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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28212 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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Trump is not the driver of this sentiment, he is just the only one willing to harness the latent desires of the electorate.

But who else can? J.D. Vance? Seems kinda unlikely. Desantis? Tried once, failed... maybe he could succeed without Trump as opposition, but it seems doubtful. What the Democrats hope is not that the GOP goes back to pre-Trump, but that their base basically dries up and blows away, becoming an unaffiliated and impotently dissatisfied group who can be ignored electorally. The GOP keeps the neocon remnants that haven't gone over to the Democrats, plus a few paleocons and business republicans who aren't neocons, and as a result is so small that it never is able to mount a serious challenge again.

I mean it’s not necessarily going to be a Return To PreTrump. Somebody will take the crown simply because the sentiment precedes Trump and will be around without him. The MAGA crowd has now tasted real power, if you think they’re going to allow this moment to fade without any significant victories, you’re mistaken. And with that power available, someone (probably someone anointed by Trump himself) will take the cause and run with it.

I guess the question is how many MAGA presidents would have to lose in a row before they gave up?

But who else can?

Vance, DeSantis, Abbott, and Scott are the obvious candidates that spring to mind, and I wouldn't rule out Kushner or Don Jr. either. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans also have a reasonably deep bench of young-ish state level officials of which i expect at least a couple to ready for promotion to the national stage within the next 4 years.

Recall that no one outside of Florida had even heard of DeSantis prior to 2016. (Sure he'd been a state rep. since 2012 but how many people know who thier own state rep. is much less who anyone else's is?)

Scott

Which Scott?

Alexander, of course. By 2028, his time in California will have tipped him over the edge.

He would never go into politics, lol. I'd eat my hat!

You can have your own views on the Republican bench, and I'll say as a Democrat, in theory, the GOP has plenty of possible statewide elected officials.

But just in the swing states, the Democrat's will have Rueben Gallego, Roy Cooper, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Stein and that's not getting into somebody like Wes Moore in Maryland. Now, I'm sure you likely don't like anybody I Just listed but those people are all statewide elected officials who have won or in the case of Gallego, will have won solidly in swing states.

Obama was a first term senator but he had unique magic. I’m not sure that Gallego is the same way. Cooper is a red state democrat who for that reason doesn’t have a progressive record to run on; this probably makes him a better national candidate, but seems likely to cause problems in a democrat primary. Shapiro and Whitmer are actual possibilities, although Whitmer is uniquely polarizing and Shapiro is likely to cause some issues with the Muslim vote.

I maintain that the top three Republican candidates by default going into 2028 are Abbott, Desantis, and Hawley. It’s possible Vance makes it onto the list, but it’d require a pretty good four years for him. I’d point to Cruz and Youngkin to round out my top five instead.

If Trump wins and there are a decent four years then it would seem that Vance is likely a shoe in for the nominee. He would be endorsed by a popular two term Republican president. I could see him making RDS the VP.

Out of your list, I think only Shapiro and Moore are actual national possibilities. The rest are some variation of Blue Scott Walkers or nobodies whose current media attention is pretty much an in-kind campaign contribution.

Shapiro makes sense but makes Michigan perhaps easily red.

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