It might help you to know that there has been a preponderance of republican based polls over the last few months have been playin a decided factor in making the election seem closer than it is.
When the election is over - and I remain fairly certain Harris will win - America is going to have to complete revisit how we handle polling. It is not just that there are now a preponderance of heavily right-wing polling sites that are given the same level of treatment as all other in the process known as 'herding' - it is also the fact that even before that the polls have increasingly become unreliable over the last eight years. In many cases they have underestimated Trump support but in the 2022 midterms they also vastly underrated Democratic support (the red wave that never materialized). Even allowing for that fact,. we have to argue about the term margin of error is often so large that at a certain point it is useless. If a poll says that Harris is winning Nevada by 49 percent to 46 percent, but has a margin of error of 4 percent, then Trump could win by one point and Harris could win by 7 - and in both cases thhe statistician can and often does claim that they were right. Nate SIlver has increasingly doubled down on that position even after being horribly wrong in 2016 (something, for the record, he's never admitted he erred in)
The threats you discuss are valid about Trump - I fear them too. But the early voting numbers have painted a different story so far. As I stated in your post yesterday I do believe Trump will be defeated. As for the threat of Trumpism, I don't believe that will go easily. The problem we face - - that so many people have embraced the idea of a fascist leader as part of one of their major parties is something that America will have to deal with and I have no easy solutions. But what I know is that the majority of the candidates Trump has personal endorsed ever since he became the leader of the party keep losing elections for the Republicans that they should be able to win and don't.
The real question I have - and no one can answer it for me - is not why the Republican Party has chosen loyalty to a man who not only disdiains them but gives them none in return or even why they've sold their soul to him but the very real fact that they've gained nothing for i.t Much of America now knows in no uncertain term what the Republicans are and what they will do in power - we learned thta after the Dobbs decision. They now have no identity none aisde from Trump and every election that he has been a part of of, including 2016, they lost seats in Congress. Indeed the biggest reason they should have broken off from Trump in 2020 HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH TRUMP. In the House and Senate both, the Republicans ran ahead of Trumop by 2.5 million votes. That was the clearest evidence that Trump was holding them down as a party.: IN 2020 THEY WERE MORE POPULAR WITH THE PUBLIC THEN HE WAS. I'm stunned that Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy didn't look at the vote totals alone and realize that theire was a political upside to casting aside Trump.
Maybe the Republican will fall apart after 2024; it has nothing left to give when Trump loses again. They've been a party based more on personality than policy for longer than you'd think (since Eisenhower actually) but their previous Presidents were either capable or at least likable. They have neither now. Again I think Harris is going to win and I don't think it's going to be as close as you fear. But at some point we do have to look at these problems which is what I'll be trying to do after the election in my column. (Mild plug but not really given the circumstances.)