"Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II." nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Trump is a classic leader of a reactionary movement. He was elected to stomp in & piss all over the elites, their institutions, their norms, their precious procedures & habits. Yes, GOP elites want the judges & the tax cuts, but the base wants the cruelty & crudeness.
The problem is that reactionary movements are purely destructive. Once they piss all over everything, they have nothing to do but ... find other things to piss on, other enemies. There's nothing TO them but organized resentment. There's no generative project.
That, I think, explains why the Trump coalition is shrinking on the margins. It was a thrill to watch him desecrating everything, making elites 😵, but now what? There's nothing else. Just 4 more years of destroying more stuff, more cruelty & contempt? The show is getting old.
This is the core challenge for the GOP: a party that is purely reactionary, purely destructive, cannot maintain majority support. It must eventually have some positive program, something it wants to *build*. But insofar as the GOP has a positive program, it is wildly unpopular.
So it's facing a choice between doubling down on irrational, illiberal reactionary fury, which has no electoral future, or pivoting to soft plutocracy, which also has no electoral future. Contemporary conservatism is simply ill-suited to the 21st century. Can't hide it forever.
The party's answer to the dilemma, so far, seems to be to rig democracy so they can rule with a shrinking minority. That's what this election is about: foreclosing that option. (Or not.) </fin>
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