It seems like we are watching the (slow) de-legitimization of American liberal democracy unfold. At least from my perspective. For example, the other day, my normally progressive-liberal parents were talking about how they would prefer to live in China at this point. It put me off guard ngl. People are losing faith, even if Biden's win has given many a brief dose of copeium. What do y'all think?
I was getting ready to write a paragraph response about Trump's 2016 win being the moment, but despite all the bullshit people still believed in America or whatever notion of it existed in their heads. I also had a very similar discussion with my proudly liberal parents after the 1st Trump-Biden debate, my dad actually said "I can't believe this is the best we've got." I made sure not to make a snarky comment that time.
I wonder how many other libs had a similar thought that night, and despite the later win aren't happy. The people who would aren't the type to post and I don't see a lot of people these days, so its hard to know, but I reckon its probably a sizeable block. If Biden actually follows through on his COVID plan of "mask mandate but no lockdown" then I think that block will grow. If a new political party doesn't fill the void left by the Dems then American Liberal "Democracy" will probably be stuck on a flat foot, waiting for something to knock it over.
You aren't wrong there about 2016. The energy Trump has put out there is not going away. We started seeing cracks in the trust of our liberal democracy around that time.
Biden isn't going to be able to fix this pandemic. He don't support lockdowns and he has flipflopped so far on mask mandates. The big thing he is going to screw up will be the COVID relief bill, which will likely just be tax credits and come at the expense of him getting to finally defund social security or medicaid after working his whole life to it. Biden will be the austerity president and the backlash to this is going to some serious anti-government sentiment unlike anything we have ever seen before. Biden very well might just destroy the Democratic party all together. There's no way they're going to win midterms and 2024 is shaping up to be the year we get a competent fascist to arise from the GOP.