MAGA will echo on without Trump, but it is all Trump and its power dies with him.
Future fascists will need a new four letter acronym for their red banner. spqr
I disagree, especially if the Democrats choose folks like Mamdani and AOC to be the standard bearers. Some of the pillars of Trump's brand are anti-diversity, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, white-nationalist, Christian-evangelical... Having someone like Mamdani become transcendent in the Democratic party will fuel that fire, because he will represent to MAGA supporters what all those pillars are against.
More and more I am starting to see Trump/MAGA as a spirit that will live on in the Republican party. Before Trump, it was pretty universal for Republicans to identify as "Reagan Republicans" and the spirit of Regan and his administration ruled the Republican party well after he left office and even after his death, I'd say from 1980 to 2012 when Romney lost. Heck, the Republican Presidents during that time period were Reagan, Reagan's VP, and Regan's VP's son, (with the same name to boot). Romney losing to Obama was really the deathknell of the Republican party being led by the spirit of Reagan. Romney even had the "Reagan" look, his aesthetic invoked a young Reagan and was the image of what many people grew up with as what a US President should look like (ie, Reagan).
Romney's loss was a final repudiation of Reaganism as a viable party theme/aesthetic and sent the Republican voters looking for something different/new, which is what Trump gave them. I think, like Reganism and "Reagan Republicans" we are looking at potentially 20 or 30 years of Trumpism/MAGA and "Trump Republicans" being the new party theme. Like Reagan, Trump will be identified as the standard for Republicans for decades to come. It may not have been so if Trump had lost in 2024, but him returning to office solidifies him and his MAGA brand as winners in the minds and hearts of the electorate. Like Reagan, the Republicans won't need Trump to keep Trump's spirit alive and to propel them to wins in national elections.
I don't think waiting Trump/MAGA out is going to work. I'm skeptical of the notion that the Republicans don't have anyone to pick up Trump's mantle, or that JD Vance couldn't do it. Even puting Vance aside, the Republicans have plenty of folks who could step in to lead a MAGA resurgence if Vance were to lose, or win, then lose re-election (like Papa Bush did). Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Brett Favre, Dennis Quaid, Danica Patrick, Aaron Rodgers, Kid Rock, Mel Gibson, Dean Cain, Charlie Kirk... the Republicans have plenty of big names that could easily glom onto Trump's mantle and ride it into elected office.
TBH I kinda doubt even that. Even New York guys know his ambitions are limited by Hochul and consequently they have little cause for immediate concern.
The problem is that Zohran was quite obviously part of the crew who would have argued "identity check boxes" are a good thing and appears to have min/maxed them. His response, while it will not sink him, will not be a political ground gain. It should be obvious by his reply that he is attempting to mitigate damage; that he does that at all is telling; on the bright side, at least he recognizes the larger political situation.
Presumably, Heidi Moore is already sympathetic to this new way of thinking, of hierarchies of marginalization and disparity in support based on them. The term whiteness and reference to Jim Crow over this issue, seldom if ever used by those not in sympathy.
Big problem: those sympathetic to this way of thinking are a minority, and there is a rather obvious large and stunningly successful movement that has leveraged that discontent into political power.
Zohran is extremely vulnerable to the old woke takedown. Internal strife of the left, indeed.
This isn't the "gotcha" on Mamdani that some folks seem to think it is. I couldn't care less that he checked African-American and Asian on his application despite not considering himself Black. Black people understand the flaws in the term "African-American" just as much as we understand the flaws in the term "Black". The flaws are just different. African-American is a more deeply flawed term that (mostly non-Black) folks have come to prefer just because they think it sounds "nicer". Black people are fine with just being called Black. If you want the checkbox to isolate for Black people then it would be simpler to just make it "Black".
In any case I don't think this is going to have any impact on Mamdani's electability. Trump's "Pocahontas" attack on Warren resonates mostly with his own voters, rather than the folks who would otherwise support Warren. I think it will be the same for Mamdani.
