How will Donald Trump be remembered in 2066?

[Vosem]

Analogously to George Wallace; a man who made several runs for President representing a dying way of thought, who did shockingly well but ultimately never even came close to the White House and destroyed his health while doing so. (This assumes that he continues running over the next several cycles, even as he enters his 70s).

[Vosem]

Analogously to George Wallace; a man who made several runs for President representing a dying way of thought, who did shockingly well but ultimately never even came close to the White House and destroyed his health while doing so. (This assumes that he continues running over the next several cycles, even as he enters his 70s).

Trump does not represent a dying way of thought, his ideology is the future of the GOP.

_trump is literally the candidate of places with high mortality rates, and he's consistently done very poorly with young Republican voters (consider that, even as Rubio lost Nevada by 22 points, exit polls still had him winning the under-30 crowd by 6 points; not all states have had exit polling, but you'll find that Rubio won the under-30 vote in Virginia; Cruz won both Carolinas, Arkansas and Missouri among the under-30; _trump also won the under-30 vote in Michigan and Illinois due purely to the strong Kasich performance, and lost the 30-44 vote in both states to Cruz).  It's a way of thinking that is dying out not just figuratively, by people abandoning it, but literally, with those who hold it dying and not getting replaced.

Interestingly enough, the one part of the country where this trend is reversed is New England; Massachusetts is more muddled, but in VT and NH _trump is stronger among the youth and weaker among olds (in VT, Kasich won the over-65 crowd only). However, this is probably due to the unusual circumstance of there still being many Rockefeller Republicans voting in the Republican primary giving an illusory anti-_trump strength to the old; and regardless the region isn't particularly important to the GOP.

Kasich and Rubio encapsulate the future of the GOP far more than _trump does, to wit. (The whole metric is flawed, because as 2008/2012 showed Republican youngs have strong libertarian inclinations and this race hasn't really given them an option; either way my general point should've been made pretty well).

[Vosem]

Kasich and Rubio encapsulate the future of the GOP far more than _trump does, to wit. (The whole metric is flawed, because as 2008/2012 showed Republican youngs have strong libertarian inclinations and this race hasn't really given them an option; either way my general point should've been made pretty well).

The problem with that idea is that Kasich and Rubio represent a Republican Party of the professional class.  In time, candidates like them might appeal to professionals across racial and ethnic lines, but in the end, their base will still really only consist of professionals.  Do you truly want the party to restrict its appeal to this group?  And do you truly believe the party will be able to count on its present foot soldiers forever, particularly if the Democratic Party, at some point, aligns itself to be more Sandersesque, in that it would come to represent the economic interests of the working class more than the professional class?

Kasich and Rubio represent candidates acceptable to the professional class, but they don't represent a Republican Party of the professional class (see Kasich's results in OH for what the man actually represents). The Republican Party is going to continue to get white working-class votes, and religious votes, so long as the Democratic Party continues using feminism, secularism, and identity politics appealing to racial minorities. A more Sanders-esque Democratic Party would not be able to win back meaningful numbers of white working-class voters unless it abandons rhetoric that implies they are "privileged" in some way; rhetoric that the Democratic Party is using more and more, not less and less of.

The point isn't Kasich and Rubio, so much as it is _trump, whose own brand of politics goes over much, much worse with younger voters (especially under 30, but under 45 as well) than it does with others. The general authoritarian tone of the campaign ("restrict the libel laws") is going to go over poorly with younger voters, who especially on the Republican side are quite libertarian and believe in a very absolute form of freedom of expression (to some extent this is a counter-reaction to the opposite trend on the left) and the liberalization of drug and gun laws and such.

Younger conservative voters also tend to be less religious, so Cruz is an imperfect fit for them -- but a much more tolerable one than _trump. The strong support for Kasich and Rubio we've seen is probably mostly a function of process of elimination, though. (This is also somewhat illusory, because as the Democratic Party gets progressively more and more secular, religious voters will become even more inclined to support Republicans than they are now, so "religious right", while declining in strength, is going to remain a meaningful part of the Republican coalition for a long time in the future; the one social issue the youth don't really differ from their elders on is abortion, which is going to continue to be used as a motivator to turnout both sides well into the foreseeable future).

Analogously to George Wallace; a man who made several runs for President representing a dying way of thought, who did shockingly well but ultimately never even came close to the White House and destroyed his health while doing so. (This assumes that he continues running over the next several cycles, even as he enters his 70s).

Trump does not represent a dying way of thought, his ideology is the future of the GOP.

_trump is literally the candidate of places with high mortality rates, and he's consistently done very poorly with young Republican voters (consider that, even as Rubio lost Nevada by 22 points, exit polls still had him winning the under-30 crowd by 6 points; not all states have had exit polling, but you'll find that Rubio won the under-30 vote in Virginia; Cruz won both Carolinas, Arkansas and Missouri among the under-30; _trump also won the under-30 vote in Michigan and Illinois due purely to the strong Kasich performance, and lost the 30-44 vote in both states to Cruz).  It's a way of thinking that is dying out not just figuratively, by people abandoning it, but literally, with those who hold it dying and not getting replaced.

Interestingly enough, the one part of the country where this trend is reversed is New England; Massachusetts is more muddled, but in VT and NH _trump is stronger among the youth and weaker among olds (in VT, Kasich won the over-65 crowd only). However, this is probably due to the unusual circumstance of there still being many Rockefeller Republicans voting in the Republican primary giving an illusory anti-_trump strength to the old; and regardless the region isn't particularly important to the GOP.

Kasich and Rubio encapsulate the future of the GOP far more than _trump does, to wit. (The whole metric is flawed, because as 2008/2012 showed Republican youngs have strong libertarian inclinations and this race hasn't really given them an option; either way my general point should've been made pretty well).

Didn't you say in Trends that Paulism, as a blend of Cruz and Trump, is the GOP's future.

I've said that an ideology resembling Paulism is the future of the GOP, and that it has features from both Cruz and _trump, but that doesn't mean "a blend of Cruz and _trump" is the future of the GOP. I see the GOP progressively becoming more isolationist as time goes on, with interventionists increasingly returning to the Democratic Party, and in that sense there is a contribution from _trump, who also represents a less-interventionist strain of thought. ("Isolationist" is too strong a word to describe it, I think). Many more of the contributions are from the Cruz side, though (there's a reason the Pauls themselves are strongly anti-_trump).

[Vosem]

Sorry folks, Trump may be a blip in history but the values and beliefs that he represents are not. His ilk are no longer sitting silently on the sidelines, it's all out and in the open now. It's going to stay that way barring a complete and sudden radical change in American culture.

You don't realize the fact that they've come out into the open is indicative that the change (the change being that their children are not preserving some of their beliefs/values) is already underway?