How likely is this scenario for the trajectory of short-term American politics?

[Vittorio]

- Trump wins re-election in the Electoral College in 2020, but the Republicans narrowly lose the Senate in the process.

- A revitalized Congressional Democratic Party sends Trump major economic legislation on spending, welfare and infrastructure; Trump signs off on them, with modifications (e.g. infrastructural legislation must ignore local environmental concerns), not out of principle but to preserve his 'anti-establishment' credentials - possibly even some actual form of Obamacare replacement. The Congressional Republicans are powerless to stop him at this.

- Mike Pence runs (and wins) as a traditional Reaganaut Republican in 2020, on the assumption that the reactionary Keynesianism of Trump's second term was an aberration. But an ill-timed war with Iran in the middle of his first term guarantees his defeat, though Pence probably actively pursues the kinds of electoral meddling that Trump is regularly accused of. This completely and forever discredits the combination of social conservatism and neo-liberalism that dominated the late twentieth and early-twenty first centuries.

- A progressive landslide ensues in 2024. But this new form of progressivism owes more to Andrew Yang than to Franklin Roosevelt; it contents itself to tinkering around the edges of structural monetary policy, instituting a form of Universal Basic Income to make up for a declining rate of profit and pursuing business-friendly 'green solutions' to climate change.

- The balance of the century is contested between a reactionary neo-Keynesianism and an ascendant left-neo-liberalism, intensified by the core contradictions between both forms of capitalist governance. Agribusiness eventually collapses as the Right Keynesians deport all the foreign laborers it is so dependent on to survive, depriving the GOP of one of its traditional pillars of support; the urban poor begin to regret accepting their Yangbux as rampant inflation makes their thousand-dollar-a-month guaranteed stipend worthless.

 Gradually, the welfare institutions established in the 20th century are turned into instruments of Foucauldian biopower and weaponized against the working-classes: riot (or fail to work productively to our satisfaction) and we'll pull your EBT/Social Security/Yangbux/Trumpcare. Thus the traditional division between the "welfare state" and the "private sector" erodes and eventually disappears, and public ire is forced of necessity to be direcrted against the system as a whole, which is no longer capable of playing off against itself.

[brucejoel99]

Very unlikely (<0.01%).

[Vittorio]

Very unlikely (<0.01%).

Why?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Overally, vanishingly unlikely.

A Trump win in the face of Dem gains elsewhere is plausible (if he remains functional, something I doubt). Even in such circumstances, Trump has shown no ability to "triangulate" as you suggest. His ego is too huge, and his actual negotiating skills are non-existent. Democrats will not make concessions to Trump's ego necessary to get anything other than keeping the nation's lights on. They would ride another four years of Trump being Trump into a substantial wins in 2022 and 2024, including the Presidency.

Pence wins no future elections, save the outside chance that he is a late replacement for a too-ill-to-run Trump in 2020 and then wins a close election.

A Progressive landslide is coming, but the Yang-inspired politics honestly seem more likely to find a home in a re-invented Republican party (or a replacement for it) around the mid-2030s. The Democratic party itself is going to face an internal struggle between progressives and pro-corporate neoliberals.

Addressing climate change is going to be the driving force of the balance of the 21st Century. The necessary work for survival, mitigation, and geoengineering is going to be huge (or civilization crashes orwe  go through The Rapture for Atheists Singularity.

[Vittorio]

Overally, vanishingly unlikely.

A Trump win in the face of Dem gains elsewhere is plausible (if he remains functional, something I doubt). Even in such circumstances, Trump has shown no ability to "triangulate" as you suggest.

I'd argue that he has, on guns if nothing else. And pre-2000s Trump was a Democrat, and is on record supporting things like infrastructure spending and universal health care.

The GOP is already adjusting to its new role as the Party Of Stimulus.

CALLER: In 2019, there's gonna be a $1 trillion deficit. Trump doesn't really care about that. He's not really a fiscal conservative. We have to acknowledge that Trump has been cruelly used.

LIMBAUGH: Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it's been around.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/rush-limbaugh-debt-trump/index.html

His ego is too huge, and his actual negotiating skills are non-existent.

The fact that his ego is yuge is precisely the kind of thing that could hook him into a system of Keynesian makework projects, particularly in the face of a potential recession in his second term, if he gets something like a Trump National Airport out of the bargain.

Democrats will not make concessions to Trump's ego necessary to get anything other than keeping the nation's lights on.

They would if it kept them popular in their home districts, which is all that really matters.

Pence wins no future elections, save the outside chance that he is a late replacement for a too-ill-to-run Trump in 2020 and then wins a close election.

This depends on whether or not he can hook his Reaganoid policies into a reactionary Keynesian framework - in other words, if Trump's second term proceeds anything like I've suggested, I'd say this follows rather logically, at least as logically as the 'Eastern Establishment' Bush pere succeeding Ronald Reagan did.

A Progressive landslide is coming, but the Yang-inspired politics honestly seem more likely to find a home in a re-invented Republican party (or a replacement for it) around the mid-2030s.

Doubtful. "Free money" is at the heart of everything the GOP loathes. They're far more likely to acclimate themselves to Keynesian indirect stimulus projects, which at least have tangible and immediate results.

The Democratic party itself is going to face an internal struggle between progressives and pro-corporate neoliberals.

And some kind of Yangism is probably an ideal synthesis for them to smooth over this contradiction.

[brucejoel99]

Very unlikely (<0.01%).

Why?

Because your scenario thinks way too much of the American people in general as well as Donald Trump in particular.

[有爭議嘅領土 of The Figgis Agency]

I liked the OP because it was an amusing read.

[Vittorio]

Very unlikely (<0.01%).

Why?

Because your scenario thinks way too much of the American people in general as well as Donald Trump in particular.

Quite the contrary: I'm presenting this as a late-capitalist dystopia, or at least as the run-up to one. I think nothing of Donald Trump other than that he is incredibly egocentric, views himself primarily as a builder, and has no core foundational principles.

[T'Chenka]

Well, there's no President Ocasio-Cortez in your 2024 or 2028 projections, so I'm gonna have to go with "unikely" dawg. Unless she transforms into Andrew Yang 2.0 by that time.

[T'Chenka]

Very unlikely (<0.01%).

Why?

Because your scenario thinks way too much of the American people in general as well as Donald Trump in particular.

Quite the contrary: I'm presenting this as a late-capitalist dystopia, or at least as the run-up to one. I think nothing of Donald Trump other than that he is incredibly egocentric, views himself primarily as a builder, and has no core foundational principles.

I don't think Trump thinks of himself as "a builder". He probably views himself as "worshipped alpha king" and he understands that in order to win that kind of affection from his base and ideally the populace, he will have to build or defeat SOMETHING (or make it seen like he is doing that).