Politics right now are chaotic, confusing, and unnerving. My idea is not to take the bait but to step back and think.

Trump is not going to take up too much space in my head. I believe in the power and promise of democracy; it made our country great, and I do not think it will die or fade away, not at the hands of Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis, and not in our lifetimes.

Don’t join the fray. I don’t see politics through the prism of panic and fear. Some of you have asked me to write about what I think is happening in politics right now – I was a political writer in another life – and I still like following it sometimes; I don’t want to be in the process, which is beyond reason or clarity at the moment.

Our democracy is alive and well, and responding slowly and painfully but steadily towards regrouping and reshaping itself towards a new America.

I like the perspective it forces me to consider. It keeps me thinking, not arguing or fretting.

Here is what I think is happening right now.

(Note: I don’t argue my politics with anyone, especially strangers, on social media, but I want to share my sense of things occasionally. These are my ideas; I am not a wizard or seer and never tell others what to do or who to support. I’m not trying to persuade anyone of anything. Take it or leave it.)

1. It is ludicrous to pay any attention to polls a year before an election and months before most voters pay much attention. No poll this far out has ever been accurate, and it’s been many years since the polling for any presidential campaign – including the last two – was close to reality. It is a broken and thoroughly discredited mode of prediction.

Most people have no reason to be candid with pollsters and no need to make decisions so far off. They cherish their right to listen and think about it. Hatred is exhausting. I can almost feel people tiring of it.

I’ll take my chance with my mind, eyes, and ears, with what I can hear, see, and read myself.

2. Donald Trump will not be President again. His genius is that he has manipulated most mainstream media into paying attention to every awful he does, thinks, feels, or lies about. They are stuck in this foul-smelling tar and can’t get out. They are also making a lot of money from him, and he is returning the favor by always managing to be in the news—an actual deal with the devil.

Because he dominates so much of the news, the notion of his potency and magic has been grossly exaggerated.  He is, in fact, pathetic and disgraced and increasingly ignored.

Once again this week, every candidate he endorsed was defeated, as is the new pattern.  They didn’t get to seize control of the election progress.  That is the most telling measure of his absolute power or lack of it.

This is not a politician on the rise but one who has fallen apart before our eyes. The prosecutors are all over him now; they will peck him apart; he has given them all the ammunition they need and much more. I feel sorry for him.

Trump is not well and not equipped to fight open battles in front of people more powerful than he is. That will tear him apart; look at his face in those photos. The lies aren’t working anymore. He is clearly coming apart, mumbling, ranting, and waving his arms. He is eating himself alive. There is no joy in the face or life of that man.

3. That does not mean he is more electable than he was – he isn’t and won’t be. He is the most self-destructive political figure in American history, and he will not be President of the United States again; I don’t care what any poll or pundit says.

Most Americans don’t like him or Joe Biden (I wish President Biden would step down), but when push comes to shove (or vote), few people outside of the MAGA world will vote for Donald Trump to be President again.

4. The Republican Party has made a colossal and historic blunder in pushing its long war on abortion. They have awakened their worst nightmare – women gaining real political power and crossing ideological lines to keep their freedom. If you really care about democracy and how it works, join them or watch them in the coming year.

Women are enraged and stirred up as never before in our history. They are sending one message after another that they won’t accept having their birth choices and health care taken over by nasty old white men in various mummified legislatures telling them what to do. Those men are not the future.

Victory and dominance won’t happen for the MAGA movement, and the GOP is paying dearly now and soon next year. In another of his great blunders, Trump has made enemies out of one of America’s most potent and influential voting blocks. They are not in the process of eating him alive. This is a person to pity, not to fear. His world is coming apart.

5. Be sure to dump on me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe Trump will end up as the Republican Nominee in 2024, no matter what the pundits keep saying.

The evidence against him – from theft to treason –  is devastating and just beginning to be revealed over this and the following year. He is already blowing himself up with narcissistic and increasingly sociopathic rage. Just look at him and try to think. I am not buying the media hype about his infallibility.

This process is just beginning, not ending. Trump is a hot mess, and hot messes don’t win national elections.

Nikki Haley finally figured out how to beat Trump when she called the enthusiastically annoying Vivek Ramaswamy a “scum” for revealing that her daughter is on Tik-Tok. That is a Trumpian response.

She is the first Republican Candidate with the guts to speak the truth; Ramaswaymy is scummy. She’ll first knock DeSantis out of contention and give Trump his most serious challenge. There is plenty of time.

6. Women are the big story now and for the foreseeable future. Seven times, they have voted to protect their freedom and reproductive rights in Red and Blue states with all kinds of people voting. They won every time. Is there any news bigger than that?

They will prevail and drag the Republican party down with them, as they have done this week in Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia.

Abortion was the dominant and deciding issue in all three states.

The issue goes well beyond abortion itself – women will simply no longer be dominated and abused by angry and power-mad white men determined to keep their power and money at the expense of others. The mainstream media is just beginning to grasp the importance of this. They are late as usual. They hate all kinds of diversity and blame it for all of their troubles.

