Over at National Review, Charles Cooke says Kamala Harris's convention speech was fine but didn't really say anything about what she wants to accomplish as president:
Harris’s Speech Advanced Harris — and Nothing Else Besides
I agree wholeheartedly with the commentators who have suggested that the address was “unthreatening” for swing voters or undecideds. The important question, however, is why was it unthreatening? And the answer is that it was unthreatening because, other than on abortion, where she is already ahead, Harris said nothing of consequence.
....She has become so much of a cipher that even her own supporters cannot tell journalists what she stands for. This may well help her stay ahead in the polls for the next 70 days or so, but it will not help her advance the ball. And in politics, as in football, it is advancing the ball, not possessing it, that is the final aim of the enterprise.
This would all be true if this were an ordinary year. But it's not. Unlike most candidates in most years, Harris has only one real campaign goal: to prevent Donald Trump from winning office. That's it. Democrats are mostly willing to accept that everything else is small beer. Even the Gaza protesters couldn't gin up any enthusiasm for interfering with this singular overriding goal.
Beyond that, what do Democrats want? The honest answer is: nothing much. They're satisfied with any version of ordinary liberal goals—reproductive freedom, civil rights, helping the poor—and are happy to bury their differences in service of keeping Trump very far away from the levers of power.
Moderate Republicans should be delighted by this. The best they can hope for is an outcome that (a) rids their party of Trumpism and (b) doesn't concede much to Democrats in the process. And that's what they're getting. What more could they realistically ask for?
Thank you. All the commentators talking about how we need more detail about Harris policy goals are missing the point. Look at the Biden administration's policies and you already know much of what Harris will pursue. The main task she has is beating Trump and the crazies of the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. After that will be time enough to talk about policies. If Trump wins, the policies you get will be Project 2025 policies. That's reason enough to vote enthusiastically for blue up and down the ballot. Give Dems the White House, a Senate majority, and a House majority and stand back for some real improvements.
Well I was going to comment but I think Toofbew said most of what I was going to say. The only thing I’d add is that Harris and her team, unlike idiotic Dem consultants, understand that the more specific she gets on policy the more lines of attack on her will open up, which could jeopardize the overriding goal of keeping Trump out. The MSM wants this, for a lot of reasons, but this wouldn’t be good for the campaign or its goal (or ultimately for the country). I’ve been delighted to see a Dem campaign that actually understands that the MSM is just another interest group to be managed.
"If Trump wins, the policies you get will be Project 2025 policies."
That is nonsense.
What you will get is Trump's "policies", which can be summarize as "being strong", i.e. suppressing the population (like Putin, Xi and Kim). The "2025 policies" are a distraction balloon (that didn't work so well).
Trump doesn't care about policies. Any of them. He only cares about winning. The people he puts in positions of power do care. Those are the ones we have to be concerned with. If he does fill his administration with Project or Aenda 2025 supporters their policies will become his policies.
" If he does fill..."
But he will not. He will fill the administration with people that will help him "being strong" (some of them unwittingly).
You underestimate the Project 2025 crowd. They are fanatics, ideologues, who will do what it takes to get into power to implement their policies. And all it takes is to flatter TFG, and swear undying loyalty. They are fully willing to do that, whether they worship or despise him.
"You underestimate the Project 2025 crowd."
Until now he outwitted all the right wing fanatics and ideologues. Unless he seriously deteriorate, he will continue to outwit them.
The idea of Trump outwitting anyone made me laugh.
You don't think that what happened?
Otherwise, How come he is in a complete control of the Republican party and related organizations?
I don't think that's what happened. One of the reasons why Trump now dominates the Republican Party is that he outsourced all of the things he doesn't care about. Once he's in office, his incentive to pretend that he cares, namely that acknowledging Project 2025 might hurt his election chances, will be gone, and he'll stop caring and allow the ideologues to do what they want.
"He will fill the administration with people that will help him "being strong" (some of them unwittingly)."
They are the same damn people. Trump did indeed learn a thing or two about how to make the WH do what he wants, but the broader group of would-be autocrats out there learned far more about how to get in Trump's good graces, and that includes the Project 2025 crowd. They are *his people*.
"The '2025 policies' are a distraction balloon"
How do you figure? They're the policies of all the weirdos in Trump's orbit, who would make up his administration. Do you think Trump--the same Trump who mostly watches teevee, rage tweets, and blathers at rallies--would keep them on a tight leash? Or would he let them do whatever they want as long as they keep him buttered up by telling him he's the Bestest and Strongest and Handsomest president ever?
