I am not so sure about that. The historical precedent is rather the opposite given the two party system.
After the Civil War, and Reconstruction, and the government doing a lot to get Civil Rights done and so on, suppressing the Klan and other radical white terrorists in the South...the Republican Party started splitting and lost interest in enforcing Reconsturction and then in 1876 made the corrupt bargain that led to Jim Crow and the end of the Golden Age of the party's history (which it has never reclaimed since). Closer to our time, Ronald Reagan's landslides in the '80s, followed by H.W. led to 12 years of Republicans in the WH and that led to the Democrats to sell out whatever's left of its New Deal history and go yuppie under Bill Clinton which led to the major crime bills and so on.
If Trump were to take the election again, you might see calls for moderation or going to the center and so on. There were similar calls after 2016 but luckily the opposite happened but even then Biden getting the nomination was partly a result of caution on the part of Dem voters who didn't want to role the dice with Bernie against Trump when Obama's second-in-command was there in the wings. For the left, winning 2020 is quite important to prevent that.
In the long run, the Trump era may ultimately end up being good for the country because it has woken people up from the comforting lie that America's problems have mostly been fixed and that we can all go eat brunch without having to worry about anything. Positions about race, gender, sexuality, economics, the environment, health care, and a range of other issues that would have been dismissed as Marxist lunacy just a decade ago are now largely mainstream among the general public, if not so much the upper echelons of power, and regardless of the outcome of the election we need to continue pushing for reforms because a return to normalcy just isn't possible when America was never normal to begin with.
It's a natural tendency to want to make a silver lining and so on...that somehow this kind of misrule might create a better world and so on...but we shouldn't fall into that kind of trap.
People said in the '70s that Nixon was good for Democracy because the public outcry about his administration and so on made people less trusting of the Presidency...but then 10 years later you had Ronald Reagan whose administration had more criminal indictments than Nixon did and where Nixon resigned over Watergate, Reagan presided after Iran-Contra...and Reagan walked out of the WH and got a successful post-presidency with high approval ratings, every inch the bad guy who won.
What I mean is that it's too early to tell or decide what's gonna happen Post-Trump. The right wing in America has historically doubled or tripled down or quadrupled down when faced with rejection, rebuke, defeat and so on. It's very much "the guy who can't accept no". It doesn't have a lot of history in terms of backing down.
The Cover Contest Weekly Winners ThreadSo much winning!!
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis
“It’s your party and you can cry if you want to.” - Captain Europe
Much depends on the Senate races. If Trump wins, the probability of another impeachment is very high, as is the likelihood that he will try more vigorously than ever to rip the guts from any curb on his power.
If he loses, the institution will jettison him from office, no matter what Erik Prince's mercenaries attempt. However, that will be the opening gun of the far-right militias' next campaign in their war on civilization.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
Obama's administration oversaw Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Protection Bureau (aka Elizabeth Warren's ticket to national fame). An action which put him on the s--t list of America's oligarchs, as did the ACA. Obama did more against the oligarchs than any Prez since LBJ, and his Presidency was considerably more left wing than Bill Clinton's and he took the party to the left, he took Biden to the left.
I will say that people expecting the oligarchy to reform on the Presidential ballot don't really understand how politics work...you can only do that at the party level, at the state level, and so on. To be honest, the real way is for the left to become the oligarchy in turn, but that's a separate thing.
A President, Obama was elected on a moderate platform but gradually moved left throughout his Presidency. President Obama in 2016 probably would not have been impressed by Candidate Barack'08, feeling he was too moderate.
If we look at the 80s in hindsight though, it wasn't so much America being made great again as it was an illusory decade of faux prosperity, with the irresponsible fiscal policies necessary to engineer that unsustainable growth having terrible long term ramifications that we continue to feel to this day. And as hard as the GOP wants to be able to replicate that feat with the same policies nowadays, I don't think they'll be able to pull it off, because the perfect storm of favorable circumstances that made the 80s boom possible are certainly not the conditions we face now.
Yah I agree with you on that, about fighting the oligarchy versus becoming the oligarchy. The problem with any president who actually tackles the issue is that there are growing pains in the process. Obama had to walk a fine line to prevent people from turning against him en masse, because growing pains look an awful lot like failure. Hence - moderation.
Every day is a gift, not a given right.
Yes you can and he did. The massive tax cut was a give away, the placement of corporate cronies in Government was a givemeant for small businesses away. Giving all that PPE money to large corporations and the wealthy without accountability was a give away. Please don't try to say Obama was the same.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
1 civil war, 1 cold war, a few proxy wars, 1 great depression, a couple of recessions and it's still here. No, I think they'll be fine.
december 21st has passed where are my superpowers?
No.
He actually just handed them the cash in a bailout.
Things have been bought and paid for going on "Decades..." now. While the degree to which a President actually pulls the curtain back on that might vary, that they have all been stooges for the same boss doesn't change.