Since the 2022 midterm elections, ending the Trump era in American politics has become, at the very least, a fifty-fifty proposition. While Ron DeSantis comes up in several national polls, the former president has been busy selling $99 digital figurines of himself to his most devoted fans.
The promised battle royale, in which Donald Trump emerges from Mar-a-Lago to defeat his adversary and reclaim the throne, may still be yet to come. But it’s also possible that Trump 2024 ends up where many people expected Trump 2016 to go, reduced to an act of self-indulgence that leans on its true supporters but fails to garner primary majorities.
If this is how Trump exits, slowly fading away as DeSantis reclaims his mantle, the people who most fiercely opposed Trump, both Resistance liberals and Trump Never Republicans, are likely to find the ending deeply unsatisfying.
There will be no media presentation of Trump leaving the White House in handcuffs; no revelations of Putinist treachery forcing the Trumps into exile in the Middle East; nor a denunciation written by Aaron Sorkin leading him to leave the public square in shame.
Nor will there be a dramatic repudiation of Trumpist style. If DeSantis defeats Trump, he will be like a copycat of his pugilism and populism, like a politician who promises to fight Trump’s battles more effectively and cunningly.
Nor, ultimately, will there be any accountability for Trump’s lenient GOP enablers. There was a certain amount of political accountability when “Stop the Robbery” devotees lost so many elections they could have won last month.
But the men and women who held their noses and agreed with Trump every step but the worst will continue to lead the GOP if he disappears; there will be no Liz Cheney presidential campaign to deliver the coup de grace to them all.
These realities are already generating some justified anger, spirit visible in the title of a recent article by Bill Lueders in The Bulwark: “Are You Leaving Trump Just Now?” Never forget, Lueders insists, that if Republicans abandon Trump it won’t be because of his long list of offenses against decency and constitutional government; it will only be because finally they are sure he cannot win.
As an original Trump Never supporter, I don’t criticize anyone for this reaction. If Trump disappears, it will be a victory for places like The Bulwark, but people naturally want something more than a quiet, limited victory after a seemingly existential long campaign. They want revenge. They want to feel like everyone finally agrees: Never again.
But dissatisfaction with the lack of repudiation or revenge is a normal feature of democratic life. The act of winning an election creates an alchemy of loyalty—”Vox populi, vox Dei”—which, in most circumstances, only defeat can slow.
The time it takes for parties to repudiate their most disappointing leaders can span decades or centuries (as in the case of the slow divorce between the Democratic Party and Andrew Jackson). And voters generally do not impose permanent penalties on parties, preferring to accept each election as it comes.
The southern wing of the Democratic Party was literally an insurrectionary party in the 1860s, and the northern wing was tainted with attachment, but they just came together as a normal opposition party after the Civil War.
The first Republican president elected after the resignation of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, paid no price for being one of Nixon’s staunchest supporters through most of Watergate. The public voted en masse against the supposedly dangerous radicalism of Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, then turned around a few years later and voted for the parties that nominated them.
Or, to take an international example, in the brief window when Russia was a semi-functional democracy, its main opposition party was, of course, the successor to the Communist Party, whose dictatorial government had just been overthrown.
In politics today, it’s not just anti-Trump supporters who are frustrated by voters’ refusal to look back. Consider the hope among conservatives that Democratic overreach on Covid-19 restrictions, especially school closures, would play a decisive role in the 2022 election.
This played a crucial role in the 2021 elections, when these policies were still in effect or up for debate. But once suspended, the public moved on, leaving conservative activists depressed that there was no lasting punishment.
This desire for revenge is completely understandable. How else can you ensure that serious mistakes are not repeated or that a terrible demagogue will not simply dress up as a sheep and come back?
The answer, though (and this is a tough medicine), is that the way to avoid this kind of repetition is to make sure you have a strategy for winning the next election and the ones after that—on the public’s terms, not yours.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
