Mooretoons

Has he really ever left?

I think his return to the campaign trail is bad for politics and the country. But I don’t think it makes things any worse than they’ve been since he became President in the first place, when the worsening can reasonably said to have begun. (Or if the inflection point is really 9/11 or Bush-v-Gore, then let’s say it accelerated with his non-election.) The GOP is devoted to his ideology and wants his followers; if he died of a stroke tomorrow, hacks like DeSantis, Youngkin, and Pence would court them while posing as “safer” iterations to calm the jitters of less unhinged Republicans. DeSantis has already shown he’s willing to go full fascist with his immigrant abduction scheme. Young kin is practicing his dog whistles. Pence would like to bring on a White Christian Nationalism, but he might be too intimidated by the threat of a noose a couple of Januarys ago to be effective for that cause.

The real question is how soon and how effectively the Left, center, and left-of-far-right can motivate voters to take part and contribute to a democratic fight against fascism and to political solutions to social problems that capitalism has created. The Democrats may be fractious, but the party’s real problem has been a leadership traditionally disinterested in engaging youth or ceding more than nominal power to the racial, ethnic, and lgbtq minorities who actually bring them victories when it matters. It’s still a very hierarchical, money driven institution. That’s not changing any time soon.