Hell, some of the most significant Project 2025 stuff--like politicizing the bureaucracy--are things that his veep candidate has spoken in favor of and which Trump himself put in motion at the end of his first term. So it's ignorant and foolish to pretend that the Project 2025 agenda isn't the trump admin's
"How do you figure? "
I look at what he did and said before he start campaining, and the things that he says and does even if they clearly doesn't help him to win.Things like:
1) Complementing he Chinese government for shooting people in Tiananmen square.
2) reading Hitler speeches.
3) Complimenting dictators only for "being strong", never for anything else.
4) Talking about "love letters" from/to Kim.
5) Never criticizing dictators even when it is obviously politically useful.
6) Not denying that he is going to be a dictator.
There is more.
He is obviously always been obssessed with "strong" dictators, and the obssession is strong enough that he cannot actually lie about it.
He has been campaigning for more than 10 years (he started few years before 2015), and people pay attention to what he said during this campaigning. But that is all obviously just campiging blurb. Once you ignore it, it is pretty obvious that he wants to be a"strong" dictator, and the rest is noise.
*1) Complimenting the"
Add: until 2016 he didn't think he can become a dictator, and even after he won he didn't know how to go about. But he learned, and this is his last chance, and he will go for it full-steam.
The immunity that the SCOTUS gave him obviously will help.
I think that we are talking past each other. I am certainly not saying that Trump is a normal politician whose policy preferences are worrisome or something--I do not disagree that Trump admires dictators and has a desire for the trappings of such (both in terms of suppressing protests with force and stupid things like tanks in military parades etc.). I just don't think that dismissing Project 2025 as a "distraction" is warranted.
This is especially since a lot of what Project 2025 entails is increasing the strength of the presidency, and so is coincident with moving this country in an autocratic direction. But beyond that, a lot of what's in Project 2025 is stuff that people surrounding Trump (and Trump himself!) have, to varying degrees, indicated they want to seek as a set of policy outcomes for whatever increased WH powers they grab. It's not as if they are simply anti-democracy but neutral on everything else.
I mean, put another way: do you think a Trump-as-autocrat WH is more likely to establish workers' councils and force aristocrats and intellectuals to toil in coal mines and on farms, or more likely to fire experts in the agencies and replace them with flacks while ending the AG's independence, ending birthright citizenship, and memory-holing "climate change"? The policies of the people seeking to wield power do matter.
The answer to your question is:
First, he will do whatever he will feel help to grab full power.
If he reaches a point where he feels he does have full power, he will take policies to annoy some part of the population so he can use his militia or army to suppress it.
He really really really really doesn't care about policies, and really really really really wants to suppress people. See my previous comment for the evidence for that (which you graciously ignored).
Offs, I am not disagreeing with you that he wants to be an autocrat, nor did I "ignore[]" your previous post of evidence for that.
I suppose our disagreement is that you appear to believe that "grab[bing] full power" is some sort of metaphysical thing, whereby Trump would have "power" like as if he were a genie or something. By contrast, I think that a Trump administration would consist of a whole lot of people with policy aims that look a lot like Project 2025, and that, as part of the general project of doing things Trump wants (like looking strong and sticking it to people he doesn't like) they'd also do a lot of that.
But even in your scenario, if Trump had magical dictator powers, if Stephen Miller genuflected before his Throne and asked "Hey boss, I'd like to reroute congressional authorizations from the military to set up a federal police force to deport 'immigrants'--ok by you?" there is zero chance Trump would respond with "Thou shalt not, for I hath Already Achieved Mine Power, and now care not for the sundries of Project 2025."
Specifically about te force to deport immigrants: Trump will use deporting immigrants as an excuse to create a militia that is loyal to him that he can use to suppress the population.
Miller (and others) may think the militia is for deporting immigrants. But he will be just a tool for Trump (as he was until now).
If Trump will find a way to get his loyal militia in a different way, he will not let Miller do it, but currently it seems "deporting immigrants" is what Trump is going to use to get his militia.
Just to show that I didn't invented this in as a response to your message, here where I already said this before:
https://jabberwocking.com/a-realistic-look-at-a-second-trump-term/comment-page-3/#comment-179308
Stop feeding this ridiculous troll.
