[sterlingice]

While I think maybe a decade ago, there's a potential Polyanna scenario. Trump splits the GOP votes and the Dem can cakewalk into the White House in 2024 with a bit of a landslide. Bonus points if Trump can convince a bunch of back bench GOPers who don't really have a shot at anything to run under his banner. Like, say, the GOP Speaker of the House in a state is never going to get much beyond his position but suddenly Trump champions him for a US Senate seat and that gets him at least 20% of the vote automatically. There's enough people out there who would risk losing it all in the GOP with their small seat on the off chance that they could make it in a much larger seat. Heck, even if they lose, it will raise their profile well above where it was before. And that sort of Congressional scorched earth would hand the Dems a decent majority as many votes look a lot like 45%D-30%T-25%R or whatever. This results in the GOP schism that's been expected for years and will take them a generation to recover.

What I fear is probably more likely is one of those elections you read about in history books like 1824 or 1876. It's the type of thing you read about now and are like "lol - history is so funny but something crazy like that would never happen now". The Supreme Court goes ahead and puts together their bullshit independent state legislature theory in Moore vs Harper in a bitterly divided 5-4 decision with far reaching effects. Roberts scathing dissent is about how it should be narrowly tailored as this opens the door to broken elections. We get to 2024 and, after a bloody primary, DeSantis emerges but not without taking some big blows from Trump. DeSantis and independent Trump trail unpopular President Biden because his base is still going to beat their ticket splitting. That's what looks like happens when everyone calls the election for Biden on Election Night - he gets a low percentage of votes, only about 40% and no one is really happy with the results.

Only something funny happens on the way to certifying the election - Trump strikes a grand bargain with DeSantis where Trump gets to be President while DeSantis is VP and a newly created position of Prime Minister or something, as chief administrator of the government. They combine their votes and electors, per rules rushed into place by the 30 GOP-led state legislatures, and now the new Trump/GOP coalition has both houses of Congress and the White House without even winning a majority or even plurality of the vote. Sure, there are riots for a while but those are put down and outgoing President Biden calls for a peaceful transition of power. Trump takes back over and the structure of the government is altered dramatically over the next 4 years as the filibuster is removed, the Supreme Court backs all their decisions, ushering in a new era where there isn't really a separation of church and state but more of a partnership. Some historians would point out how this was very similar to how a number of democracies have died across civilizations, but they're dismissed as crazy, hysterical leftist loons.

SI