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Great assessment!

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Too true. Trump Savior Syndrome (my coinage, the flip-side of the ever-prevalent TDS), incomprehensible as it may be, is splitting the Republican vote (I am referring the TSS being incomprehensible, not splitting the GOP vote). As for Biden, I believe you are correct - he will *not* be the Democrat nominee in 2024. I wholly expect Newsom and some diversity checkbox-filling failure on the D ballot. Politics in America is a disaster, and factionalism (and tribalism) via parties is largely to blame. But this is nothing new. Parties were already corrupting politics as early at least as the early 1800s. All one need do is read Joseph Story's lament of this issue, published (originally) circa 1834:

§266. There probably is no part of the plan of the framers of the Constitution, which, practically speaking, has so little realized the expectations of its friends, as that which regards the choice of President. They undoubtedly intended, that the Electors should be left free to make the choice according to their own judgement of the relative merits and qualifications of the candidates for this high office; and that they should be under no pledge to any popular favorite, and should be guided by no sectional influences. In both respects, the event has disappointed all these expectations. The Electors are now almost universally pledged to support a particular candidate, before they receive their own appointment; and they do little more than register the previous decrees, made by public and private meetings of the citizens of their own State. The President is in no just sense the unbiased choice of the people, or of the States. He is commonly the representative of a party, and not of the Union; and the danger, therefore is, that the office may hereafter be filled by those, who will gratify the private resentments, or prejudices, or selfish objects of their particular partisans, rather than by those, who will study to fulfill the high destiny contemplated by the Constitution, and be the impartial patrons, supporters, and friends of the great interests of the whole country.

A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution

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author

I've usually heard it as Trump Enchantment Syndrome, but TSS has a nice retro sound to it.

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Trump Enchantment Syndrome is new to me, but it works. I coined TSS because I've seen so many claiming things like "only Trump can save us," and so many memes applying Bible verses to him that rightly applied, refer to Jesus.

I also occasionally call it Trump Obi Wannery, in reference to that famous scene from Star Wars: Help us Donald Trump! You're our only hope!

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