I honestly think, and hopefully am super wrong, that the next 4 years will suck no matter who gets elected. The only real issue that I expect Trump to deliver on is unchecked immigration.
No matter what you think about Trump or his policies/motivations, one thing is for sure: the whole system will be geared to block and hamper him in every way shape or form. And ironically imo this is exactly why he is popular. That and the fact that not only does he withstand this insurmountable onslaught, but he fights back too.
The whole world looks ok with consternation how a majority of americans will vote for someone like trump: unhinged, megalomaniac, and with many character flaws. But what the whole world also doesnt quite get is what was taken from Americans over the last couple of decades or so. How the system is gaslighting the very sense of reality of the citizenry and is weaponizimg its institutions to quell any resistance or push back. You could say the malcontents, or deplorables as dems would call them, live vicariously through Trump in his fight against a system that is taking away their way of life and a whole lot of their wealth.
I've often said there are periods that are going to be loser presidencies regardless of who is in office. George H W Bush's presidency in 1988 being a good example. Carter in 1976 for another. You may be right about this one.
I agree that many Trump supporters believe that is what they are fighting for in him. Make no mistake, this is less a Republican candidacy than an anti-establishment one.
But even Trump's closest political allies are either careerist politicians or worse: flat out grifters. I'm gonna get vegetables thrown at me for saying this, but despite all the Biden hate, he's been one of the few politicans in recent decades who seemed in it for the service of something bigger rather than in it for himself or his own grand ideas of conforming the world to his whims. Because when it comes to the tax breaks Trump might champion, etc., it will be about the same circus with different clowns: the same system with different cronies taking away more of the public's wealth.
No matter what political candidate support, the unmooring thing for me is the idolation and idolatry. In Christian religious terms, which are semi-appropriate here, you should always be wary of a society that turns a person into a golden calf. I have never, ever in my life every put so much as a political politician's bumper sticker on my car. And there's a culture of people out there with face tattoos and an identity all wrapped up in another person. That the only first thing to know about a person is who they voted for president.
This is what fuels fascism. No good has ever come from politics run by a cult of personality.