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The 2nd, and supposed to be final, term of the current US President is scheduled to end on Jan 20th, 2029. I am hopeful that my fellow Americans will elect a r

• Spooky23 1y ago
  The genie is out of the bottle, the die is cast, etc. We’re not going back to what was before. I’d only put 60/40 odds on the 2028 election not being temporarily suspended due to a state of emergency.
  • rogerrogerr 1y ago
    60/40 feels very pessimistic to me (meaning I think the election is more than 60% likely to occur on Nov 7, 2028 and the results heeded more or less as usual). If you think 60/40 is the right odds, you have some opportunities available - to make fake dollars, at least: https://manifold.markets/AndrewG/will-donald-trump-attempt-to-suspen?r=cm9icGVyeQ https://manifold.markets/AndrewG/will-donald-trump-attempt-t... I bet you could find more than a few people here to take the other side of 60/40 odds in a $100 bet.
    • rogerrogerr 1y ago
      In a different comment so people can vote on this idea independently: I am not a Trump supporter, but I have many Trump-supporting people I interact with on a level that I don’t think they’re lying to me. Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning. This is not a “I wouldn’t vote for a felon/rapist/whatever” type of red line that falls apart when you question it - they are universally against it. I sincerely think screwing with the election terms or dates to prolong Trump’s term is likely to cause immediate and shocking support evaporation. Enough to embolden Congress to do stuff, and he won’t have enough control over any armed agency to do anything to Congress. I think that a Trump who is trying to avoid prosecution for $crimes is much more likely to throw his weight behind a GOP candidate in early 2028. Vance or whoever. That’s his best chance to stay out of jail (for prosecutions political or legitimate, doesn’t matter). After a few solid months of propping up another GOP candidate, Trump’s base will be even less rabid about him specifically. He’s going to be old news in late 2028. If Trump doesn’t support another candidate in 2028, then I’d start to worry. I just don’t see it happening - the game theory very obviously says he must support a not-him candidate by early 2028, and doing that will make it even harder to pull off shenanigans.
      • TimorousBestie 1y ago
        > Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. I don’t want to argue against your lived experience, but somebody is buying all those hats and yard signs.
        • rogerrogerr 1y ago
          Yeah - I think there’s a very small core of people who genuinely think Trump will win a third term, and a slightly larger core of people who want him to. Then a much larger set of people who are engaging in some very unwise trolling. I just think it’s telling that all the rabid Trump supporters I know aren’t there. Zero of them want to see him on the ballot a fourth time or otherwise pull shenanigans.
          • TimorousBestie 1y ago
            Your account is reassuring to me, yes.
          • ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
            Surely if shenanigans around changing eligibility to vote and maybe a bit of tampering with vote machines (won't be detected if there's no-one around with the authority to validate voting), then it won't matter if Trump has many supporters or not. I would expect him and his handlers to look to other authoritarian regimes to see how to safely have democratic votes without any chance of losing power.
          • int_19h 1y ago
            At this point they don't even know who he'll be running against. But put a name there, and I guarantee you that they will immediately flip and claim that they have to support Trump, because the alternative is going to be literal communism or whatever.
      • ModernMech 1y ago
        > Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. They said the same thing on Jan 6, 2021. Trump supporters had a very negative visceral reaction to that day. But on Jan 7, 2021 the propaganda machine started up again and minds began changing one by one. Today, the very people who were running for their lives on Jan 6 are in support of officially teaching in schools that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats -- the very lie that cause the violence of the day, that caused so many to say "I do not support this". Four years later they voted for it again. So when I hear tales of a Trump voter who is against something Trump has done, I just remember that they voted for him again after he caused an insurrection against the United States in an attempt to illegally overthrow a free and fair election. If a voter can find their way to excusing that, they will find their way to excusing a third term. Here's how: "Yeah it's not ideal, but what am I supposed to do? Vote for a Democrat? They would be worse. We are choosing the lesser of two evils." Works every time.
    • Spooky23 1y ago
      We already had a coup attempt in 2020. Do you think the current VP has the integrity of VP Pence?
      • UncleOxidant 1y ago
        *2021
        • Y-bar 1y ago
          I would say you are both correct. The coup began in 2020 with the widespread lies about the election and smaller attempts at using violence to affect the outcome. E.g. where armed men appeared outside voting booths. Or when the Biden-Harris bus was forcefully stopped in Texas: https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2024/a-trump-train-convoy-surrounded-a-biden-harris-bus-was-it-political-violence/ https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2024/a-trump-tr... Then the clear culmination happened on Jan 6, 2021, that is certainly correct as well.
