I want to be clear about where I'm coming from before I write my response: I'm an off-the-US-political map social anarchist who is Left in mind, heart and hand, and who--ahem--left the United States in summer of 2004 and have stayed living abroad since because I felt the country was likely going down the tubes.

From my perspective, both parties share a fair amount of the blame but the real issue is a Systemic one that ties into flaws in capitalism and our understanding of human psychology.

Having said all of that, you're right to be concerned if you support the Democrats. Basically, a mid-term is a referendum on a president's first four years. In general, people don't like change so as long as the president presides over a country that hasn't changed too much for the negative, they've got a pretty good shot to win.

How things looking so far? I'll let you be the judge, but from my perspective from over here in Japan, the US looks like a nuthouse and, if I had one of those Magic Eight Balls and shook it up and asked for the prognosis for 2022-24. I imagine it would repeatedly land on, "All Signs Point to Chaos."

Now, as a social anarchist, I personally like some chaos in my life, but I'm not your average American voter.

Next up, one has to look at the candidate himself. Who will it be for the Democrats? I don't think there's been a modern presidential election in which the president seemed unlikely to run. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe even when LBJ announced he would not seek re-election in 1968, this took everyone by surprise.

But with Biden? Considering most objective people look at his cognitive performance and have been worrying even before he became president and it's only gotten worse since, I think this fact alone makes it unlikely he'll run. Unfortunately, the vice president is historically unpopular, even less so than Darth---er, Dick---Vader....oops, Cheney!

I'll leave this here, lest this turn into a blog post of my own, but I'll just say there are aspects of your analysis regarding actual legit reasons why Trump appeals to so many that make me say, yeah, the Dems are in big trouble.

But if my analysis perhaps felt too close to home, I'll say that the real reason I think he might win is I watched some crazy-ass Chinese channeler on YouTube who plugged himself into a golden tin-foiled "device" and was able to bring through his voice a graveling sound AI from 1 million years in the future who said that Trump becomes the Global Dictator in the year 2026, and, well, if there's one person I trust most for my info it's crazy-ass Chinese channelers! (Ha ha---of course, I'm having some fun here, but I really did watch this video in that crazy spring of 2020 and I'm super sad that the YouTube AI folks somehow took it down because it was a total classic!).

Anyway, keep up the writing. I'm hoping I didn't come across here like I didn't appreciate it!