Agreed. Every election it loses in the meantime will amp up resentment and aggravate the USA's political dysfunction. I think of it as a counterpart of Brexit, which had similar populist drivers, and was something the country just had to get out of its system, despite the steep attendant economic and social costs.
The brexit referendum was supposed to answer the question once and for all, and stop the tory party split. Instead we have a split down the middle, and the split is far further right than it was in the Major/Redwood days of the 90s.
8 years on we're seeing the tory party massively damaged, an outside chance of FPTP meaning they're neither the second largest party in seats or in votes. There's a crazy situation where half the tory voters are literally voting for a company run by Nigel Farage. I suspect 90% of the voters would struggle to name anyone else in that company (it's not a party the way the tories or greens are).
Brexit didn't solve the problem, there's always something else to blame.
One of the most pivotal moments in UK political history was Farage surviving the 2010 plane crash. There's just nobody else as large on that side of the aisle that can operate outside of the party structure (including Johnson)