It occurs to me that some of the right wing’s objectives, the entrenchment of the ‘unitary executive’ theory, the revival of the spoils system, are a) very much in line with Trump’s ambitions; and b) a strong incentive for the RW to severely restrict the franchise, to prevent Democrats/liberals from ever wielding those powers.
It is hard to say how much a Trump Administration would pursue Project 2025. He has distanced himself from them and honestly does not have a terribly policy-related mind. But then, some of those people would be in the administration and pushes them.
What it is GREAT for is terrorizing people into voting for the Dems. It is no accident that Dems are making sure people hear about it, especially the weird/extreme stuff.
I thought last night would have been a great time to announce a big proposal, like universal health care, but maybe smarter folks than me know better.
She's a cipher? I thought she's an evil leftist for price controls. They've gotta get their story straight.
Right, on one hand she's a radical revolutionary slamming the podium with a worn and dog-eared copy of the Communist Manifesto wherever she goes, throwing out names of companies she would nationalize and people she would jail on Day One, and on the other she's some kind of mystery woman who appeared out of nowhere in July, never held political office or gave a speech before, so who knows what she's about?
Well, Joe Biden was simultaneously a criminal mastermind making book by selling his massive influence and directing the prosecutions of his political enemies, and a doddering, senile octogenarian who didn’t know where he was.
Political reporters (and the political junkies like Kevin who read them) care about policy. Average voters. Do. Not. Give. A. Shit.
It doesn't make sense to care about the policies that candididates promise during elections, because they will hardly affect what they will do if elected.
What a candidtae will do if elected is dependent on the character and attitudes of the candidate (and circumstances), and that what voters should care about, and most of them do.
Promises can be indications of character and attitude, but that is all.
I disagree with this. Presidents typically put a lot of effort into doing what they said they are going to do once in office. Even Trump did so. I'm honestly not sure what reality you have been living in.
I have been living in the real world.
You actually pretty much agree with me, because you write that presidents "put a lot of effort into doing what they said" rather than "presidents do what they said."
What the voters need to know what the things the president will put their effort in, and that is determined by character and attitudes. For people that are at least basically honest, what promises they make also depends on character and attitude, so they tend to correlate.
I guess. I think it's just important for people not to think the things politicians and especially presidential candidates say they are going to do is a pretty good predictor of what they set out to do. Whether they succeed may be another matter. But Donald Trump did promise to do a number of things while president that he truly did put a lot of effort into doing.
"I have been living in the real world."
Maybe, but it's not the real world I have been living in.
All of the presidents in my lifetime did a lot of work to live up to their promises. Even Trump. But his abilities and focus were pretty limited. Fortunately.
Advancing the ball isn't the goal; winning is the goal. For someone using football as a metaphor, they should damn well understand that a football game can be won by ways other than "advancing the ball" and that in itself is not the "final enterprise".
Interestingly Walz used the football analogy yesterday and he said they would "advance the ball". And I think in the situation they are in they actually need to that: advance the ball!
It's all a matter of how one uses a metaphor.
Walz talked about being down in the 4th quarter, having to score, and specifically about "us" blocking and tackling for Harris. In this case, he wasn't talking about moving the ball forward; he was talking about grit and perseverance to win.
Did you actually listen to the speech? There was quite a bit of policy. Take foreign policy: she promised to keep helping Ukraine and to maintain and strengthen our traditional alliances, especially NATO. She promised to sustain American military power. She was clear on abortion--not even right wingers can deny that.
Then there was the focus on creating a healthy middle class. On the one hand this is an oldie in US politics. On the other hand we know what this implies policy wise when a Democrat talks about it. She did not need to spell out the details, certainly not in an acceptance speech. We all can write down the list of proposals that follows.
So why does Kevin accept the framing of a conservative over what his own ears have heard?
The key point here is that, even if we grant the Republican framing, the policy specifics just aren’t what people are looking for this cycle. There are absolutely no intraparty disagreements that trump keeping Trump from ever holding office again. Not a damned one. When the authoritarians are at the gate, you either close ranks until they’re dealt with or you eat jackboot.
So yeah, the whole Cipher Kamala thing is flatly stupid (she’s very clearly a median democrat and she has to have learned from Joe’s successes at pushing legislation that all wings of the party could accept), but it also doesn’t matter a whit. Trump can never hold power again, under any circumstances.
