access to the world's largest consumer market, but I don't see that bonus outweighing all the many negatives over the long run. I'm not sure about the next 10 or 20 years, but I don't think the US will still be around in it's current form by 2050. 

Yes one could divide up the US into the New England Eastern Seaboard group and the west coast could form Cascadia, leaving the central part of the US to fend for itself but even the hint of this happening will tend to force the Alabamas and Mississippis to confront the stark reality that they are less than nothing without someone else to help pay the bills.

Here in Canada, we had the same issue with some provinces feeling hard done by, and wanting to try and go it alone. The reality of the situation is that most do not have the population or the tax base to stand alone and rely on the rich provinces to help pay the bills. Once this dawns on them, reality asserts itself and the muttering about separation dies down. It is like having a truculent teenager in the house who threatens to move out and live on his own rather than follow the rules, and then is surprised to see Mom and Dad holding the door open for him with a big smile.

[Zorral]

5 hours ago, Ser Reptitious said:

fight like hell

Fight!  He said fight!  Fight like hell!  Proving fight means nada!  Ha!

[Winterfell is Burning]

On 2/15/2021 at 7:26 PM, Ser Reptitious said:

I think this merits a separate thread outside of the day-to-day U.S. Politics thread, especially given that the question posed in the title will inevitably (unfortunately) affect the whole world. 

I don’t live in the U.S. and never have (and don’t ever plan to), yet (as pointed out above) the U.S.’s decisions on things like climate change, pandemic control (or lack thereof), upholding the rule of law, supporting democracies (or instead fascist dictatorships), nuclear war, etc. etc. will impact those of us who never get to cast a vote in any U.S. election all the same.

So (1) where do you see the the U.S. 10 and 20 years from now?

and perhaps what I’m even more interested in is (2) what realistic solution do you see for resolving the current extreme pendulum swing?

My answers:

(1) If nothing fundamentally changes, the Trumpists/Fascists will be firmly in charge (at least federally). They just came off a trial run to overturn democracy, and it went surprisingly well (from their point of view). They just need to weed out a few ‘traitors’ here and there in critically important positions, plus ‘tweak’ the electoral registrations a bit more. And voilá, they’re set! 

The people in the Democratic Party who clearly see the true danger are still too powerless, and Fox News and the rest of the rightwing biosphere will anyway ensure there is enough misinformation out there about who actually is the ‘bad guy’ that needs to be hunted down and eliminated.

(2) Texas seems to once again threatening secession (as it did when Obama won). I know that the (first?) civil war established that no state can secede unilaterally*, but at this point I think letting Texas and some of the other Deep South states go would be the lesser of the two evils (see my otherwise prediction in point 1). With those states gone, it would definitely eliminate the threat of Trumpism/dictatorship from the remaining U.S., which I think at this point needs to be the overriding concern! 

Yes, this will leave unhappy minorities in the other’s territory, but if the split is reasonably amicable enough (i.e. long before things reach civil war level), perhaps an EU-style compromise can be worked out where trade and movement of people is largely unrestricted, meaning that anyone who is feeling repressed (real or imagined) can move, no questions asked.

 

*I’m glad the Union won the first go-around, since the thought of slavery sticking around way beyond the mid-1860s (and possibly even until today *shudder*) is too evil to countenance,  but nowadays the bitterness of the losers seems to seriously threaten to undo everything that has been accomplished since at least the 1960s in ALL of the U.S.! Time, perhaps, to let the most extreme states leave peacefully so that the rest of the union can be saved, before it gets dragged down the road of democratic destruction?

Regarding point 2- this "secession" thing is just sour grapes from some small groups- Texas in fact is on the path of becoming a swing state, and probably will see the Democrats winning it at some point in the next few elections, maybe even the next one (Dubya won it by more than 30 points, Romney ny nearly 20, Trump by 5).

The future of the US depends a lot on whether the Republican party can remain one party or will split, with Trumpists or more moderate ones leaving. If the latter happens, it will be Democratic dominance, winning all but the most conservative states.

If the former happens, then there's still a scenario in which Trump backers easily win primaries, but get trounced in general elections in most places.

