I've been thinking a lot about what comes next after Trump and as much as I know a lot of folks may find this to sound absurd while we are currently in the throes of Trump 2.0 stupidity, I truly do think that MAGA has a shelf life that is approaching expiration.
I think we are already finding out in real time that MAGA does not have a bench roster that’s capable of stepping in for Trump and winning national elections. Not one single other person in the MAGA movement has the winning combination of bluster, bravado, and lizard-brained charisma that Trump has. Hell, it can be reasonably argued that the only Republican who had a good day on Election Day was Donald Trump himself. The GOP lost all sorts of races downballot that they had no business losing in a year where the top of the ticket won only the second Republican popular vote in decades.
I truly think that Trump’s own incompetence will scatter the effectiveness of his efforts- we are already seeing it happening in real time as we speak with these absurdly outlandish cabinet appointments and the looming fight that he is picking with the GOP establishment in the Senate. I think that Trump's policies will likely make enough of a mess economically that he will lose one or both houses of Congress in 2026. Trump is much closer to the end than the beginning of his time, both politically and actuarially, and once he’s gone, I think that the most dangerous elements of MAGA will fizzle. Even a Ron DeSantis type, although I'd never, ever vote for someone like him, is much less prone to encouraging political violence and norm-busting than Trump, and we have already seen that the most shameless MAGA ballwashers flat out can’t win national elections on their own, IMO.
None of the above is intended to sound like hopium or to sound pollyanna-ish, but just my attempted take on what I personally think is realistic. Trump doesn't want to govern. He wants to enrich himself. The GOP *can't* govern- it's only effective as an oppositional out-party. There are a whole lot of people who are about to realize the hard way that all of that blustering and bullshitting about illegal immigrants, open borders, transgender people, and the like aren't going to reduce the price of eggs, aren't going to make housing more affordable, aren't going to make them and their families more prosperous, etc. And I'm not someone who is willing to buy the whole "well we might not have free and fair elections in 2028" thing. Yes, we will. And I also don't buy the "Trump is never going to voluntarily leave office." He won't have a choice. Not one single Democratically-led state, and likely all but the most hopeless of red states, are going to even participate in an election where the top of the ticket violates the Constitutional prohibition on a third term presidency.
TL;DR: this, too, shall pass. It may not be without tons of annoyance, or without quite a bit of hardship and suffering for certain groups, but it shall pass.