Regime Change 2029

On the only acceptable approach going forward.

(Credit for the voiceover for this article goes to the great Samuel Lipson)

If there was any one defining story in American politics in the year 2025, it was how the Trump administration and its allies were sent back down to Earth. Exactly one year ago, the president and his movement were riding high, with the highest approval ratings they had ever seen and a cowed elite class ready to work with them. The same liberal opposition that had met them with such fierce opposition during their first four years in power was now demoralized, discredited, and flat-out broke. But despite everything, it only took a few months—hardly any longer than the first time—before Trump’s popularity tanked, his coalition shattered, and his opponents re-mobilized and took back initiative. What once looked to be fully-baked-in realignment appears to be, at best, a missed opportunity for one.

It’s all good news—fantastic news, in fact. The horizon of possible futures that once seemed completely closed has once again opened up, and the present no longer seems fated to be permanent. Yet it might be the case that that horizon may open up a little bit too far. As the second Trump administration has crashed and burned, the same elite liberal class that once outdid nearly everyone in prostating themselves before the president has been re-seduced by the defining delusions of his first four years. They are starting to once again convince themselves that his win(s) were/are simply aberrations, and that a return to pre-Trump “normalcy” is in reach for the Democratic Party as long as it is as passive and inoffensive as possible. After all, they had seen smashing electoral victories throughout 2025 while sticking to the same exact playbook from Trump 1.0. Who’s to say that James Carville wasn’t onto something last February when he called for Democrats to roll over, play dead, and wait for the American people to miss them?

January 2026 provided an answer, and it was a very thorough one. Even if Trump’s 2024 victory wasn’t the kind of era-defining realignment that it was advertised as, it was still a very real victory, and it will still have a very real legacy. Overseas, the administration’s sudden application of its unique brand of unchecked childish imperialism has accelerated an already-ongoing process of decoupling from the United States, which is now seen as a fundamentally irresponsible power by even its most longstanding allies. At home, they have begun to use a lavishly funded ICE as a political secret police, occupying cities and executing dissidents in the streets. It’s a waking nightmare, and it is not going to go away when Trump does. For however flawed they may be at communicating with the public and accomplishing what they promised, the people in his administration have succeeded in creating something built for the long haul: a set of institutions and precedents capable of exerting both direct and indirect influence long after they’ve officially lost power.

No matter what happens in 2026 and 2028, none of this is going to go away by itself. If another Democratic administration takes power in 2029, they are not going to enjoy what the Biden White House did in 2021: i.e., a world open to its pretensions and an administrative state left mostly functional and intact. Instead, they will be forced to contend with a bona fide Trumpist deep state: a bureaucracy, foreign policy doctrine, and political world shaped in his image and built to carry out his priorities. They will be facing a regime, and they will not be able to succeed unless they recognize it for what it is and set their minds on dismantling it.

Winning Power, Part I: Aren’t They Acting Like There Won’t be an Election?

Before we talk about the best way to approach things after Trumpism, we must address the very large elephant in the room: whether or not we’ll ever get to that moment in the first place. While the current administration has let bad election results come and go so far, I doubt that you need me to tell you about how central election denial is to the MAGA movement as a whole. They went all-out on overturning the 2020 election results after they lost, were seemingly only thwarted by the skin of their teeth, and then went on to build their ultimately-successful comeback campaign around the lie that they were jobbed out of a second term. Now, they’re back in power, and they’ve governed as such uncompromising extremists that they’ve led many to assume that a fix is already in. How can one explain their recent behavior if not by describing it as the actions of those who do not care about what the public thinks?

It’s a tough question. The line between incompetence and malevolence is always thin, never more so with this administration. All else considered, however, even the Trump administration’s most lunatic stances are best understood as the work of the delusional, not proof that they have already achieved dictatorial power. As for why, the best place to look—believe it or not—is the looksmaxxing guy.