Two Roads Will Diverge On November 3rd; The GOP Will Likely Take The Road Of Assholes
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There are two paths. One is a full-throated Trump 2.0 party, where someone rallies Trumpistas together, plays Trumps favorite hits expect Lock her up! to return and grabs the subset of Americans too venal, racist, or indoctrinated to realize how bad Trump has been as supporters. The second is much more interesting. Lets have a look.
The first is the Trumpistas. Matt Gaetz might be positioned to take them. Hes white, male, a complete dithering asshole, and has an extraordinary opinion of himself. Hes willing to say the most absurdly inflammatory things, and has no shame. Perfect to take on Trumps mantle. Hell be 42 in four years, so old enough to seem credible. For his running mate, hed get someone older who isnt Florida Man Makes Good, likely from Texas or Utah. Almost certainly male and evangelical. Hard to pick the Veep, so I wont try. Theres been a lot of chatter about Tucker Carlson, but he just doesnt have a profile outside of Fox News opinion viewers. That doesnt mean he doesnt have the ego to try, but I doubt it. The party has tried a reality TV host with no governing experience, and Carlson has now seen clearly that its actually a hard job and that hes deeply incompetent to do it. He likes his cushy job pushing pillows.
The second are more interesting, and to be desired. The Democratic Party under Obama and Biden in 2008 was quite far right by global democracy standards per the Manifesto Project, an ongoing study of political platforms in elections in democracies. In 2012, they swung back to be merely center-right by global standards. In 2016, the progressive wing of the party led to a barely center-left platform by Clinton. The Democratic Primaries and Bidens actions since he became the presumptive candidate make it clear that they are staying very centrist, probably ending up around where Clinton was four years ago, which is to say in a very rational place thats aligned with empirical reality on climate, health, the economy, and the 21st Century.
The Republicans, by comparison, have remained very far right, among extremist parties in global terms. Trumps taken the subtext of racist and xenophobic dog whistlers and made it explicit, and made the authoritarian tough on crime subtext into full-blown boots on the ground echoes of fascist regimes globally. Gaetz or some other Trump 2.0 could maintain the deeply irrational far-right extremism wing of the party. They would likely lose more ground, but conservative parties globally are drifting further into lockstep with the most anachronistic portions of their bases, the ones still living in the 1980s and dreaming of a TV version of the 1950s. The Conservative Party of Canada certainly did that in the 2019 election and looks set to repeat this mistake as they select a new leader.
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https://cleantechnica.com/2020/07/27/republicans-will-have-two-paths-after-the-blue-wave-one-is-climate-friendly/