Jonathan Bernstein notes the speculation about how long Donald Trump’s domination of the Republican Party will last:
You can’t shake a stick right now without hitting someone who thinks that outgoing President Donald Trump will dominate Republican politics while President-elect Joe Biden is in office, and will surely be nominated again in 2024. . . .
On one hand … sure, it’s plausible. . . .
On the other hand? I’m with Josh Chafetz, who says that it’s “equally plausible that he really fades.”
Both Bernstein and Chafetz look to Fox News as a key indicator. I agree that keeping Fox on board could be decisive in extending Trump’s influence. But I found this insight regarding a run for the 2024 Republican nomination from an insider — within the extended family, not a political source — to be altogether convincing: Trump will not run again in 2024. Because, as Mary Trump told Chris Cuomo: “He will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again.“
Meanwhile, Amy Walter surveys the election results — where the Republican Party (aside from Trump) did very well — and sees continuing polarization, mistrust, and disillusionment as precluding any bipartisan cooperation in our future.
In the past, when I was asked what it would take to break the partisanship and gridlock in Washington, I said I thought it was going to take something truly horrible happening. Like a war. Or a Great Depression type of economic collapse. But, here we are, almost a year into the worst pandemic this country has seen in 100 years, and this crisis, instead of bringing us together, has become yet another one which divides us. And, even as we flirt with a dangerous descent into a deadly third wave of the virus this winter, those divisions are likely to remain. This is one time when I hope that I will be proven wrong. But, I fear that I won’t be.
So do I.
Going back many months, watching the pandemic rage throughout the country on Trump’s watch, even as I realized we live in a deeply polarized country, I was convinced that Trump would pay a price with his base for his disastrous mismanagement of the coronavirus.
Headline after headline, day after day revealed his callous indifference — which continues apace. A report from today’s Washington Post (“More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel”) illustrates his ongoing failure to defeat the virus, with Trump’s rallies and White House events serving as superspreader events.
Masks and social distancing have been rejected — never mind the consequences. And contract tracing? The White House doesn’t even inform vulnerable staff members of outbreaks: “People present at Wednesday night’s campaign party in the East Room who were around Meadows, Lewandowski and other now-sick staffers say they have not been contacted by the White House.”
Yet the base stuck with him — 71 million strong. Isn’t that a testament to polarization?
Ezra Klein, who wrote a book about polarization, sees the problem as a lack of small-d democratic accountability. He observes that the traditional model of politics has gone belly-up:
Because — in an era when Democrats are concentrated in densely populated urban areas, and Republicans dominate rural areas — the Electoral College, the U.S. Senate, gerrymandered House and state legislative districts, and a conservative judiciary, have given the GOP an electoral advantage. “As a result, Democrats and Republicans are operating in what are, functionally, different electoral systems, with very different incentives.”
The Republican Party has become increasingly extreme, yet even as it loses majority support, it flourishes. Klein concludes:
In politics, as in any competition, the teams adopt the strategies the rules demand. America’s political parties are adopting the strategies that their very different electoral positions demand. That has made the Democratic Party a big-tent, center-left coalition that puts an emphasis on pluralistic outreach. And it has let the Republican Party adopt more extreme candidates, dangerous strategies, and unpopular agendas, because it can win most elections even while it’s losing most voters.
(Image: Donald J. Trump on Twitter.)