I think the scariest thing for any moderate right now is the end result of now 40 years of conservatives dominating the national dialogue on the economy.
I believe strongly, and I'm not the only one, that the continued one solution fiscal policy of "cut taxes" will drive income inequality to disastrous levels while having minimal impact on the overall state of the economy. (Worse yet is that we're borrowing to make our budget in the meantime)
I see four outcomes:
I'm wrong. I admit that it's possible - cutting taxes and removing regulation MAY have a larger positive impact on economic growth in the long term than I estimate. Perhaps businesses WILL choose to act ethically without regulation and WILL choose to eat their bottom line to provide wage growth without rapid inflation.
The middle class gradually continues to erode and economic anxiety prevents any sort of protest and so nothing changes, things just get worse slowly over time and that's life. "I don't like to talk about politics" and "both sides the are the same" continue to echo off of the walls of office parks and "After all, economic anxiety gave us Trump; and nothing changed" is added to that repertoire.
Things get bad faster than scenario 2 and we see a radical pushback. No, not talking about people running in Democratic primaries as members of the DSA. I'm talking about actual socialists running and winning as populists in elections and pushing for radical reform that puts us way left of center.
People vote these guys out now, before it takes a more radical approach to reverse course.
Anyway, thanks for switching sides; I too am a former conservative (McCain was my last top of ticket Republican vote).