      • whatshisface 1y ago
        It isn't going to be easy to transfer the cult of personality from Stalin to Beria. :-) If they consolidated the police state by then they could transfer that, not so much the cult of personality.
        • atemerev 1y ago
          The cult — maybe. But if you are bringing a comparison with the Soviet system — the autocracy itself remained for 40 more years, only to be promptly reinstated through Putin.
        • intended 1y ago
          You dont have a cult. You have an ecosystem that created an alternative reality. Its structural, not individual. This idea that its a strange aberration of faith - Trump isn't the problem, hes just evidence that the efforts to counter watergate are working. Its the Bannons, Stones and Murdochs of the world that create the media world for someone like Trump to exist.
    • atemerev 1y ago
      Model risk — events of such magnitude may affect the probability of existence of Manifold, betting markets in general, and even the US dollar (in USSR-Russia transition, roubles were made worthless three times in a row). Unless you are an actuarial expert with decades of experience in hedging geopolitical risks, you cannot meaningfully trade such events.
    • yatopifo 1y ago
      This approach seems overly mechanistic to me. You can have an election, and yet the results of said election can be completely predetermined like they have been in russia for the past 20 years or so. The US toyed with gerrymandering and disenfranchisement even before it officially embraced the current flavour of fascism. So the soil is fertile enough to take the next logic step towards a full dictatorship.
  • klntsky 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • intermerda 1y ago
      Can you elaborate? What do you mean?
      • eschaton 1y ago
        [flagged]
      • klntsky 1y ago
        The status quo of the US society was largely overwritten by a single man back then. This included extraordinary (for the US) measures like expropriating gold[0] and The New Deal (which concentrated a lot of power in the hands of the state). But then everything went back to normal (he's the reason why there is a maximum of 2 presidential terms now). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
    • eschaton 1y ago
      [flagged]
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • gman83 1y ago
    There will definitely be elections, even Putin has elections. The question is whether those elections will be fair.
• ygjb 1y ago
  Sorry neighbours, but it's not about Trump. Trump is one man. The Republican party is effectively captured by that one mans 77,302,580 supporters. Changing leaders isn't enough to fix it. You all broke it, and until you re-establish norms for democracy, reinforce the checks and balances, and start holding criminals who hold office accountable, it's not going to get better. I wish you luck, you will need it :/
  • mettamage 1y ago
    IMO the US needs proportional representation, not a 2 party system. But I'm Dutch, so I'm biased as we have exactly that.
    • deleted 1y ago
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    • mg74 1y ago
      Hard agree. The first-past-the-post single representative election system that is the foundation of the two party system in the US is breaking the country. It encourages politics where the current winner has no reason nor expectation of compromising on anything; now is their time and they are justified in breaking everything the previous winners did. It encourages politicians to act like babies, not grownups.
  • ks1723 1y ago
    What I (as a non-US citizen living outside the US) never understood about the US political system is 1. Apparently none sees the (to me obvious) downsides of a two-party system where there is only black and white with cold-war logic of being either with us of against us, no grey zones and willingness for compromise. and 2. monetary interests are so close to the political system by construction: candidates need to raise a lot of money during their campaigns which they get from companies, private persons and which is tied to their person. How can you not assume that all those people who get into office (senator, president, even judges as I learned recently) with money they got from someone is not in a conflict of interest right from the start? To me it seems there cannot be any independence.
• FridayoLeary 1y ago
  If such a candidate presents himself then s/he would win. You have pretty much nailed the reason why Trump won. Everyone saw him as the second least competent presidential candidate. Bad leadership is a real problem and it has created a vacuum which Trump has roared in to exploit. But there's a more fundamental problem, where neither party has offered suitable presidential candidates in the last 3 elections. Your system needs a bit of a reset. The Democrats have to return to their roots, and the Republicans have to get over the Cult of Trump. But i'm hopeful in time these two problems will resolve themselves in time and not mutually reinforce each other. Trumps Republican Party has a hard expiration date, and the Democrats will eventually have to listen to their voters if they want to win elections.
  • simonh 1y ago
    Even without Trump the people who voted for him are still there, still have the same opinions, still want the same things, and can still vote for them. All it takes is for a candidate to credibly offer those things, and if that candidate is competent and disciplined..