As a candidate, 2024 VP Harris is a substantial improvement over 2020 Sen. Harris. She is clearly a fast learner. Joe Biden was just good enough as a candidate to beat TFG, but as a leader needing to work with others to hammer out compromises, he is peerless — whether it is passing bills through a contentious Congress where nominal allies are prima donnas (looking at you, Manchin and Sinema), or bringing the leaders of democracies into agreement on sanctions, which required significant sacrifice by some.
So leaving her policy statements nonspecific leaves her room for negotiation, given that the makeup of Congress is up in the air.
Cooke is one of those learned pundits we are supposed to respect.
I have learned that when someone says, "He/ she didn't say what she would do", what the really mean is, He/She didn't say what I WANTED to hear.
Did National Review comment on Kinzinger's speech? I think the guy is running for president in 2028. He has got the look and he has the curriculum vitae. The thugs couldn't do better. I wonder if he could turn the thugs around.
no way he wins in a republican primary. the party is too far gone.
He could have a good chance in a successor conservative party, should we be so fortunate as to see the GOP burn to the ground.
Or run as an independent with a conservative leaning.
2028 does look too early for him to actually succeed.
After Trump loses in November he's still not going to be gone, and the idiots he's enabled won't be gone for a long time.
And the billionaires who fund the Republican party have been inspired by his great example of how far you can push corruption and still have an impressive number of people who will vote for you, so they will be carefully searching for the next, improved, 'realistic' Donald Trump, and invariably they will find him.
Their organized efforts at corruption are detailed, far-sighted and continual. Karl Rove was trying to destroy Kamala when she first ran for Attorney General of California. Is there anything remotely like this effort to oppose them?
As bad as Trump is, the next Trump is going to be far worse. J.D. Vance seems to be auditioning for the role. His complete about face on Trump indicates his morals and ethics are at best situational.
Maybe I'm naive but I think this is not going to happen. Only Trump can be Trump. There is no other Trump. Remember when everyone was so high on Desantis because he was a Trump who knew how to get stuff done? Yeah nope. I don't understand it but there is something special about Trump that inspires people. There is no one waiting in the wings with that power.
I think that (God willing) if Trump loses, the money folks in the GOP will wake up to the fact that he lost them 4 elections in a row. This will be his last hurrah. Who knows what is next, but it won't be Trump and it won't be anything like Trump. I mean it might be worse, but it will be different.
I think you're both in the right. Trump is sui generis and I used to think that once he was gone, that would be that. But the "movement" or whatever it is will live on. Without the force of the cult leader though it will fade, like any other cult.
That audition isn’t going so well. Whoever ends up being the next god emperor of the chuds, it ain’t gonna be Vance.
Personally, I’m not sure any of the current gaggle of goons around Donold has the weird douchebag hypnotism to truly succeed him. My gut says that after the old windbag finally kicks it, the cult either breaks apart or factionalizes for a few years until some new scumbag we haven’t heard of yet steps up as the new pied piper of shitheels.
Yeah, but does Vance's Mountain Dew schtick connect with the maga crowd?
That's the problem with personality cults--they are hard to transfer. There's a reason that most autocracies in human history have either been hereditary or collapsed with the death of the autocrat. Maybe the Republicans/magats could morph into a soviet-style enduring Party, but--not least given the reality that you become powerful as a Republican by having lots of social media followers--I doubt central bureaucratic control within the Republican apparatus is likely. And neither Trump nor Vance has the skills or inclination to take it there.
"After Trump loses in November he's still not going to be gone"
Yeah, but there ain't too many more tomorrows in Trump's timeline. The reaper is undefeated, and octogenarians are his speciality.
????????????
I try to avoid any video/audio of Donny because that whinging, petulant voice of his drives me to violence, but I was intrigued by the clip of Fox needing to cut him off because he rambled on. I just could not get over how much older and weaker he’s sounding these days. Still, he’s such a bastard that he’ll probably live into his 90s on sheer spite.
While I agree about there not being too many tomorrows in Trumps timeline - this thought brings up another question
Lets assume Trump wins
Who succeeds him as Chief Power broker for the GOP? Nobody I've seen has the "star power" he has
Rubio? No
Rick Scott? Hell no
Nikki Haley? Maybe but ass kissing isn't becoming of her
Ron DeSantis? Too Gruff. And FLorida residents are really upset about insurance rates
The GOP bench is very shallow - whereas the dem bench seems deeper
I firmly believe Trump dies before his term ends if he gets re-elected. This then throws the GOP into total chaos. There are way too many claws out for Vance now - he just doesn't have the support he would need
Elon Musk.