Mind you, there's still a scenario in which Republicans get back in power if they don't split- a weak economy and presidential candidate for the Democrats might still will the popular vote, but lose EC, thought that likely won't happen in 2024 (economy recovery due to vaccine availability will tend to favor incumbents not just in the US, but worldwide). And if Trumptards can't pull a coup being in power and having the Senate, they won't do it next time being out of power.

So, the most likely scenario seems to be the Democrats continuing to win for years because of internal division of it's opponents and being out of touch with the general population's ideas- and that happened before between 1932 and 1968 (with only Eisenhower winning, but he would also win if he ran as a democrat, and differed significantly from some of the standard Republican views of the time) or Democrats barely winning between 1860 and 1932, and even then often when the Republican party was divided itself).

But there is a bigger than zero chance of a Republican winning by only taking the EC, and then using majorities in Congress to try a coup, so of course there's still bound to be a lot of tension in the next years, or maybe decades.

I think nearly all the problems of the US derive from it's age- it was not built for the people to actually have a voice, because even what it built in 1789 was already far more democratic and open than most places. By contrast, democracies that were designed or rebuilt after WW2 already had the ideas of full democratic representation for all it's citizens in mind, so something like the Electoral College or rules designed to keep voters out would be unthinkable. .

 

[Ser Reptitious]

@Winterfell is Burning, I hope your overall assessment turns out to be correct. It is certainly possible that things will turn out that way. 

Personally I doubt a true split will happen in the Republican party. Rather, it will continue to radicalize, and those (few) with a conscience who can't stand it any longer will leave. A big problem will be the very real threat of violence towards "enemies" and especially perceived "traitors". The GOP will become more and more like a mafia. In theory that should indeed make them unelectable, but the overall balance is close enough that with their willingness to shamelessly cheat in whatever way it takes, they very well might still pull off some wins here and there. They don't need the trifecta (although if they ever somehow do get that in the next decade or so, U.S. democracy is probably doomed), but just controlling a lot of states and gaining control of the House or the Senate (or both) could seriously gum up the works. 

[Winterfell is Burning]

The problem with radicalizing is that if you keep losing, eventually most people will walk away, either forcing your party to move closer to the center or going to the fringe and being replaced by a new one. What makes the US democracy unique is that since the 1850's, the parties always went with the former and kept existing.

And Trump already lost his mystique to many followers because he lost, is now out of social media (much harder to keep your following interested), and his popularity is in all-time low when leaving office.  Demographics, lack of social media for the main leader, and some donors walking away don't favor Republicans at least in the short-medium term. In the long term (if not sooner), Trump is dead, and it's unclear what happens to his following, most likely split due to in-fighting.

[Fez]

I think things mostly muddle along for the foreseeable future. Probably slowly getting worse, but maybe getting a bit better here and then. I think Biden is very likely to win re-election in 2024, because incumbents almost always do and because the economy is likely going to be doing gangbusters still in a post-COVID recovery. Which means, if that comes to pass, that regardless of what happens in Congress or in state elections, we'd be in for at least a certain base level of stability for the next 8 years.

Of course, it's what comes next that gets hard to predict. I'd expect Republicans to win the White House in 2028, but the picture of what comes after a party has two terms in the WH isn't as clear as the sample size of presidents winning re-election. If Democrats, presumably Kamala Harris, win in 2028, I think the is probably going to be able to continue muddling along for a while longer. Both because that'd be a sign that enough voters do recognize how fucked the GOP is, and because if that happens, it'd mean Democrats will have had the presidency for 20 out of 24 years. That seems like a long enough time for Republicans to realize they have to make changes to regain power. Also 12 years would be long enough, assuming there's at least a few more times that Democrats control the Senate, to completely re-shape most of the court system. And maybe also regain a majority on the Supreme Court; in 12 years Thomas would be 84, Alito 82, and Roberts 79.

OTOH, if Republicans do win in 2028, all bets are off. I suspect the most likely path is still that the US muddles along; it slides a bit further down the authoritarian path, but doesn't reach the levels of Hungary or Brazil. And certainly doesn't become all-out Q-flavored fascist. But it all depends on who exactly the President is; and how much they owe their political career to the fringe.

