Between Donald Trump himself, top campaign surrogate Elon Musk, and J. D. Vance’s kingmaker Peter Thiel, the Oval Office is poised to become a billionaires’ lounge. The richest Americans have always exerted outsize pressure on politicians, who readily conform to their dictates or face consequences. But the usual class dynamics are set to be compounded by the direct intervention of individual, hyperideological capitalist cadres, who have grown bored with mere market domination and now pursue total social transformation.

The path lies open before them. With control of all three branches of government, the coming administration will likely waste no time in paring critical regulations, programs, and whole departments down to the bone. The result will be austerity for the many and an orgy of unrestrained profiteering for the few. Ordinary people’s material conditions will deteriorate further, leaving the electorate increasingly alienated and agitated. People will continue to gravitate to whoever speaks most convincingly of a radical shake-up, which won’t be the Democrats as we know them.