But, aside from him, the billionaires play the long game. They won't be cultivating someone for now, they'll be cultivating people for 10, 15 or 20 years from now.
That's probably the only way he leaves. I don't see anyone with the chops to push him off the stage. It would not surprise me one bit if 4 years from now it's the same matchup.
It will take reversing Citizens United, plus a confiscatory estate tax, and a steeply progressive wealth tax. I’m persuaded of this, not by Marxist professors, but by the Kochs, the Uihleins, the Adelsons, Bill Ackman, Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon …
That is exactly what we need.
Got it in one. Why don't more people get this? It's obvious our betters still haven't gotten over the shock of stagflation and the power of us rude mechanicals having some say in the crumbs that are thrown to us, blindingly so.
WTF! She is running against a guy who last time around had no, zero, nada platform. A guy who promised a new health care plan and a new infrastructure plan in two weeks every week for 4 years. This year he actually has a platform except he categorically denies all knowledge of it. And yet the media largely lets him off the hook and goes after the Democrats. When is the media going to start doing its dam job?
Never. They've been neutered by Trumps constant denigration that they're afraid to level any substantial criticism of him. Apparently that treatment doesn't apply to the Democrats.
He ran on the wall, being generally meaner to undocumented immigrants, banning Muslims, outlawing abortion, cutting taxes, repealing Obamacare, and standing up to the big corporations who are exporting jobs overseas. In own way he pushed to do all of these things and accomplished several of them. I'm not giving him any credit by saying so, but we need to keep up with current events here.
Oh Kevin. What more could so-called moderate Republicans ask for?
Only a not-Democrat, because any Democrat is at best status quo for them. They want the world.
Bingo. There are virtually zero truly moderate Republicans left these days. Most of the ones still posturing as moderates are actually fairly hard-right conservatives who have idiosyncratic reasons for hating Trump. And most of those are too feckless to let that hatred actually supersede their hatred of Democrats and their own ideological fixations.
My one beef with an otherwise excellent speech, and actually the convention as a whole, is the radical takeover of the Supreme court and their corrupt grab for power in order to advance the right wing agenda was largely ignored. Yes, defeating Trump is paramount, but if the Democrats do hold the Senate and take the house, they will be expected to accomplish things and that probably won't happen with the current court in place. Of the various strategies to reign in the fash 6, expanding the court is probably the only thing that would be effective immediately, but that's a huge push in what will be a closely divided Senate, and so you have to start working on it now. Next to Trump, it is by far the next biggest problem Democrats face.
DC statehood would also be nice and could be accomplished with an act of Congress
Agreed. If the Dems were to play hardball and maximize any advantage available to them, DC statehood is the way to go. It would deliver two reliably blue senators for at least a generation.
It has the additional benefit of being the right thing to do if one cares about democracy.
The critical question is whether talking about SCOTUS (or DC statehood) helps or not in winning against Trump. The Democrats presumably believe it would't help.
Also, keep ‘em guessing. Wouldn’t put it past this Court to launch a preemptive strike.
Cooke's claim that Harris stands for nothing is completely absurd, because in the first place she has simply taken on most of the objectives and stances of the Biden administration. These have been reported in the media to some extent, although until recently the media would rather talk about how old Biden is.
But more importantly she stands for a great number of policies and attitudes that Democrats have always stood for. Many of these were explicitly stated by speakers at the convention, and contrasted in detail with the current attitudes of Trump and Republicans. I guess Cooke must be deaf if didn't hear these things.
If Cooke was complaining about a lack of very detailed economic policies and plans, obviously most of these are continuations of the Biden administration policies and don't need to be repeated. Trump and Republicans have opposed many of Harris's actual proposals, falsely calling them "communism".
Could Cooke list what Trump stands for? Most of it is personal plans for revenge or things that make no sense whatsoever. Trump's rhetoric is heavy on racist dog-whistles, so obviously he stands for racism, but Cooke is not going to admit that. Racism and ostensible religiosity are Trump's main stances - the rest of what he claims is lies and nonsense.
On the whole Cooke is carrying on the usual and current strategy of Republicans in characterizing non-whites in particular as non-persons - people who just don't count. The ridiculous claim that Harris has changed her race is another example.
