US Politics 2025

[Jubal]

Not as many elections, significantly more clusterportugalery, welcome to the US Politics 2025 thread.


So I'm going to use this as a chance to write down my predictions for 2025: yes, those are a fool's game, but it's interesting to test one's hypotheses against whatever the reality turns out to be.

My core thinking re Trump II:

• It's going to be nasty. The things the cabinet and congress can all agree on will be things like border security, deregulating cryptocurrency, and some of the 'anti-woke' stuff: the pointlessly cruel or simply climate-burning bits of the Trump agenda.
• The economic side of Trump's agenda is probably doomed. There may be an outside chance that Trump can sacrifice America's long-term geopolitical position and climate efforts to try and get a short term economic boom: if Trump sacrifices Ukraine and drills a lot he might get oil prices down, though at the cost of America's position in Europe. In general either his protectionism happens, in which case it will be very inflationary and voters will get upset, or business interests and political concerns stave off the protectionism in which case Trump's nationalist base start feuding with the said business interests. I guess I'd say maybe 20% that Trump gets a high by luck more than judgement, 20% his approval slides on bad inflation, 20% his approval craters horribly in a major economic depression, 30% the tarriffs keep getting staved off amid political infighting.
• It's probably not going to retain coherence. The usual popularity dip of a midterm will be more than enough for Trump to lose the house, and if things are going badly the Senate isn't invulnerable either. So Trump has two years, not four, for big changes, and he has a cabinet with very, very different opinions on what those should be, plus senators who'll be being lobbied in various ways. I think that's what's most likely to scupper attempts to seriously gut state structures or move the US more solidly towards autocracy.
• So my midpoint scenario is that Trump's popularity keeps up until maybe April, slumps by a regular amount during 2025, and by this November the wheels are coming off the cart a bit, 2026 up to the midterms then becomes mostly feuding as swing-state senators balk at an unpopular agenda and/or get primaried from the right. And all of this is happening against a background of large-scale deportations, US alliances creaking at the seams or snapping entirely, and a bad economic climate.
• That's a median prediction, so there are options that are less bad (the feuding starts much earlier and they get almost nothing done, Musk is funding a new party by the midterms that splits the GOP vote) and options that are worse (global economic depression, unexpectedly efficient Orbanisation policies).

[The Seamstress]

I'm mostly afraid what will happen climate-wise, there's also a not quite unrealistic chance of new pandemics and we all know how that went so far, and then there's the general anti-science rhetorics... And a lot of people will have their lives worsened or threatened, which means mostly POC, queer folks, women, etc.

The whole situation just seems dangerous and unpredictable to me, we've no idea what cruelties and foolish ignorant sh-t that guy or his followers/enablers still might come up with, and that's rather scary.

[Jubal]

Yeah, I think on the climate and minority rights stuff especially it's just all bad news all the way down.

[dubsartur]

I'm mostly afraid what will happen climate-wise, there's also a not quite unrealistic chance of new pandemics and we all know how that went so far, and then there's the general anti-science rhetorics... And a lot of people will have their lives worsened or threatened, which means mostly POC, queer folks, women, etc.

Surrendering to COVID was bipartisan in the USA and the current admin has not exactly done a lot to contain H5N1.  I suspect that an out Anti-Vaxxer as Sturgeon General will be a bit worse than the 2016 and 2020 administrations were on public health but that is a low bar.

[The Seamstress]

Agreed, and that's what I meant with "we all know how that went so far". I expect things to go downhill even more with the people now in charge.

[dubsartur]

I also wonder how much Russian oil the USA could get to world markets on its own, without EU and UK agreement. 

There seems to be widespread ignorance about how climate change + removing so much fossil fuel from the world market has affected costs to produce things such as food.

A lot of people and institutions in the USA are trying to rewrite history such that Orange Julius was bad on public health, then Former Veep was good, then Orange Julius was bad, when Orange Julius allowed public health measures in 2020 that no government south of the border would allow today.  I even see speculation that H5N1 may be given a new status just after the inauguration.

[Jubal]

I also wonder how much Russian oil the USA could get to world markets on its own, without EU and UK agreement. 

Oh, not much. But I think the strategy would be to either a) hope that the EU gives up on Ukraine when the US does, because European governments are also desperate for something to curb inflation and the promise of cheap oil is something that e.g. the Hungarians and Slovaks and the far right everywhere are yelling for and/or b) hope that Trump can bounce Russia and Ukraine into accepting eastern Ukraine being in Russian hands (at which point, same thing).

