A still-forming thought:

Perhaps we might usefully view this pathetic situation as a major political party realignment in the US that has been left half-finished. When Nixon adopted Goldwater’s Southern Strategy and won, the Republican Party effectively became a fascist party — but the Democrats never became an anti-fascist party.

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[disclaimer: not a political scientist, just riffing here]

Plurality voting forces a two-party system. There will always be two parties (or if a third forms, the system will rapidly collapse back to two; this happened twice in US history).

The role of the two parties can change, however. Parties are coalitions, and coalitions are heterogeneous. There are lots of ways to draw lines through the myriad political interests to form two coalitions of roughly equal size. And those lines can shift.

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When Nixon adopted Goldwater’s Southern Strategy and won, that was a party realignment. The new foundation of the Republican coalition was “throw anti-Black racism lots of ethnonationalist red meat so they support the concentration of wealth.”

I’d venture that ethnonationalism captured to concentrate power is (or inexorably becomes) fascism. Nixon’s realignment made the Republican Party the fascist party.

@AnarchoNinaWrites’s post below on this topic touched off my train of thought here:

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https://jorts.horse/@AnarchoNinaWrites/114926186431482846