Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Remember the swing voters.

Of course we all live in our own little bubbles these days, and despair can distort the perspective of anyone including me. Still, from where I stand, the general tone of the conversation still sounds too much like 2016, when so many liberals and lefties were talking and acting as if Trump’s followers were supporting him by mistake, because they just didn’t know how awful he truly was, and would start abandoning him in droves as soon as they realized their mistake, hence the many confident predictions that his base would turn against him whenever he said or did something outrageous (i.e. whenever he said or did anything at all). It’s as if the 2016 election, all the scandals of Trump’s first presidency, his two impeachments, his endless legal trouble, and even his attempted coup d’etat (!) never happened, and we were still basically dealing with a normal, democratic politician who just happened to have a somewhat “unconventional style”. In the end, as we all know, all of Trump’s supposedly career-ending scandals didn’t stop him from gaining votes between 2016 and 2020.

So as much as I sincerely hope I’m wrong, I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win again*. I almost wrote “pleasantly surprised” out of old habit, but I can’t honestly say I find anything “pleasant” about any of the available options, although there can be no doubt as to which candidate would be the lesser evil. If I’m right, then that will be it. Forget about “taking back power next time”. There won’t be a “next time”. I’m sure there will be (some parody of) an “election” in 2028, but it will be as meaningless as the next “election” in Russia.

* Not the popular vote, to be sure, but as the title of this post reminds us, he doesn’t need the popular vote to be first past the post.