What would be worse? Trump or another Trumpist?

[Tekken_Guy]

Who would be worse for the country? Another Trump term or a more competent heir to Trumpism?

[dw93]

A more competent one as said competent Trumpist would be able to reek havoc on the country with little opposition, as a more competent Trumpist would be less outwardly offensive and more politically astute than Trump himself.

[Leroy McPherson fan]

A more competent one as said competent Trumpist would be able to reek havoc on the country with little opposition, as a more competent Trumpist would be less outwardly offensive and more politically astute than Trump himself.

So, #DeSantis2024?

[John Dule]

A more competent one as said competent Trumpist would be able to reek havoc on the country with little opposition, as a more competent Trumpist would be less outwardly offensive and more politically astute than Trump himself.

This comment wreaks of hyperbole.

[Spectator]

A more competent one as said competent Trumpist would be able to reek havoc on the country with little opposition, as a more competent Trumpist would be less outwardly offensive and more politically astute than Trump himself.

This comment wreaks of hyperbole.

I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong though. Donald Trump is by all accounts a moron and surrounds himself with sycophantic morons, so someone that’s more politically astute than him, like a DeSantis, would be more effective in implementing his agenda.

[Inmate Trump]

I said Trump.

Even a more competent Trumpster won't be Trump himself, and Trump himself is what excites most of these sheeple.

Someone like DeSantis may be able to accomplish more of the agenda, but only Trump can bring these sheeple to the polls.

[brucejoel99]

As much as Trump wanted - & often got - the federal government to do anything that he wanted them to do, god help us all if a more competent Trumpist is ever elected & able to use the power of the presidency to a much greater effect than even Trump at his most rabid could've hoped to. An intelligent, politically savvier Trumpist could very well be a nightmare on an order of magnitude more severe than what we experienced with the original, & were a gun to be put to my head on the matter, I'd rather have 4 more years of the original's outright insanity than a sane person who subscribes to Trumpism & would know how to effectively implement it anyday.

[Heebie Jeebie]

A more competent Trump would end up being an American Viktor Orban.  So yes, I find that much more frightening than the prospect of opposing Trump's incompetence for another four years.

[Xing]

Considering how much damage Trump did as an incompetent moron, I can only imagine how horrific a more competent version of Trump would be.

[Vespucci]

If Trump was elected in 2024, he'd be even more unhinged than his first term, as he'd probably burn the country down in order to get "revenge" on Biden and the Democrats, and would make sure he had no sane people to keep him in check like Mattis or Pence. It would take a lot more to rebuild after Trump 2024, especially with how important the 2025-2029 term is likely to be in terms of climate issues, so I'd definitely opt for DeSantis or another right-wing populist over him.

The one exception would be Hawley. That guy is a straight-up fascist.

[SnowLabrador]

Considering how much damage Trump did as an incompetent moron, I can only imagine how horrific a more competent version of Trump would be.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Tough to say.

On the one hand, a competent Trumpist could likely do a far better job a deliberately destroying America.

On the other hand, Trump's mix of incompetence and stupidity has already killed a couple hundred thousand Americans already.

[Make America Grumpy Again]

I'd prefer Josh Hawley or a clone of Teddy Roosevelt, so I voted for another Trumpist. I guess that makes Trump worse in that regard.

[Heebie Jeebie]

I'd prefer Josh Hawley or a clone of Teddy Roosevelt, so I voted for another Trumpist.

Not the point of this thread, but it's really good to see somebody acknowledging that Teddy Roosevelt was basically the Donald Trump of the early 1900s.  Correct, sir!

[Del Tachi]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol   

[Heebie Jeebie]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol   

Fox News has about 2.5 million viewers every night.  Is that not mainstream enough for you?

[Del Tachi]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol   

Fox News has about 2.5 million viewers every night.  Is that not mainstream enough for you?

And yet it exists on the journalistic fringe, with motivated voices at legacy New York-based media outlets calling it detrimental to the integrity of news overall.  Fox News is not any more brazenly biased or blind to ideologically unfavorable facts/stories than liberal cable news outlets like MSNBC, they just attract criticism n for doing it in support of the *wrong* opinions.   

[Xing]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol   

"Normal" is a very nebulous term. Who gets to decide what a "normal" Republican is? If said Republican supports every policy Trump does, as well as Trump's attempts to undermine our institutions, is the assertion really unfounded? Either way, what might be considered a "normal" Republican by most in 2024 might have been considered a fringe candidate as recently as 2015 or possibly even later. And it's not like Republicans don't manage to make every Democratic president, even those specifically chosen to be "safe"/"compromise" candidates into "socialists", "antifa/CRT supporters", etc. so it's not like liberals totally control the narrative. And the punditry seemed to think Trump was uniquely awful, so it's not like thinking someone could be worse than Trump is blindly following the punditry.

[Heebie Jeebie]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol  

Fox News has about 2.5 million viewers every night.  Is that not mainstream enough for you?

And yet it exists on the journalistic fringe, with motivated voices at legacy New York-based media outlets calling it detrimental to the integrity of news overall.  Fox News is not any more brazenly biased or blind to ideologically unfavorable facts/stories than liberal cable news outlets like MSNBC, they just attract criticism n for doing it in support of the *wrong* opinions.  

