2 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Rajeev's avatar

For probably the only time in my life I can provide some insight to the great Bill Galston.

In this universe there were no circumstances in which the Republican Party would have moved on from Donald Trump. The first impeachment was irrelevant. They watched their capitol building get ransacked and did not care. The only way those Republicans would've voted to impeach Donald Trump was if the punishment was to restore him to his rightful place as President for Life.

Now in an alternate universe quantum mechanically speaking, you would need some sort of Star Trek space rupture or Stargate quantum mirror to check out those universes. But in this universe there is nothing Donald Trump can do that would cause these Republicans to do anything meaningful about it.

Expand full comment
Migs's avatar

I agree with everything you wrote.

I disagree so much with bill. Not his politics. I bet we are pretty close there but his analysis. He treats politics today likes it’s 1995 where the media isn’t heavily siloed and the voters haven’t been brainwashed consistently for 30 years.

We are in a completely different universe where some impeachment didn’t happen or Biden didn’t try to do x or y or z. The Republican Party has been moving in a straight line the last 15 years…and it is accelerating.

Let me give you the craziest counterfactual (I’m not sure this would be true but I have been batting it around): what if Hillary won. Now some would say “god we would have avoided all of this. Republicans would have snapped back to normal. Blah blah blah.” I disagree. I think the Republican Party might be WORSE. 8 years of a black president followed by 4 or 8 years of a woman? My god the backlash in red states would be CRAZY. mtg might look normal ;-)

Expand full comment