AUGUST 2025 – In late November 2023 – nearly a year before the presidential election – public intellectual Robert Kagan penned one of the most prescient works of political analysis ever posted to a news site. He wrote, in The Washington Post, that Trump’s election, even then, was increasingly inevitable, and people should stop pretending it won’t happen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/
Well, pretty much everything that Kagan predicted came true – through the 2024 campaign, and after the election as well.
Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge. But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, if not downright impossible.
The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor. Until now, Republicans and conservatives have enjoyed relative freedom to express anti-Trump sentiments, to speak openly and positively about alternative candidates, to vent criticisms of Trump’s behavior past and present. Donors who find Trump distasteful have been free to spread their money around to help his competitors. Establishment Republicans have made no secret of their hope that Trump will be convicted and thus removed from the equation without their having to take a stand against him.
All this will end once Trump wins Super Tuesday. Votes are the currency of power in our system, and money follows, and by those measures, Trump is about to become far more powerful than he already is. The hour of casting about for alternatives is closing. The next phase is about people falling into line.
Kagan’s piece generated nearly 19,000 comments – few of them disagreeing with his premise.