  • vineyardmike 1y ago
    > neither party has offered suitable presidential candidates in the last 3 elections Were we witnessing the same elections? Because I saw one side of the ballot as suitable 3/3 times, and the other side… not event close. Were they perfect, no, but the difference in quality has been baffling 3/3 times. The actual reality is that many people have a belief system that is wildly different than their fellow countrymen. And whew, what a set of beliefs to act upon and force upon the world.
    • andrepd 1y ago
      You cannot get people to vote on the "least bad" option, I thought this much at least has been made clear in the last decade. The enthusiasm will be so low that you cannot get enough turnout to beat the hard-line fans of the other side. Please present good candidates with a progressive program and an inspirational personal charisma and people will vote for them over the fascist. Does anyone have a sliver of a doubt that an Obama would beat Trump with a leg tied behind his back?
• deadbabe 1y ago
  He could serve a third term and probably will attempt to do so, the two term limit could be wiped out with the stroke of a pen and Trump has a record for doing a lot of unprecedented things.
  • dpkirchner 1y ago
    I think it might take more than a stroke of a pen -- it seems like the easiest legal way would be to bribe the House to elect Trump as Speaker, bribe a pair of Republicans to run and win in 2028 and then in 2029 have each of them resign, promoting Trump back in to office. The bribing might be costly but people are more than willing to buy Trump's merch.
    • suzzer99 1y ago
      Just get SCOTUS to rule that the 22nd Amendment only applies to consecutive terms because argle bargle reasons that supersede the language of the amendment.
  • nosianu 1y ago
    Why are so many so focused on Trump? If the current VP becomes the new P, will it be any better? What about the people behind it all, the ones financing and organizing the whole thing for which Trump is only the public figurehead whose function is to distract and get all the attention?
    • rsynnott 1y ago
      I mean, the current VP seems to be a complete non-entity, and vanishingly unlikely to be elected.
      • i80and 1y ago
        There is something to be said for, to date, nobody on the right wing in the US managing to even partially recapture Trump's particularly inexplicable brand of charisma. Everybody who has tried has just flamed out (e.g. DeSantis cratering like Wile E. Coyote just looked down). I pin my hopes on that failure continuing.
• motorest 1y ago
  > I am hopeful that my fellow Americans will elect a responsible, intelligent, virtuous leader in 2028 to be sworn into office on that day. The US elected Biden after Trump's disastrous first term, and immediately followed up with Trump's totalitarian self-destructive second term.
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  • lotsofpulp 1y ago
    When the other option is a woman (a non white one at that), what choice do people have?
    • andrepd 1y ago
      Way to absolve the absolute joke that is the Democratic Party of any blame...
      • lotsofpulp 1y ago
        Way to absolve the joke that is the American voter of any blame…for voting for a person who committed treason, and said he would pardon those who committed treason. Which he did.
      • const_cast 1y ago
        It's the truth. Kamala was well-spoken and overly qualified. She had answers to cost of living and healthcare. Meanwhile, Trump just said "you're poor because of brown people!!1!" And... that messaging won. The reality is Kamala is a black woman, and Trump has been attributing everything evil in the world to people who are not white. Are we going to play stupid and pretend that has nothing to do with it? Or, are we going to at least try to be honest with ourselves about the current state of American politics?
        • int_19h 1y ago
          There's no denying that the white racist constituency is a major part of the Trump coalition, but it's not all there is to it; remember, Latino men went in almost 50% for Trump, and a surprising number of non-white immigrants in general voted for him.
• deleted 1y ago
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• kergonath 1y ago
  Even if the next president is sane, it will take a long time to change the culture. Once border control agents get more power (or the feeling that they can use their power more arbitrarily), they will want to keep it. Also, the legal framework is not going to go back in time, either. It would take time to re-establish trust.
  • dtech 1y ago
    Several languages have idioms like these: "Trust arrives on foot, and leaves on a galloping horse"
    • virgildotcodes 1y ago
      Gain respect by drops, lose it by the buckets.
• grues-dinner 1y ago
  It doesn't really matter though. If there's going to be a potential flipflop between nuttery and normality every four years, you can only really book things in the future for a couple of years after the start of a "normal" phase. And even that is assuming there aren't held-over issues that need to be legislated away by the new guy. At that point, why even bother with the hassle and uncertainty?
