With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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Notes -
There are two things in play. One, there's no clear Trump successor who can fully capture the populist appeal as it currently exists. However, there IS a template for it, so we might see someone replicate his style of "say whatever and people won't hold it against me" but not for another 10 years or so. Part of this is his personnel decisions are somewhat unpredictable. So my certainty level on what exactly replaces it is low. Watch his cabinet picks carefully, and their reception, which will be a bellwether for 2028. We probably will see a continuing trend of corporate to politics pivots, to mixed success. For specifics on the other end, I could honestly see a Mark Cuban 2028 campaign. Appeals to working class people and a message in economics is probably here to stay for the next 5-10 years for the GOP, but how well Trump's economy actually does will play a role, because the rhetoric and think-tank support isn't super well defined for Trumponomics at the moment. That kind of "intellectual cover" is often the glue that makes a movement something lasting vs ephemeral (think Reagonomics which had intellectual influence well into the Bush years).
The second thing in play is how the Democrats respond, which determines how contested the middle, moderate, everyman vote is. They have some decent historical DNA for a return to their working class roots and appeal, but have a GIANT millstone around their necks -- the college educated crowd. There's a huge bubble among the college educated that we've seen over the last 10 years. It's (probably) slowly popping especially as Millennials age, and to a lesser extent the younger Gen X, but it's hard to get a sense for how fast that's happening. If the Dems do a better job with the working class, that changes the whole picture quite a lot. But if they stay in liberal la-la land, that leaves a ton of space for the GOP to solidify their gains into the gap.
Edit: removed polling specifics as I need to look at some more crosstabs. Good news for moderates: looking at NBC's "key states" exit polling (includes TX, FL, OH in addition to the swing states) a full and healthy 34% of the electorate say "independent or something else" about their political identity. That's pretty good from a moderate perspective. People themselves are still open despite the strong two-party machine.
Trump looks like a corporate-to-politics pivot, but he is actually a reality TV-to-politics pivot - he was mostly a failure as a businessman, but a once-in-a-generation success playing a businessman on TV. I think it is significant that the only two Republican candidates that the base doesn't regret nominating (i.e. Reagan and Trump) are both actors. The machine that produces Donald Trumps is the machine that produces good conservative movies and TV - and someone needs to build it.
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The thing about politics is that when a well-liked public figure enters the arena, the arena almost always win.
Cuban has already lit his reputation on fire with half the country. If he puts his hat in the ring, the scorn will only intensify. I doubt he has what it takes to endure it. Furthermore, he's a lot less informed and well-spoken then he thinks he is. He sounded pretty vacuous on "All In" when he got grilled by David Sachs.
All of which is to say, politics is a tough, tough game. People think they can win at politics because they won at business. Usually they can't.
The best best for the Democrats in 2028 is a free and fair primary process, which they haven't had since at least 2008.
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