Unequivocally worse.

Trump and his ilk want fascism, because it gives the capitalist class the most control over the people and our society. A smarter Trump would not only be instilling fascism but would be doing so in such a way that could actually win people over by being conniving and coercive to regular folk instead of just being a loud mouth bigot that strokes the egos of the lowest common denominator in American culture.

I've debated this a lot with friends and family, usually in terms of trump dying and Vance taking power.

I'm not sure which is worse and I'm scared to find out.

Regardless, I think as things get worse, we get dumber and more polarized, increasingly easy sounding solutions that are terrible in reality, on both sides, become more and more appealing. And that means things are gonna get a lot worse.

Not too long ago I remember the bookmakers had the Rock and a few other shocking celebrities having respectable longshot odds at next President.

Saw your instance domain and thought I'd add something from home that Malcolm Turnbull has repeated a lot about American politics, which is that when you lack compulsory voting, government parties no longer have to appeal to a broad majority but instead can gain election by exciting a crazed minority with whatever sticks at the wall. Hate wins

I cannot agree with this enough.

Honestly, I think that "well they don't meet all MY checkboxes so who cares" is the most selfish privileged bullshit ever and it breaks my heart that it usually comes from my side which ostensibly cares about the marginalized.