Matt Yglesias: belief

Transcript context

…What’s the most plausible scenario for that rupture? The Civil War — we know how that went. The Constitution, Articles of Confederation — that’s past history. What do you actually see happening? Not a prediction, but just the modally most plausible path? I think the configuration would involve something like a very unpopular Republican administration being replaced with a very left-wing Democratic president who, for the demographic-balance reasons in Congress, doesn’t have majority support in the Senate, and who then faces a lot of pressure from his supporters to govern in extra-constitutional ways. Then conversely, a lot of elite actors in the business community, in law enforcement, in the military are very motivated to resist that president’s factors. It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen in Latin American presidential-type systems, and that could happen here very plausibly. That’s not Joe Biden, right? But the Democratic primary could have gone in different kinds of ways. Eight, twelve years in the future, you might have a different outcome in this sort of situation. Now, you and I both know Donald Trump is not favored to win, but he does, in fact, have some chance of winning, even with very high unemployment, serious problems with the pandemic, a long history of being corrupt, other issues surrounding rhetoric I don’t need to tell you. What is your best account of why Trump is still in the race?…

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