Setting aside the idea that Fox isn't any more biased than most popular news outlets (which, come on, man...really?), I wonder which opinions you feel Fox News is being unfairly criticized for.  Like, I read the Times and I listen to NPR and watch  the PBS News Hour and all that, and the impression I always get is that these media outlets consistently bend over backwards to give conservative voices fair treatment and the benefit of the doubt.  And to tie it back to this thread's discussion, I see these "legacy New York-based media outlets" at times giving comically fawning coverage to Republican figures like DeSantis, Scott, or Haley.  And they obsess over any negative story tied to prominent Democrats (How many front-page articles did we get about Hillary's emails?).  My point is, I don't think you can blame "the mainstream media" for the narrative that Republicans are hostile to American democracy.  If anything, the media has done a lot to minimize the sense of danger, to write it off as the bad impulses of a single man (Trump) and not the powerful political institution he leads (the Republican Party).

EDIT: Just for jollies, I clicked over to CNN and MSNBC for a bit this morning.  The theme of the day seems to be that Democrats are doomed and it's time for progressives to eat sh**t.  I'm not seeing that liberal stranglehold on the media I was told of.

[Del Tachi]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol   

"Normal" is a very nebulous term. Who gets to decide what a "normal" Republican is? If said Republican supports every policy Trump does, as well as Trump's attempts to undermine our institutions, is the assertion really unfounded? Either way, what might be considered a "normal" Republican by most in 2024 might have been considered a fringe candidate as recently as 2015 or possibly even later. And it's not like Republicans don't manage to make every Democratic president, even those specifically chosen to be "safe"/"compromise" candidates into "socialists", "antifa/CRT supporters", etc. so it's not like liberals totally control the narrative. And the punditry seemed to think Trump was uniquely awful, so it's not like thinking someone could be worse than Trump is blindly following the punditry.

Yeah that's my point:  "normal" is a very nebulous term.  Any future Republican president who implements any kind of conservative solution on the border or tries to play hardball with tech companies, for instance, is going to be vilified as a more competent version of Donald Trump.  It's an easy claim for the liberal punditry to make because it's completely unfalsifiable.  The very fact OP is asking this question now (and how several posters have answered) is suggestive of this narrative already being set.   

[Xing]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol   

"Normal" is a very nebulous term. Who gets to decide what a "normal" Republican is? If said Republican supports every policy Trump does, as well as Trump's attempts to undermine our institutions, is the assertion really unfounded? Either way, what might be considered a "normal" Republican by most in 2024 might have been considered a fringe candidate as recently as 2015 or possibly even later. And it's not like Republicans don't manage to make every Democratic president, even those specifically chosen to be "safe"/"compromise" candidates into "socialists", "antifa/CRT supporters", etc. so it's not like liberals totally control the narrative. And the punditry seemed to think Trump was uniquely awful, so it's not like thinking someone could be worse than Trump is blindly following the punditry.

Yeah that's my point:  "normal" is a very nebulous term.  Any future Republican president who implements any kind of conservative solution on the border or tries to play hardball with tech companies, for instance, is going to be vilified as a more competent version of Donald Trump.  It's an easy claim for the liberal punditry to make because it's completely unfalsifiable.  The very fact OP is asking this question now (and how several posters have answered) is suggestive of this narrative already being set.   

While certain members of the punditry would dislike both of these, I think plenty of Democrats would have different reactions to each of these. Going after big tech would be a welcome development for me and many other Democrats.

[Heebie Jeebie]

This question and the associated responses are an interesting case study in how the liberal punditry has perfected the art of using unfalsifiable claims to set their preferred narratives.

Like, even if a "normal" Republican is elected in 2024, liberals are already bemoaning him as only a more competent(i.e., worse) version of Trump.  As long as liberals remain in control of the mainstream press, I'm convinced each Republican president will somehow manage to be worse than the previous one lol  

"Normal" is a very nebulous term. Who gets to decide what a "normal" Republican is? If said Republican supports every policy Trump does, as well as Trump's attempts to undermine our institutions, is the assertion really unfounded? Either way, what might be considered a "normal" Republican by most in 2024 might have been considered a fringe candidate as recently as 2015 or possibly even later. And it's not like Republicans don't manage to make every Democratic president, even those specifically chosen to be "safe"/"compromise" candidates into "socialists", "antifa/CRT supporters", etc. so it's not like liberals totally control the narrative. And the punditry seemed to think Trump was uniquely awful, so it's not like thinking someone could be worse than Trump is blindly following the punditry.

Yeah that's my point:  "normal" is a very nebulous term.  Any future Republican president who implements any kind of conservative solution on the border or tries to play hardball with tech companies, for instance, is going to be vilified as a more competent version of Donald Trump.  It's an easy claim for the liberal punditry to make because it's completely unfalsifiable.  The very fact OP is asking this question now (and how several posters have answered) is suggestive of this narrative already being set.  

While certain members of the punditry would dislike both of these, I think plenty of Democrats would have different reactions to each of these. Going after big tech would be a welcome development for me and many other Democrats.

1.  There is no "conservative" solution to the border problem.  The problem is caused by immigrants seeking asylum, and the law (and human decency) is pretty clear that they have the right to do so.  The only real answer is to speed up the asylum process, but that will require a huge increase in the judicial infrastructure that governs the border.  It will take any administration, liberal or conservative, years to accomplish that.

2.  Conservatives have no incentive to "play hardball" with tech companies, especially with tech media companies like Facebook or YouTube.  Those companies have been huge allies for the conservative movement, not opponents.  And even other tech companies like Amazon or Tesla or whatever...these businesses are the greatest allies conservatives have against organized labor in this country.  Why would conservatives want to muck up that symbiotic relationship?