Trump is most likely to be replaced with somone with at least nominally the opposite platform. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, ? is really not more of the same. Hell, he already got thrashed in the last election. It may not look like progress, but people are willing to tackle each sides failures to score points. This tends to remove the absolute dumbest policies.
Mao on the other hand was able to double down and maintain power through the great Chinease famine. This was after a policy of killing off at least one land owner in every village. It’s hard for most people to get just how quickly things can deteriorate without external corrections.
People who vote populists have both fickle loyalties, and short memory. The OP is right. I myself began to sense the trend back in nineties, back then there were centrist ultrapopulists, now the cohort catering to their electorate just changed their purely nominal titles from centre to right.
Trump did better during his mid-terms then practically any predecessor and his approval ratings were recently higher then Obama at the same period of his presidency.
They lost the house, that’s the real test of a president’s midterm. It normal to lose some seats and same thing happened to Obama, but even still the shift was unusually large.
Such shifts are likely very good for countries over time.
The biggest risk for China is the system failing. Mao was being given bad data because the system in place rewarded people lying to those above them. This becomes common in many dictatorships. Eventually you get a lot of ‘dumb’ choices because accurate information is really important for any government to function.
> [...] his approval ratings were recently higher then Obama at the same period of his presidency
That doesn't look to be correct. Scroll down on this page [1] for approval, disapproval, and net approval comparisons between Trump and all past Presidents back to Truman at the same points into the term.
