That debate was something, huh? I didn't watch it live, I was traveling between time zones and had important beer to drink, but I've since listened to the audio. And oh boy, folks. Oh wow...
This is no great shock. Biden was a sundowning buffoon all through the 2019 primary, securing the nomination less because the party believed in his chances against trump and more to squelch their own Sanders insurgency. He was never going to get better and it's a classic tale of hubris that the Dems started believing their own bullshit about how he was still sharp as a whip. Because only Democrats are dumb enough to lose yet another election to Donald Trump.
But speaking of... I don't see what everyone's so scared off. Donny just sounded so tired. For a performance artist best known for his zingers, this was a mediocre showing at best. Which could also have been predicted - Trump was going soup-brained at his own rallies all through the spring. Even when his word salad has some kind of logic, there's none of the energy. MAGA is a spent force, at least nationally. They can claim Florida and a few other worthless corners of the US, but as an ideological project they're just out of gas.
"But Project 2025!" all the professional class liberals have been saying, all over social media for two weks. The Heritage Foundation's grand plan for a Christian Nationalist Reich. Which sure would be scary, if you don't actually read it. Rick Perlstein did, and quite rightly pointed out how this is not some unprecedented power grab. It is in fact very precedented, and more aspirational than plausible.
Especially, I would argue, because if there's one Republican least likely to deliver on this waffentwerp wishlist it is Donald Trump. The White House from 2017 to 2021 had a few committed ideologues passing through, but it had far more media-obsessed nihilists selling each other multilevel marketing scams. Half those ideologues have abandoned Trump as the fairweather autocrat he proved to be, the other half are in jail. And this was already the B-squad of rightwing wonkery. A second Trump administration isn't even going to have his kids along for the ride.
That's not even getting into the many de facto and de jure barriers to the sorts of sweeping executive overreach Very Concerned People are all very concerned about. Federalism proved a solid check against Trumpism the first time around, now blue state governors will be even more energized in their defiance. Trump's upset victory in 2016 has since cost the GOP two midterms, the Senate, and so many state legislatures that they're weaker than the Libertarian Party in Michigan these days. Michigan! Home of the crackpot militias of the '90s! And if current national polls prove accurate - something I personally believe you could just as well flip a coin over - a Trump re-election would occur alongside a Blue Wave across both the House and Senate. How the fuck's he instituting no-fault divorce then?
What a Trump 2 can do, what he's promised to do far more often than any sops to the anti-abortion crowd, is trade war. A yuge trade war, this time with Europe! And appropriately when taking on the Europeans, it'll be an own-goal: more inflation, less jobs. He won't pull out of NATO - he can't, for various boring treaty reasons - but in turning the US from the de facto leader into the sulky junior partner, Trump will foster a new and emboldened Europe. Which will further diminish US influence and ultimately lead to the real doomsday scenario: no more dollar hegemony.
The US dollar's position as the global reserve currency is the imperial foundation of every creature comfort you still enjoy. It's why the 2009 recession didn't hit as hard as the EU's sovereign debt crisis and it's why you get subsidized oil for your SUV. It's why nobody really cares about the federal deficit, no matter how much they pretendto cry about it on cable news.
But that can all change under Trump 2. The EU and OPEC, tired of these schizophrenic Americans, just go, "Okay, we'll peg petrol to some basket of currencies or some digital bancor" and then it's adios Your American Dream. The deficit will suddenly matter, Treasury Bills will decline in value, and you'll be paying ten bucks a gallon at the pump. Which you deserve, it's 100 degrees in the shade and that's your fault.
And then the president will keel over because he's too damn old. That prediction holds for whichever of these marionetted corpses actually wins in November. That Republicans are in this situation, hitched to a loser echo of the Reagan years, is as poetic as it is funy. That Democrats are so enthralled to their own sclerotic elites, well, an empire's gotta end sometime.