In the longer term, I don't think the US is going to do enough about climate change and that has the potential to be an existential threat. However, I remain optimistic enough that technological progress and wealthy self-interest, will be enough to spare most of the country from most of the worst effects. Of course, I don't think we'll do nearly enough to assist the rest of the world, and there's no telling how bad the spillover effects from that might end up being. 

[Winterfell is Burning]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

; it slides a bit further down the authoritarian path, but doesn't reach the levels of Hungary or Brazil.

Speaking as someone living in Brazil, for the many, many (many, many, many...) problems of Bolsonaro's government, it's just non-sense to say it's an authoritarian regime, or comparable to Hungary, and most of this talk about "Brazil is now fascist" is just left-wing hysteria . His methods of keeping in power are the same as previous governments, right or left-wing- bribing Congress with government funds and attempts to stop corruption investigations against everyone to keep them happy, and trying to buy votes with social programs and spending money the government doesn't have. 

In fact, just yesterday the Supreme Court arrested a Bolsonaro-lite Congressman who talked about violence against the SC and it's members, and he hasn't said a single word, because he knows he can't afford this fight, something an authoritarian regime wouldn't ever have to worry. And for all his talk against the press, he did less against them than Lula and Dilma Rousseff, whom for years tried to push for a "social control of the media", which is as Orwellian as it sounds.

There's also the matter that Brazil has two things the US doesn't- popular vote to choose the president, and a second round of voting in which the candidate with the highest rejection usually loses.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

The problem with radicalizing is that if you keep losing, eventually most people will walk away, either forcing your party to move closer to the center or going to the fringe and being replaced by a new one. What makes the US democracy unique is that since the 1850's, the parties always went with the former and kept existing.

Kinda feel like you're eliding a certain even that happened in the 1860s

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

And Trump already lost his mystique to many followers because he lost, is now out of social media (much harder to keep your following interested), and his popularity is in all-time low when leaving office.  Demographics, lack of social media for the main leader, and some donors walking away don't favor Republicans at least in the short-medium term. In the long term (if not sooner), Trump is dead, and it's unclear what happens to his following, most likely split due to in-fighting.

Republican officials are not acting like Trump's lost his mystique. 

[Winterfell is Burning]

2 hours ago, Karlbear said:

Kinda feel like you're eliding a certain even that happened in the 1860s

Republican officials are not acting like Trump's lost his mystique. 

Hardly appropriate to compare this to the Civil War- first, because all it took there was the Democrats to lose one election. Second, there was more regional division- the North was overwhelming pro-Lincoln, but in the South he didn't even run in most states. Meanwhile, every state today has Republican and Democratic areas.

Also, Republican officials might continue to publicly support him, but he lost a good chunk of support since the election- candidates who are not from safe Trump areas have a massive risk of losing if they don't disavow him, and eventually they'll realize that or keep losing. 

[Kalbear]

19 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Hardly appropriate to compare this to the Civil War- first, because all it took there was the Democrats to lose one election. Second, there was more regional division- the North was overwhelming pro-Lincoln, but in the South he didn't even run in most states. Meanwhile, every state today has Republican and Democratic areas.

At the same time, the partisanship was pretty extreme, no? 

19 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Also, Republican officials might continue to publicly support him, but he lost a good chunk of support since the election- candidates who are not from safe Trump areas have a massive risk of losing if they don't disavow him, and eventually they'll realize that or keep losing. 

Citation needed. That might be the case, but there is zero indication of that so far and several indications that the exact opposite is happening. 

2 years is a long time in people's memory. 

[Ser Reptitious]

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Also, Republican officials might continue to publicly support him, but he lost a good chunk of support since the election- candidates who are not from safe Trump areas have a massive risk of losing if they don't disavow him, and eventually they'll realize that or keep losing. 

But again you're overlooking the very real fear of physical violence that such candidates have to face if they cross Trump. This is likely why McConnell and his ilk voted to acquit.

McConnell got about as much use out of Trump as he could. It would have been entirely in character for him to throw Trump to the curb now, especially given the overwhelming evidence of Trump's guilt (and his obvious dislike of McConnell and "establishment" Republicans). And he's not up for re-election for almost 6 years. But I imagine he worries about Trump sending his rabid hounds on him.