One of the more interesting pieces of writing over the weekend was Robert Reich’s report on his meeting with a friend who had been a Republican Congressperson.

Him: So the moment Trump does something really dumb – steps over the line – violates the law in a big stupid clumsy way … and you know he will …

Him: They’ll get as much as they want – tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare – and blame him. And he’s such a fool he’ll want to take credit for everything.

Me: So what now? What are your former Republican colleagues going to do?

Now, this lines up with what I’ve heard from other people, and the bit at the start with ” You kidding? I was surrounded by Trump voters. I’d have been shot.” also aligns with what I’ve said a few times to the derision of some liberals, who don’t really believe violence would happen.

My take is the same, but more succinct. Trump has a base. If he keeps that base happy, the Republicans won’t dare impeach him. Even if you don’t believe there would be violence (I think it’s quite possible), these are the sort of people who would make their congress members lives quite miserable and would definitely primary them, with a good chance of winning.

The problem here is that, for example, that some of the plans floated are insane, and will gut Trump’s support. He can get away with cutting taxes and even reducing mortgage subsidies (though it was stupid of him), but he can’t get away with cutting Medicare or Social Security. He said in the primary that he would never do so, or allow it. If he does, he’s toast, it’s that simple.

People will know if this happens in the sense that they will feel it in their lives. The same is true of the Obamacare repeal: People will know if they’re not getting health care they used to get. (Note I didn’t say insurance, but health care.) If Trump actually replaces Obamacare with something about as good or better, there’s no worries. If it’s repealed and placed with shitty health care savings plans or tax write-offs which don’t actually add up to as much care as even Obamacare offered, people will know.

Trump’s core promise is to make the lives of people who lost from the last 40 years of neoliberal politics better. (He didn’t use those words, but that’s what it amounts to, and that’s how his own base understands it, again, using other words).

If he makes the lives of those in his base better off, he’s golden, and the GOP will show their belly. If he doesn’t, they will turn on him and rip his belly out. It is about that simple.

Trump doesn’t need to be popular with everyone. It doesn’t matter that the women’s march produced more people than his inauguration, despite his squealing about it: It is irrelevant because those people couldn’t produce enough people in the right states to with the election AND, as with previous great protests, nothing appears to have been built on top of the protests. It’s nice they all showed up, but they aren’t being asked (or organized) to do things that matter in the future, for all the talk of “the resistance.” If you wanted power, you’d want to be able to get one-fifth that crowd to show up when needed to oppose specific bills and actions by Congress, for example.

All that Trump needs is to make the lives of the people who voted for him, and a few more, better. If he does, he doesn’t get impeached and gets re-elected, and his deranged screams about how reality is the way he wants it to be (biggest inauguration crowd) are irrelevant.

Trump gets this if he listens to the right people. The more he listens to what people like Pence and Priebus and Rand Paul want, the more likely he is to get impeached quicker. The more he listens to Bannon’s populism in particular, and allows people like Kushner and his daughter Ivana to mitigate the worst cruelty desired by Republicans, the more likely he is to get two terms.

This puts some of the opposition in the odd position of needing him to be maximally cruel and to not help ordinary Americans in the states he won. They need the worst people to win (Kushner, Bannon, and Ivanka are not even close to the worst people in DC).

Trump is immensely flawed. The need to be seen as the bestest, reality be damned, makes it hard for him to always make good decisions. This is not, again, to say he isn’t competent by any useful definition of the word (he shits on a gold toilet, had sex with some of the most beautiful women in the world and became President when almost no one thought he could), but it also doesn’t mean he doesn’t have issues. Not every man or woman who is capable of achieving great things is equal.

Those who want Trump to fail should be careful what they wish for, as well. Pence is a theocrat’s theocrat, and not amenable to influence in the way that Trump is. He’ll parse as a lot less crazy, but his policies won’t necessarily be better and for many, they will be worse.

But bottom line: Trump keeps his base happy or he gets impeached. He delivers a better enough life for people who voted for him or would consider voting for him, or he doesn’t get his second term.

It’s that simple.

Now we will know whether he’ll last within a couple months or sooner. We will be able to tell from his budget, his first series of actions, and whether he allows real cuts to Medicare and SS, and replaces Obamacare with something at least about as good.

All you have to do is evaluate how those things will feel, once they’ve played out. I predicted the shape of Obama’s economy the second I had two pieces of information: his economic team and his stimulus. I wrote in early February of 2009 that his economy would never recover for most Americans, and it pretty much never did (only in 2016 was there an increase in median wages, and employment as a percentage of population never recovered).

Because Trump is potentially changing so much, it will be a little harder to tell, but I still expect it to be entirely clear by the end of March, and quite possibly within a few weeks.

Everything after that will just be playing out what Trump and the Republican Congress have already decided on, and their inevitable effects.

So chill and watch, the future will its shape soon enough, and for quite a few years in advance.

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