Josh Marshall has an interesting piece up arguing that Harris has made Trump into the incumbent with her as the challenger, running on a campaign message to turn the page. Trump claims that he is still the real president, demands that he be addressed as president, meets with international leaders, and claims the right to that national secrets and presidential documents are his personal property. In Josh's words: "She’s taken his most perverse and vainglorious conceit and turned it into a massive liability".
The Harris campaign sure does seem to be doing a bang up job of exploiting Trump’s many, many, many, many, many personality flaws. And they’re making it look so effortlessly easy that I really have to wonder WTF it has taken until now for somebody to do so.
Stopping Trump and the MAGA movement is the most important thing for this election and the foreseeable future. I'd rather not see what Trump will do with a second term.
Conservative pundits sometimes make occasional valid points, but at present the Heritage Foundation is dedicated to support of Trump, no matter how lacking in facts or logic their arguments may be. Kevin is wasting time in trying to pull anything valid out of this, and in this case he is just factually wrong in agreeing that Harris doesn't stand for specific things.
Who is listening to what Heritage says? Maybe a few "centrist" pundits, but the low-income white people who make up Trump's base are inspired by Trump's racist and religious attitudes, not really anything to do with economics or conservative ideology.
Over the past few years people have often said 'This isn't your father's Republican Party anymore', or words to that effect.
Well, I must not get out enough, because it really snuck up on me, but this past month has proven,
this isn't your father's Democratic party anymore, either.
I've recently been listening to Lindsay Graham's replay of "American Elections: Wicked Game", and (having lived thru it) the recentish Republican party 1960-1996 or so ... was pretty much then, just like it is today. Some of the principles of that time were a little smarter, but the beliefs, not so different. Ronald Reagan ca 1976 would not be at all uncomfortable in Trump's Republican Party.
There was also a liberal Republican wing, which was hated (feeling was mutual), and which has now been exterminated.
What a lot of Republicans probably don't realize is that they themselves have moved on from some of those positions.
The Democratic party? Completely different. LBGTQ? Reproductive rights? Not so much. The 1st was unheard of and the 2nd fringy at best. Just like the Republicans from that era, the Bidens and Pelosis and other survivors of that time have changed enormously. Of course there was also a real conservative Democratic wing that has been completely exterminated, too.
There is simply no way the Democrats of 1970 thru a couple years ago could have replaced their incumbent and turned it completely around like this.
This is completely new.
This just needs to be interpreted as "We need to say something bad about her, quickly, but what" and coming up with the laziest thing available.
What does the National Review stand for anymore? Beyond the obvious fascism?
The DNC convention adopted a party platform a few days ago. It's loaded with concrete policy proposals, like the following:
I don't know how much more detail anyone could want. Harris's position is completely realistic in acknowledging the president can't do a lot about"policy" without the cooperation of Congress, and nobody knows who's going to have the majorities in Congress next year.
I think maybe we’re overthinking the motivations here. Like anyone else in their job, journalists develop habits and routines and get salty when those are disrupted. They’re accustomed to dem campaigns being earnest and boring; they just don’t know what to do with this campaign putting the party back in the Democratic Party. They want to go back to their standard story templates.
I call bullshit. A campaign speech can never be a policy seminar. In a campaign one sets policy goals and Kamala did that Thursday night. Contrary to what most journalists seem to believe any policy discussion beyond that belongs in Congress where the details are fleshed out. Every journalist knows this and yet they clamor for policy details, presumably because they are a good place to find gotcha questions.
I expect that Harris will win the November election, and that Trump will not go quietly. But go he will, and after a couple of years of lawsuits, rallies and maybe some violence in the streets, we'll be rid of him.
Just as the common wisdom has been that Trump did not make people racist, misogynist and stupid -- but merely enabled them to be so -- once he is gone the MAGAs will crawl back under their rocks, having no one to tell them it's OK to unleash their darkest instincts. With that fanatic 20 million voters out of the picture, Republicans will get back to their core business of slashing taxes on rich people, gutting regulations and tearing up the social safety net.
Another demagogue will come along -- Huey Long, Lester Maddox, Donald Trump -- some day, but not right away. Democrats will be taken by surprise, and this whole thing will start all over.
" Democrats will be taken by surprise, .."
How is Democrats being surprised relevant?
It is the Republican that let Trump in by not stopping him when they could.
We know Republicans won't stop the next demagogue. Democrats generally have to clean up after Republicans.