Yeah, I have a feeling that if the theory has any legs at all the actual social moment will be pretty noticeable by the time it's over.
There are different permutations of your policy-based argument that could occur. Suppose the War on Terror winds down, the ACA gets partially unwound, Trump could radically re-engineer the country with trade and immigration restrictions, some dramatic things happen on the domestic or international front, Pence gets in for a term and loses, and we get the Dems back in under Tulsi Gabbard(?), on a platform of single-payer healthcare and a raised minimum wage, as demographic shifts put some big Sun Belt states in play. You could still have Obama as the precursor to the new Democratic party, his ACA as consequential in the sense of pushing the issue forward finally, his term the start of the wind-down of the imperial project, but Trump as the president who defines the turning.
You can splice those things out several different ways. We'll have to wait and see how things turn out.
(The above was just an example of a "4T" that started in 2008, with a more intense social moment starting in 2016/2017. It is not necessarily intended as a prediction, only an example).
There are different permutations of your policy-based argument that could occur. Suppose the War on Terror winds down, the ACA gets partially unwound, Trump could radically re-engineer the country with trade and immigration restrictions, some dramatic things happen on the domestic or international front, Pence gets in for a term and loses, and we get the Dems back in under Tulsi Gabbard(?), on a platform of single-payer healthcare and a raised minimum wage, as demographic shifts put some big Sun Belt states in play. You could still have Obama as the precursor to the new Democratic party, his ACA as consequential in the sense of pushing the issue forward finally, his term the start of the wind-down of the imperial project, but Trump as the president who defines the turning.
You can splice those things out several different ways. We'll have to wait and see how things turn out.
(The above was just an example of a "4T" that started in 2008, with a more intense social moment starting in 2016/2017. It is not necessarily intended as a prediction, only an example).