Just as in 2016, it still feels like an absolute dream that Donald Trump is victorious once again. For some, including yours truly, it may very well take weeks to finally realize that this is indeed our reality once again. But as time goes on and the euphoria refuses to die, the sheer number of additional wins and rippling after-effects continue to grow higher and higher.
The Democrats vs. Democracy
Two days after the election, Axios published a headline declaring Trump to be “the most powerful Republican president of the modern era.”
To quote one of the most infamous antiheroes in television history, my reaction to this headline was simply: “You’re goddamn right.”
President Trump has indeed laid waste to the entire Democratic Party. He ended both the Clinton dynasty and the Biden dynasty. He has erased virtually all of Barack Obama’s accomplishments, as the 44th president was forced to stake his legacy on his successor and his successor’s would-be successor. The Democratic Party ran the first two female presidential nominees in history, only for both of them to sail right into the propellers of the SS Donald Trump.
Nancy Pelosi was prepared to have her reputation as a Democratic icon solidified until she found herself placed with much of the blame for Harris’s loss due to her role as the “mastermind” behind the overthrow of Joe Biden. Even Chuck Schumer doesn’t emerge unscathed, as he lost his Senate majority this year, due in large part to President Trump’s comeback bid, including the defeat of three senators who had been in office for nearly 20 years. He also must surely be stinging from his failure to stop President Trump’s Supreme Court majority, especially as the president-elect is now primed to solidify said majority in a second term.
President Trump won the popular vote, the first Republican to do so since 2004. He is set to easily surpass his 2020 performance and receive even more votes nationwide, for the second-highest total in American history and the highest ever won by a Republican. He returns to office with, once again, a Republican majority in Congress that is even more ideologically aligned with his agenda than the last one. He also returns with the wisdom and experience earned from his first term, ready to more effectively implement his goals even despite expected Democratic resistance.
One of the most profoundly accurate summations of the Democrats’ obsession with stopping Donald Trump was made by Victor Davis Hanson, who compared their hatred of Trump to Captain Ahab’s legendary pursuit of the white whale Moby-Dick. In the end, their manic crusade ended just as it did for the one-legged captain: with their own total destruction.
The Grand New Party
But, equally as important as crushing the Democratic Party, President Trump has also completely demolished and rebuilt in his image the heart and soul of the Republican Party.
His dynasty-slaying skills were not limited to one side of the aisle. He ended the reign of the Bush family and turned the Cheneys into pariahs. In a 180-degree flip that may have seemed impossible just 15 years ago, Republicans now denounce the Cheneys as war hawks while the Democrats are embracing them wholeheartedly.
The NeverTrump movement is dead, buried, decayed, and forgotten. Does anyone even remember the likes of Bob Corker or Jeff Flake? Mitt Romney and John McCain are gone, both having wasted their potentially strong post-presidential campaign careers by selling out to the anti-Trump crowd. Eight of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump the second time are extinct. Larry Hogan’s bid for the Senate, once considered a likely pickup, completely flamed out.
President Trump won the 2024 primaries with quite literally no effort. He never showed up for a single debate, yet he crushed all of his opponents right out the gate in the Iowa caucuses. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who some people apparently believed had a chance at dethroning a former president, was humiliated in total defeat. His name was added to a long list of candidates who were once labeled as “rising stars,” all but guaranteed once upon a time to eventually become president; his presidential ambitions join those of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, and Nikki Haley in the ash heap of history.
But just as importantly as kicking elephants and taking names, President Trump also won over longstanding issues that were once considered at odds with the “conservative” agenda.
He singlehandedly turned the pro-Wall Street, unapologetically free-market GOP into a party that is much more skeptical of big corporations and much more willing to instead fight for the working-class American with language that would make Bernie Sanders proud. Trump won on trade, eliminating the GOP’s obsession with “free trade” and forcing the right to finally embrace the many benefits of tariffs and protectionism. He put a leash firmly around the GOP’s neck on the issue of welfare, rolling back decades of Republican rhetoric that Democrats often used to portray the right as a threat to Social Security and Medicare.
Not even two decades removed from the presidency of George W. Bush, Donald Trump ended the reign of the NeoConservatives and turned the infamously interventionist party into the anti-war party; driven by their obsession to oppose everything Trump does, it is now the Democratic Party that embraces forever wars.
And, of course, he made his signature issue the top priority for this brave new party. Immigration was barely even discussed in the 2012 election, as candidates instead chose to bicker over healthcare and tax policy. But since 2016, the new rallying cry for Republicans is no longer “low taxes” or “increase the GDP,” but instead “build the wall” and “deport them all.”
As NBC put it in a headline four days after the election, President Trump has “realigned the entire political map.” To put it most simply and definitively: This is Trump’s party—and Trump’s world—now. We’re all just living in it.
Changing of the Guard
President Trump’s victory is easily the greatest Republican victory in modern history, not because of sheer electoral magnitude but because of the almost unique nature of the comeback he had to pull off in order to achieve it. The mainstream media was ready to dismiss him as a pariah after 2020, never again to set foot in Washington, D.C.
Now, he is prepared to ride back into the capital on a wave of even greater support than he achieved in his prior two races. He expanded his own electoral map and finally won the popular vote, proving that a majority of the country does indeed support the America First agenda.
Up until Trump came along, the gold standard for the Republican Party was the 40th President, Ronald Reagan. For nearly 30 years after his departure from office, every Republican presidential primary came down to a contest of which candidate could most passionately declare that they were the second coming of Ronald Reagan.
But truth be told, the Republican elite never even cared for Reagan’s agenda, his charming personality, or his penchant for quick quips. They only cared about one thing and one thing alone: his electoral maps. The GOP machine simply assumed that if someone came along who could basically be a carbon copy of Ronald Reagan, then they too would achieve landslides of over 40 states and over 400 electoral votes.
As this election has proven, our country is long past the era where such landslides are achievable for either party. Every electoral victory since 1984 has consistently shrunk, with George H.W. Bush’s victory being lower than Reagan’s, Clinton’s victories being lower than Bush’s, Obama’s victories being lower than Clinton’s, and Biden’s “victory” being lower than Obama’s.
But, for all of their larger electoral totals, none of these past presidents can boast of achieving the greatest political comeback of all time as Donald Trump just did. With one exception, no Republican candidate since 1992 can claim that they have won the popular vote. And despite all of the adversity, he has achieved the greatest electoral victory for a Republican since 1988. When you realize that Bush Sr. was essentially nothing more than a third term for Reagan, then you can also deduce that Donald Trump is indeed the greatest Republican president since Reagan himself.
Or, more accurately, even greater.
Reagan had plenty of flaws as far as his policies went, from amnesty to support for gun control later in life. The effects of decades-long nostalgia and proverbial drooling over the prospect of another 49-state landslide have long clouded proper judgment of his actual agenda by many on the right. He served his purpose at the time, particularly in regard to ending the Cold War. But his time is past. Even Reagan himself would not want the Republican Party to turn him into such a demigod as he has been up to this point.
At long last, the party has finally moved on from the Republican standards of old. The GOP has finally let go of dusty names from the past. The Don has taken The Gipper’s place as the new avatar for what it means to be right-wing in America.