The Russians would be happy to be able to sell again - I'm not sure the Saudis would be as happy at all about oil prices dropping, though, and they could restrict supply if Trump pushes to increase it to maintain the price.

Anyway, not much any of us can do about any of it other than watch (or probably more productively, not watch too much and get things done where we are for the betterment of the world as best we can).

[dubsartur]

Agreed, and that's what I meant with "we all know how that went so far". I expect things to go downhill even more with the people now in charge.

I hope I did not sound like I was trying to argue with you.  I think in the months to come we will have to be careful and kind in our online communications.

I don't know of one good trend in the North Atlantic, but I can focus on local things and those are not trends at all.

[The Seamstress]

I hope I did not sound like I was trying to argue with you.  I think in the months to come we will have to be careful and kind in our online communications.

It's alright, I didn't interpret it as arguing. And yes, kindness is always a good thing to strive for and practice.

[Jubal]

I wrote some notes on my expectations for the second round of Trump, combined with some thoughts on the frequent online-left memeing about the "end of the US Empire" being an imminent outcome of this:
https://thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com/2025/02/06/trump-ii-expectations-and-empires/

Thoughts welcome!

[Jubal]

Whatever people's views about the US Democratic party and its performance, it is nice to have the "longest US Senate speech ever" record no longer being held by a dead racist.

Two Floridian special elections to the House of Representatives have taken place. Both saw Democrats perform about 15-17 points better than their results in the 2024 elections (not enough to flip these sorts of Republican-by-thirty-points seats, but still a lot). The Democrats also held a seat on the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, which opens possibilities for Democrats to eke out an extra seat at the midterms by pushing for fairer district boundaries.

I think this is fairly par for the expected course: Trump isn't breaking norms at quite the speed he needs to for old-school jackbooted curtailment of the opposition, and between this and the Signal/Email stuff Republicans who dislike Trump's agenda or want to try and target some of the more incompetent members of his administration may start to feel comparatively emboldened.

[dubsartur]

I wrote some notes on my expectations for the second round of Trump, combined with some thoughts on the frequent online-left memeing about the "end of the US Empire" being an imminent outcome of this:
https://thoughtsofprogress.wordpress.com/2025/02/06/trump-ii-expectations-and-empires/

Thoughts welcome!

Xenophon or Sallust would run intellectual rings around the US administration as far as understanding arche or imperium. Hundreds of junior academics like Bret Devereaux understand how the American empire works better than the people in charge of it let alone the Iranians or Iraqis or Chagosians.

These baboons have such a crippled understanding of reciprocity and systems theory that they don't seem to understand that European military weakness is part of a deal with the United States.  If European countries other than France develop an expeditionary military, they will use it in ways that the USA does not approve, just like the USA uses its expeditionary military in ways they do not approve.  If US IT becomes openly predatory and not just parasitic, the EU will introduce alternatives and relentlessly force US services out of the European market.  It took decades of work to turn the center of global imperialism away from invading Suez for kicks and they are throwing that away.

Someone with more time and a different education could explain the similar situation with US control over global finance and the trade deficit (if the rest of the world wants to build up US dollars, it has to export more goods and services to the USA than it imports).  Again, this is a source of unimaginable US power and wealth which a US administration is attacking.

I read an American being sad about the thoughtlessness in the group chat about bombing Yemen.  Just remember that nobody involved can explain how the US decided to invade Iraq, which is probably the single most destructive choice a US administration has made since the decision to back a puppet regime in South Vietnam with troops. There are no documented debates, no oral memories of reasoned argument, just a vague shift. The rot is not new and not linked to any one person.

If the CEO of Tesla were brighter or humbler he would hope that J.D. Vance has never read Il Principe about what to do with the enforcer you bring in to break some heads and terrify your new subjects.

Edward Niedermeyer wrote this about the CEO of Tesla https://niedermeyer.online/2024/11/07/means-and-ends/

"For me, (the CEO's) reliance on "ends justify the means" logic was one of the original red flags about his entire deal. I certainly wasn't doomed to always be a Tesla hater: I've always liked EVs, I believe strongly in protecting the environment, and I'm a lifelong west coaster who kinda loves the idea of having a "home team" automaker. What turned me off about Tesla early on was the cynicism: the willingness to simultaneously violate environmentalist principles and use them justify other bad acts."