by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Our Orange Ding-Dong fascist former president currently inhabits a strange political space. To the average member of the electorate, he’s a washed up former POTUS. The average person is now busy thinking about what they were thinking about before — their kids growing up, etc.
Then there is the MAGA New Right base.
For them, the coup attempt of January 6th is still on going. An entire Lost Cause mythos is being developed around the “stab the back” they experienced with SCOTUS wouldn’t throw the election to Trump. For this small, but passionate subset of the electorate, Trump is either shadow Speaker or shadow POTUS, depending on their talking point of the moment. They are willing to defy any form of logic for the greater good of making it clear that they think “#TrumpWon.”
So, where does that leave us?
Well, a lot depends on how things break politically.
It could be that Cyber Ninjas will do their job and “prove” that Trump “won” Arizona. Either that, in itself, causes a secession crisis this year or it simply causes a longer-term series of events that causes the Right to demand Trump be named Speaker when Republicans inevitably win control of the House. Or the same thing essentially happens, only in January 2025 when a MAGA Congress refuses to certify any election result that doesn’t have Trump on top.
There is, of course, the possibility that Trumpist candidates belly flop in 2022. Then, we get to see the dozen or so would-be autocrats who are scheming around Trump fully embrace the New Right movement and we get either, again, autocracy or civil war.
I guess the point is — either Trump is the one who causes our existential choice of civil war or autocracy, or some other would be autocrat does it.
The Aristocrats!
