The front page above is from one of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing propaganda media properties. I don't know that it means much. MAGA is toothpaste that Trump squeezed out of the tube. It was always there, and now that it's out, it ain't goin' back in. If the MAGA Jacksonian base is just as Trumpy now as it ever was--and is there any reason to think it's not?--then Murdoch will get back in line once the base makes clear that they're not ready to move beyond Trump. The same is true for the Republican lawmakers who hate Trump but fear the MAGA base more. They will still have to deal with the base in the primaries, which means that they will still have to kiss the ring of the MAGA King.
Trump is not going away unless he goes to jail. But will the indictments (if they come) that Trump faces be the nails in his coffin, or will they be incitements in MAGA world that will galvanize MAGA in support for Trump the Martyr? I don't know.
And then there's the DeSantis phenomenon. Is he strong enough to push a weakened Trump off the stage? I don't know that either. He doesn't have the "it" factor that Trump has, and if Trump runs head-to head with DeSantis, Trump will make mincemeat out of him. But DeSantis surprised me in his sound trouncing of Crist, a centrist guy whom Floridians voted in as governor before and who at least, unlike DeSantis, has a personality. But it's hard to make the case that Florida is a bellwether. If I were DeSantis and Trump runs, I'd stay out of the race, let Trump go down in flames, then step in to save the party from complete self-immolation.
In the next two years, unless something really surprising happens in the next week, Kevin McCarthy--or someone worse--will become Speaker of the House, and it will be interesting to see if the crazier Jacksonians like Marjorie Taylor Greene set the agenda. If so, expect endless Trump ass-kissing, expect frivolous investigations, and expect a frivolous impeachment. And we'll be hearing more about Hunter Biden than any but the MAGAiest Americans will have a stomach for.
Will enough sane House Republicans vote No on impeachment if it comes to that? Unlikely. We all saw what happened to those who went against the MAGA mob last time. All the Republicans in the House with a spine have either quit or been voted out.
If the crazy Jacksonians set the GOP agenda in the House, that will almost certainly insure that the Dems will take the House back in '24. Is there any reason to believe Republicans are capable of learning the right lessons from the unpopularity of their fanaticism? Doubt it, but things feel very fluid right now, and who really knows?
Along the lines of what I wrote in my election day post, I'm more worried about how irrationally the MAGA world will react if they see that the Blues keep winning elections in ways that someone in their Facebook feed tells them were rigged by Venezuelan communists using Italian satellites in collusion with the American Deep State. With or without Trump the fundamentals haven't changed. And there's no reason to believe the crazies will now become sane because they didn't win the way they thought they should. Just proves they were right all along.
Will the Dems be able to wash the toothpaste down the drain? I don't think so, but they might be able to push it to the edges of the sink. To do so would require that they distance themselves from the Neoliberalism that Clinton and the DLC branded the party with in the '90s. That's a stain that won't be easy to wash out, even if it no longer represents where most rank-and-file Democrats are--or ever have been.
And then there's the cultural piece. Most everyday Dems are like most everyday Republicans. They're normies who want to be compassionate toward people who are suffering. The Dems are more attentive to the suffering of the historically marginalized, and that's a good thing, but they need to find a way to enact their compassion and their thirst for justice without coming across as virtue-signaling, sanctimonious prigs. They won't always have crazy to run against.