Trump will run in 2024, and one way or another, he'll destroy any semblance of democracy.

Anybody else remember how the only likely Republican candidate for president was Jeb Bush? Right up until about November 2015?

It's early days. Trump is getting no younger. He is gaining no new friends. And he has gone from a joke to an existential threat for half of the country.

Teddy Roosevelt was a more popular president than Trump. He was objectively better. Yet he couldn't secure the Republican nomination in 1912, and lost as a third party candidate.

Yeah, the Republicans don't have anything else going on right now - but that's because they don't have anything else going on. There are definitely Trump die-hards. There will always be Trump die-hards. But theirs is a cult of personality, not of ideology, and that personality is substantially less potent now than it was in 2016.

The way Republicans win is by pointing out how different Democrats are, how other, and how much of a threat they are to the Republican way of life. That's harder and harder to do in an environment where the other side doesn't. This is why Biden ended up winning: he doesn't pick fights.

The Democrats should have gone for the jugular in 2009. Should have annihilated the banks, gutted their leadership, punished the shit out of corporate malfeasance. Woulda smothered the Tea Party in its cradle. Now? Now the Republicans hold all the buzzwords because the Democrats stand for nothing.

I kinda feel that's why they're letting Manchin and Sinema run the table.

I dunno. It's all a fucking mess but I've lost faith that shouting past each other will make things better.