A reader offers the following observations:

I guess the writing has been on the wall for a while now, but it’s still somewhat surreal to watch the GOP under Trump formally and officially double-down on Know-Nothingism and stupid culture-war social conservatism / law-and-orderism. To me, it appears that while, yes — the elites are hedging their bets in terms of wanting to retain control of the Trumpists in case they do win again (especially re: foreign policy, as you’ve noted) — by and large the long term plan is to let them rot at the kiddie table they’ll soon be relegated to politically (just as they have been culturally more and more as time has gone on).

Meanwhile, the right-leaning neolibs have begun their exodus from the Repubs and are heading to the Dems, cramming right-neolibs, left-neolibs, and the progressives together into one party, at least for the time being.

I also suspect that (despite the hopes of the MAGA crowd) the vast majority of people who are convinced by Trump’s law-and-order posturing (“they’re coming to burn down your cities, destroy your suburbs!”) are people who would have voted for him anyway, and that on the net he’s lost voters, largely those upset by his handling of the coronavirus situation. And with regards to the segment of voters fleeing the Dems to vote for Trump in reaction to the rise of Woke-ism, I’m skeptical that that group is large enough to matter, and I think it’s more likely that most people who feel that way strongly enough will probably just become disengaged from politics, or hang onto the Democratic Party. I could be wrong, though.