Be sold out before I get to put in an order.

The magats in congress will probably do whatever necessary to preserve their comfy jobs.

It will be like Reconstruction all over again. No one will have decisive authority.

a) he is vp and b)he has the all important r after his name on the ballots.

No money, no re-election support, and you’d best watch your back.

The better question is the power vacuum that will take place when/if Trump signals he won't seek an unconstitutional third term.

The behemoth won't die. It's got too much momentum.

JD Vance has Peter Thiel and also the rightwing "traditionalist" Roman Catholics behind him: technocrats enacting a Christian Dominionist vision, complete with AI-turbocharged surveillance (with DOGE access to our banking, medical, and mental health records...and soon our voting/party information)...skimming money out of the economy into nearly-untraceable cyber-currency hoards.

Even without getting further down the chain of succession, things look pretty locked in.

I don't think Vance has the political creds to garner much support.
I agree that MAGA will crash once Shitler leaves the scene.

VD Jance has neither the salesmanship or the ability to sway a crowd that the Fascist Felon has. He's an unlikable little putz who would never win a national election on his own. He'll go back to the obscurity he deserves, like Scott Walker. Remember him?

asswipes. Follow the money. Follow that they don't care.

will pass to Vance. Compared to djt's relentless outrage, Vance is a stack of syrup-free pancakes. My concern is that djt pulls that dirty trick of resigning in year four, leaving Vance as sitting POTUS. Incumbency is traditionally harder to defeat.

When he strokes out (not a predication, Statler & Waldorf. Cool your jets) I think a moderately fast deflation of his policies and organization will follow as the wind gets knocked out of their sails and the vultures feed off the corpse (I think that's why more than a handful stick around).

I’m not sure how much they fear Peter Theil though…

Fatso dies, Vance becomes prez. He steps down and Johnson becomes prez. Any takers?

Johnson is an attendant lord. He isn't equipped and is devoid of charisma.

JD Vance isn't charismatic either, but he has a more forward facing media presence.

Hopefully he ends up in the ocean before Trump.

Trump's voters won't elect someone in a wheelchair and baggage. It is one or the other. See Madison Cawthorn

And in the end, that's all they care about - using the treasury as a vending machine for themselves and their donors.

Vance has support from the Trump family, the oligarchs, and Hegseth. If they don't support him in day 1, they will have to on day 2 when Don Jr gets nominated as VP.

Nobody will win.

members would be more free to do what they want or might actually face pressure to do right in some cases since there will be more attention on issues .

the CULT SHIT would wane

I doubt JD has Congress in his pocket. Deep down, he thinks he is the heir apparent as he will inherit the mess left by TACO Don.

As for the show that would follow after a death of a POTUS, the accolades will all be LIES! FAKE tears, FAKE sorrow! FAKE mourners. Former FLOTUS 47 will have a hard time suppressing her smiles of relief.

I do not plan to watch. Will you?

nobody in Congress is beholden to him. He has zero charisma and is widely disliked by the American public. He will have considerably less power than Donald.

Authoritarianism is their end game. One leaders demise won't stop the usurpation of our democracy.

will the cult have less passion for Vance as they do for tRump? The Heritage Foundation and tech pals will push it through with Vance if tRump is somehow out of the picture, either dead or incapacitated.

Two evils, which is the lesser?

And is extremely unlikable. I assume many will try to shaft Vance in order to make their own run for president in 2028.

their base

Front just like Daddy, and Congress will do exactly as Stephen Miller demands

Putin and other billionaires have taken over the GOP so the Republican politicians will continue to do what they're told.

Voters' opinions don't really matter right now, and they're easily manipulated anyway. Even a significant portion of Democratic voters are also being manipulated by online propaganda funded by billionaires.

Trump exiting the stage is not going to fix this.

