Biden is right now. It shows he’s calling the shots. He’s the nominee. If he loses in November, he’s no longer the Democrat party.
But he hasn’t rebranded an entire party. If Trump loses, it’s still his party. He will call the shots. He’ll still dictate who’s running, who’s not. Everyone who wants to run will seek his approval.
This isn’t a great argument; you’re pointing to a few youngish-but-Trumpy Republicans. So what? Going from that to “changing of the guard” is a leap. If these people were new and genuinely distinctive policy-wise, you might (sort of) have a better case. If Trump loses, they will either have to rebrand or become irrelevant.
They herald a GOP with more Qanon types in it than it had previously: the party’s been grinding toward something like this for decades. But they are new and different. That’s more significant than your examples—especially if Trump wins.
That seems, uh, fanciful. Especially because of Trump loses, unless it’s a squeaker, they’re gonna fire him into the dustbin of history posthaste.
And unlike 2009, social media has all the receipts. There’s no claiming you were really against something when there’s five hundred tweets of you supporting it.