What happens when Trump loses?
What happens to the Republican Party after Trump? Say, for example, Trump loses the election (and accepts the results, which is obviously no sure thing). Does he immediately launch a fourth presidential bid? Does he shuffle off to one of his country clubs for his true passion: eating shitty hotdogs while kibbitzing with fawning strangers? What happens when Trump finally exits the political stage? When Republicans wake up, as if after an all-night rager, and see the house has been trashed?
How will they respond? What lessons, if any, will they draw, from their decade-long embrace of Diet Fascism? The fact is, Republicans have a big problem. It’s that problem which led to Trump in the first place.
The problem is this: the country is growing more diverse. Within a decade or two white people will become a majority minority population. For the Democrats, that’s not a problem. They’ve been the party that welcomes immigration, diversity, inclusion. (Not to mention equity, a word I am only using because theGOP hates it.) Rather than embrace demographic change, the Republicans have gone the other way. To the detriment of actually growing the party, the conservatives decided to conserve their white male support. If white people going to become a majority minority, then the Republicans had to ensure that their voters were enfranchised to vote in gerrymandered districts and the other voters would be subjected to more and more onerous hurdles to cross simply to cast their ballot.
It didn’t have to be this way.
After Romney lost in 2012, the Republican National Committee created a post-mortem to figure out where the party needed to go to remain competitive.The results were a problem for the modern GOP. The report, entitled, “The Growth & Opportunity Project” detailed some specific policy changes the party needed to take to remain competitive in the years ahead. Go after big business, for example, which is correctly seen by voters in both parties as having too heavy-handed a role in shaping policy. Attacking corporate greed would also help appeal to less affluent voters than the blue bloods to whom Republicans normally devote a fair amount of time, energy, and messaging.
One obvious problem: how does the party of Big Business turn on a dime and begin condemning their biggest fans, thanks to all the groovy tax cuts they keep giving and all the annoying environmental red tape they keep snipping away?
Interestingly, the report also concluded that Republicans should stop hammering wedge social issues, stop demonizing immigration, and try to reach out to the growing Hispanic electorate. It even went to so far as to propose the creation of a “Growth and Opportunity Inclusion Council.” Forgive me if I take a moment to indulge in a hearty L O fucking L.
If a party were actually trying to grow its membership, all of these would seem like sound suggestions. The problem is that, to embrace these changes would almost surely mean alienating around 30% of its voters – the resentful, rural whites who comprise Donald Trump’s base. Trump recognized early on that he could do a mash-up of the Growth and Opportunity Project recommendations – attack big business, present himself as the blue-blooded blue-collar guy, while also tacking hard right on the social issues. Demonize immigrants, attack anybody who’s skin tone deviated too sharply from “ecru,” blame the most vulnerable for the nation’s problems. It worked, at first.
His voters loved locking her up (didn’t happen) and building the wall (didn’t happen) and having Mexico pay for it (didn’t happen). They loved his message of bringing back American manufacturing (didn’t happen, although Biden has made enormous strides during his presidency). They liked the idea of fixing our crumbling infrastructure (didn’t happen until Biden). They liked that he was going to get tough on our adversaries (didn’t happen). And, more than that, they liked the way he said things. He sounded like one of their drunk friends. He sounded like a moron, sure, but the kind of moron who liked to go around picking fights with people and calling them faggots. In other words, their kind of moron. For a while, it worked.
Until it didn’t. Trump never won the popular vote, has never done much to help down ballot races, and has alienated nearly everybody he has worked with in the political sphere. His current campaign seems exhausted, no more so than his beleaguered running mate, JD Vance, who looks as if he is daily being sent out to drown in quick sand. Trump has never polled higher than the high forties, his disapproval numbers have always been higher than his approval, and even his base seems like they’re tiring of his antics. They’ll vote for him, of course, because they can’t bring themselves to vote for a radical San Francisco liberal and a stolen valor phony soldier, both of whom, naturally, will implement Full Communism on Day One, but I wonder if Trump turnout will be slightly depressed in this race, as people who might have been less inclined to vote at all pre-Trump now look around and wonder what the hell he ever did for them while he was in office? Those first-time Trump voters who swept him into office in 2016 may have tuned out after eight years of his bullshit. If his base turns out in fewer numbers. it’s over.
So what happens then? After the charges of “rigged,” after the court cases, the protests in the streets, the eventual Supreme Court ruling, and inauguration of Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States?
What happens then?
The idea that Trump would go quietly seems unlikely. He’s not going to simply retire to Bedminster and spend the rest of his days cheating at golf. He’s going to want to stay involved, either as candidate or kingmaker. Which means that the MAGA loyalists will remain spellbound. Which means that he will continue to insist that candidates kiss the ring. Which means the party will have a hard time stepping out from the lunar eclipse that is Donald Trump.
How does a party whose brand is scapegoating and demonization turn things around? How does a party that overturned Roe V. Wade find a winning message with women and families? How does a party that threatens to send in the National Guard and local police to knock down doors by the millions for the purpose of deporting people who have committed no greater crime than sneaking across the border ever expect to win majorities of support from those voters? How does a party that attacks LGBTQ people ever gain their trust; how does any vulnerable queer kid or their family ever move past the hatred leveled against them? How does a party with a significant and proud “Christian Nationalist” wing enlist the help of Americans who don’t want their kids force fed the Bible in public schools? How does a party that wants to return us to the 1830’s govern in the 2030’s?
Will the Republican Party even survive another string of losses? If Trump loses, obviously, that will be terrible for the party. But what happens if down ballot candidates end up getting sucked into the maw of Trump’s whirlpool? The GOP is in danger of drowning a generation of emerging talent in order placate the whims and rages of a delusional, eighty-year-old sundowning dotard.
Further, he will leave behind a Republican electorate who have been told that elections are rigged, all politicians are crooks, scientists cannot be trusted, climate change is a hoax, white people are being discriminated against, Christianity is under assault, and windmills cause cancer. He will leave behind a Republican electorate the same way a crashed 747 leaves behind a farmer’s field.
So, I ask again, then what? How does the party rescue itself? How does it rebuild? Rebrand? Can it? When you’ve got leaders like the noodly Mike Johnson saying that God told him he’s a new Moses. When you’ve got big personalities like Marjorie Taylor Greene just waiting to suck up whatever oxygen Trump doesn’t first inhale. When the few remaining moderates are just keeping their noses down, none of whom can win the presidency. And, as always with the Republicans, you will have a bumper crop of crazies licking their chops to inherit Trump’s made-in-China throne atop the party apparatus. How does a Republican party that thrives on insanity ever nominate somebody who lives in our shared reality? I don’t know that they can. In which case, I think they die.
Of course, Trump might end up winning in which case none of this matters. When I say “this,” I’m not talking about the election. I’m talking about (gesturing wildly) THIS.
What now indeed. To stretch historical similarities to the breaking point, Jan 6 was the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. Their Leader (who shall not be named) never received a voters majority but managed to get positioned as an absolutist. This group never goes away. They screamed at Irish and Italian immigrants, lynched Blacks on a whim, marched down Pennsylvania dressed in sheets and blocked doors to universities. Christ said that the poor are always among us but my take is that angry, dim—witted bigots thrive among us too
Lets win first, then throw his ass in prison for treason where he belongs. That will kill the spell quick.