  • authorfly 1y ago
    This is part of why France lost status for large events and organisations in the early-mid 20th Century until now. Quite large political swings at regular intervals and fairly ready-to-protest population = not ideal for basing stability. And it doesn't matter that France was far more stable than most countries, it was simply much less stable than America, the UK and regrettably, Germany. Frances solution seems to be not to really compete for international industry or science, but to focus on French culture and language to fit their tourism strategy.
• tsoukase 1y ago
  Too late. The 2028 Olympic Games will be held in Los Angeles. It will be a historical one, since those two legendary of the 80s.
  • ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
    I wonder how many foreign athletes will be barred from entry to that?
• AlecSchueler 1y ago
  The trust is already gone. He was voted in twice and there was enough support for the party as a whole that none of the other branches of government can contain him. Plus he said that he intended to make the changes such as his supporters would never need to vote again. Things have already been dismantled in such ways that it will be impossible to build them back as they were. Not to doom and gloom you out of hoping for the best but the Rubicon is rapidly fading into the distance.
  • mycatisblack 1y ago
    I must have completely missed those speeches. Looked it up, At a "Believers' Summit" event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 26, 2024, Donald Trump told an audience of Christian voters: "You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote." He also said: "Christians get out and vote. Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians." Looks like we’re out of the short term loops and well into the decadal effects with this man. As a European, I’d like to add that the impulse response on the collective memory will be multi-generational.
    • tim333 1y ago
      I think a fair reading of Trump would be that he was saying he'd have things fixed in four years, rather than staying on as a dictator.
      • AlecSchueler 1y ago
        That's how we're already interpreting it, that he will "fix" things, i.e. cause irreparable damage. There was no suggestion that he would stay on after his term, only that the damage would be so deep that the switch couldn't simply be flicked in the opposite direction.
        • 1y ago
• emeril 1y ago
  don't get your hopes up - I fully plan on moving to Canada and sending my children to college there even if we elect a "better" president in the future the fact that roughly half of of the electorate is fine with how things are as well as virtually all of the republicans in the senate and the house are too "scared" to do anything (complete BS as this is the very definition of their job) is really an embarrassment of civilization and humanity - apes are more evolved than we are
• hoseyor 1y ago
  Regardless of people’s politics, Americans have not done that for at least 100 years now. What would make you think that would change now that basically all of the western world has followed our lead, largely because the American corporate authoritarian ruling class has imposed it on the rest of the western world over the last century?
• thrance 1y ago
  They're already printing out "Trump 2028" MAGA hats, don't get your hopes up too much. Now that they've permeated every level of power with their cronies, making them relinquish power will be much harder. Prepare for the worst.
• fluidcruft 1y ago
  It's looking like a rather large assumption that Democrats manage to rebuild trust with the public. You would think 2024 would be enough of a crisis for Democrats to get their shit in order. And yet here we are with the same fucking dinosaur generation running the party.
  • intended 1y ago
    This is a red herring. There is no winning for any party that isnt the Republican party, because there is no actual mechanism for non right wing voices to be heard on the right wing information ecosystem. The issues is that Dems must bring their A game, to compete against a clown squad that can and will fabricate issues that havent happened, and force the dems to debate on it. This is also a thought experiment, not a real issue, because Americans do not have that long a time horizon. The strongest, most unified, and capable you will be is now. By the time elections come around, you will be hounded, disorganized, isolated and unable to coordinate.
    • fluidcruft 1y ago
      Democrats don't have an A game. They're too busy deplatforming themselves and running away from the right.
      • mandmandam 1y ago
        > running away from the right. Huh? Harris campaigned with Dick Cheney. She removed torture from her platform to do so. She promised to keep arming Israel. She promised to be more harsh on immigration than Trump. She warbled about having "the most lethal military" at the DNC. This was all tacitly endorsed by the party. So, how did you get the impression Democrats running from the right?
• kaycey2022 1y ago
  It is just foolish to think that electing a new figurehead will change everything. USA always has been and is at least for now, a nation of laws and institutions. Trump could only have managed to do all that he has done, with deep political and self institutional support. And the discourse is America has been growing increasingly selfish. Look at the way American exceptionalism has evolved so quickly under Trump. I always took the American exceptionalism talk to be internally focused and meant to motivate Americans to do better. That now sounds like every other country is robbing us, we are being exploited, and we will make drug prices, for example, shoot up everywhere so that they can be lowered in the US. Even if you are not a nationalist for your own country, that has to sound to you at some level as exceptionally repulsive. USA has not shied away from promoting their own interests over others, but now thankfully the actions match the rhetoric.