Typically, personality cults survive only when they become generational (as with the Kims in North Korea). Trump hasn't succeeded (yet!) in appointing Uday/Qusay (or Beavis/Butthead, whichever you prefer) to a putatively inheritable position, and even if he did, I doubt that either of those two degenerate nincompoops could take over MAGA for long. The arrogant but feckless Vice President, he of the furniture fetish memes that won't go away, isn't a member of the cursed Trump tribe, and is even more anti-charismatic than Dear Leader's semi-sentient crotch-fruit. MAGA are by definition authoritarian followers: insular, fearful, prejudiced and credulous, desperate for an apex predator "winner" to lead and protect them. Vladimir Futon is not that. He's just a mean, snarky little man with a lot of attitude and not much else. When Trump is gone - and may that be soon - I think the GOP will fracture as it tries to find a leader to which the MAGA masses will attach themselves like so many lampreys, but there aren't any of those because they've all transformed themselves into obedient, zombified acolytes of the One True Trump. We'll see something like scorpions rattling around in a jar trying to sting each other to death while the big money tries to figure out what to do with itself.

the Republican leadership was going to have a brokered convention to choose another candidate but because Trump was so wildly popular among the 80% of their base who are authoritarians they realized that they could not win without him. So they put an authoritarian Strong Leader who was not committed to democracy as their candidate.
After the tax cut for the wealthy was passed in Trump's first term some Republican politicians started to drift away from Trump but that split was quashed too, because of Trump's popularity.
After the failed coup attempt there were a few weeks when Trump's popularity declined among his base. But when it became apparent that he would not be held personally responsible, his popularity rose back to it's baseline. His base didn't care that he had tried to overthrow democracy, they cared that he had failed and might be punished.
During President Biden's term, Trump's popularity among some groups actually rose.

All of this popularity is because of propagandization of an authoritarian base. Propaganda works best on people when they are stressed. It seems likely that when the Republicans need to switch their base's loyalty to Trump economic conditions will be bad and people will be frightened. It is also possible that Trump could start a war to gin up support.

If enough propaganda can be fed to a stressed population, and especially if Trump could be coerced into accepting a "president emeritus" position, I think that the Republican base could be weaned over. If he dies in office with the economy spiraling downward, it might be possible to pin the downturn on Vance. That's when a war to gin up support seems very likely.

And the votes will be combined with extreme disenfranchisement and gerrymandering and an incredible amount of money from our oiligarchs, and incredible propaganda from reich-wing news, religion, and social media.

I think that it is likely that the Republicans will hold the House and Senate.

It's not going to matter if the figurehead is Trump or Vance, the force in control is going to be Putin.

By then the magats will probably already be realizing they’ve been had but will not know how to turn off the fascism.

They're too stupid to figure it out for themselves.

How will the Repukes know what Pootie wants?
Faux Noize will tell them, also Michael Flynn, Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein, and several other mouthpieces.

which means "no competitors for Stalin while Stalin lives," they likely have plans for keeping the game going or simply leaving chaos behind as cover. It must fit in with Trump, the last glue holding Magats together. So it is and will be large scale voter suppression, media enhanced "divisions", ignorancem large scale gerrymandering and every other dirty trick in the book, massive money (and not just for campaigns), establishing a kinder gentler Trumpism in some board-like gaggle of power brokers and wannabes. Since all these corrupt elements are as stupid and unpopular as humanly possible that leaves the sanity charism ball in the Dems court.

Every time the Democratic party passively hopes for a default reset giving them logical victories they can get disappointed big time by not hitting the default corrupt advantages that will be in place still, especially vote suppression. The extreme measures of cancelling elections, etc. are the current bugaboos that leave that main advantage untouched. Also hampered by the rich donor part of the party, good-willed or not. If the GOP crumbles- as it should!- all the corruption should be given a quick, consistent and merciless full court press and get rid of ALL Trump second term appointees and damage while trumpeting as much progressive public service as possible.

And protect the Vote!

Congress will attempt to coalesce around JD Vance, but he won't evoke the same rapid discipline.

Rubio and he will probably have to duke it out for the "insider" Trump heirs, but there is no Trump heir. They might do a Vance/Rubio ticket - my money is on that. It'll fail miserably.

I think in the immediate aftermath most of MAGA will support Vance out of reverence to the Dear Leader. What I’m curious to see is what happens in the months and years after. I think many different people will continue to try to carry the mantle by sucking off Trump’s legacy much like the GOP did in the 2000s with Reagan. It will honestly be tough to stomach it

Recommended.

There are numerous maga opportunists in DC that recognize that the country is rapidly approaching lame duck status, which will result in a post-felon era -- which will begin when our party regains control of Congress in the mid-terms. Since there are less than ten adults in the United States who like Vance, even if the felon croaks, they will uncut him as quickly as a school of piranha savage any pre-dead carcass.