Fundamentally: the Republican vanguard has largely chosen tribe over philosophy. This stands to reason as it's been Mitch McConnell's party free and clear since John Boehner pulled the ripcord and Mitch is purely transactional. Whatever the tribe says is gospel; Sarah Huckabee Sanders is living her best truth and if her best truth doesn't in any way align with objective reality that's because reality has a well-known liberal bias.

The issue for the Republicans is that the message is now the message. You're Republican because you're Republican, not because you believe in anything. Trump's entire political message can be summed up as "own the libs." Paul Ryan got his tax cut and pulled the ripcord and ever since, it's been whatever Stephen Miller and the Federalist Society want because Trump has no central idea beyond "build the wall."

So if you vote Republican what are you voting for? You're probably voting for the fact that you've always voted Republican. You might be voting for tax cuts if you're rich. You might be voting for fear if you watch a lot of Fox News but make no mistake: Fox News primetime is under 2 million viewers. Sure: that's more than watch MSNBC (most of the time) and slightly more than watch CNN (more than half of the time) but it's still one third the audience of Gray's Anatomy. That's the biggest myth of American politics: that people care that much.

So if you're voting Republican, what are you voting for? You just linked to a thinkpiece attempting to reverse engineer the political motivations of the Trumpkin. It's borderline sovietology, a shadow analysis to determine if those missiles in Romania are anti-aircraft or anti-ballistic missile. The motivations are nebulous at best.

But if you're voting Democrat, what are you voting for? Pick a slogan - "end corruption" "no kids in cages" "the rule of law" "medicare for all" "a return to normal" - they're all pithy and immediately relatable. They all have art. They've all been dragged through public debate so much that I fully expect to see the word "BURISMA" in crossword puzzles for the next 20 years.

Trump was a protest vote. It's led to the protest presidency. Vote that way in 2020 and you aren't protesting, you're endorsing. And chances are good your kids and your grandchildren have been giving you plenty enough stink-eye for the past three years that you're ready to sit this one out.