[windowpains]

I like jpow so I’m biased for sure. But when I zoom out, I think the thing some people are missing is the arbitrage aspect. With US politics, we typically get a choice between two people. Often it’s a choice between the lesser evil. Many of Trumps voters were not people who liked Trump, but people who were horrified by Kamala. This means Trump can arbitrage that gap, and do all sorts of disagreeable things as long as he remains the lesser evil to his voters, those disagreeable acts will be ignored come election time. Many Trump voters will be aghast at him weaponizing the courts to chip away at the independence of the fed, but they’ll vote for him and his preferred candidates because they feel the alternative is even worse.

The important implication is that resistance or countering with extremism in the other direction only makes him stronger. To defeat Trump the left will need to move closer to the middle so he has less room for that kind of political arbitrage. Alas emotion seems to be in greater supply than strategic thinking so probably things will get worse before they get better.