7. Ron DeSantis has failed in just about every measurable way. Florida might like him, but when it comes to national politics, he is just an awkward and timid loser. It is almost painful to watch him try to become an ordinary guy, a populist. I don’t think they teach that at Harvard and Yale. I can’t stop laughing at those expensive cowboy boots he wears to Iowa.

He will quit and take his “war on the woke” campaign back to Florida with him. He blew it all.

8. That is another gross miscalculation of many Ivy League graduates – Trump, Hawley, Cruz, DeSantis –  desperate to be tough like their master and seize power by spreading hatred and more division. They are much too weak and narrow-minded to pull it off. The American public can often be manipulated and exploited, but they are not, in fact, stupid. This isn’t working, not for them, not for the country.

Trump is more charismatic than any of his challengers and crazier than all of them. Haley may be the only candidate tough enough to take him on and win. She is rising rapidly in popularity. That’s what happens during the primary season. Everything is on the table.

I’ve seen this story many times before. The media, as usual, only grasps what is right under its nose at the moment.

Trump, as always, is his own worst enemy. In the tearing down of Roe-Vs-Wade, he has created the monster who will do him in and end the nightmare he has spawned.

Anything can happen in presidential politics, and it often does.

These political races are not static, and those who claim to know for sure what is going to happen down the road are blowing smoke out of their butts.

9. Biden is a sad story. He seems too old and weak to lead this country now. He ought not to be running for re-election. But that doesn’t mean that Trump, an even bigger and unhinged mess, can beat him. He can’t. He will be fortunate to stay out of jail. He has been rejected by voters several different times. If he gets that far, he will do it again.

10. In many ways, this election will mirror the last one.  There aren’t enough people in the MAGA movement to take over the country. Women beat him last time and are hot to do it again.

It becomes more apparent by the month that the Republican Party has become a hate party,  determined to keep America as a white Christian male-dominated nation. It’s an impossible fantasy.

Almost all of the increasingly extreme positions the Republican legislators are advocating reflect that. How curious that they will embrace unlimited support for Israel but not a dollar for Ukraine, which does not arouse the passion of the evangelical movement or Trump’s MAGA people. Their favorite leader is Alexandr Putin; they like him; this is all we need to know.

This insanity will continue for the next couple of presidential elections. By then, American whites will be in the minority, and the new America – female, black, young, white, yellow – will begin to take charge and flex their muscles. It is too late to stop them.

10. There is only one pro-democratic political party, like it or not. It will take an increasingly shattered Republican Party years to recover, if ever. If he is nominated, this is why Trump is doomed to fail: His new hero may be William Randolph Hearst, once the most powerful man in America, who ended his life in isolation, trapped in another beautiful castle with nobody around him but servants and boot lickers.

If you want to understand Trump’s future, watch the movie Citizen Cane, one of the best and most insightful movies ever made. The movie is a story of how power is taken away just as quickly as it comes. Alone and raging in his castle, Hearst invokes Mar-A-Largo in almost every way, except he was a lot smarter than Donald Trump.

Hearst is Trump’s doppelganger. Nobody thought he would ever fall apart, either.

The keep- America- male- and white- and Christian party is, like its leader, a catastrophe that cannot prevail. The great irony of Trumpism is that Trump not only lies as often as he breathes, but he doesn’t believe any of the policies he argues for. He is T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Man.

He can’t stop talking but has nothing to say.

That drift has dominated almost everything the Republicans stand for. It is profoundly out of touch with the new and increasingly diverse America. The media insists on presenting the campaign as usual; it is a revolutionary party seeking to overthrow our government and political structure.

It will take some years, but profound and meaningful change is coming. We have to work for that change when we can and be patient. leading the Reinforcements are coming. To be healthy, there must be a longer view than Trump’s posting on his dying social media site.

Some in the Republican Party are one click below treasonous and getting closer by the week. I have stopped trying to understand and describe them. They are what they are and will be held responsible for it. Hate is exhausting after a while; most people don’t want to live this way. I can feel the stirrings of another revolution, not the one MAGA wants, but the one they fear.

The Republican Party is no longer a mainstream political party committed to democracy. It is a Frankenstein party led by a monster who can’t die or go away, and no one dares to stop. It’s just something I have to accept for now, and I can’t explain it and don’t care to try anymore. I’m sick of them and their endless whining and grievance. I’m not alone. Hatred and grievance are not policies; they are sicknesses.

There is no doubt in my mind that most Americans will not vote for a party seeking to overthrow our system and replace it with arrogant billionaires hungry for more power.

Trump, like his movement,  can quit or face reality. He can’t win, but he can blow himself up, and believe me, he will.

I’m looking forward to the next year; God Help Me. It is often painful and sometimes frightening, but I think the very idea of democracy is being reborn and appreciated.  It is messy and complicated to watch, but it was a miracle when it was born, and it is still a miracle. The world needs us more than ever.

I like the long view, and the interval, at least,  will not be dull. I’d suggest not despairing.