Donald Trump is behind. He trails in the pivotal postindustrial swing states and is treading water in the Southern and Sun Belt states — Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — that could help him find an alternative path to 270 electoral votes. In just a few months, Trump may join the exclusive club of two-time presidential losers.
Of course, it is still too early to make any real prediction about November. But the sharp reversal in Trump’s electoral fortunes raises an obvious question worth thinking about now: If Trump loses, and perhaps especially if he loses badly, what comes next for the Republican Party?
It is rare in American political history for a single figure to dominate a party as thoroughly as Trump does the modern Republican Party without delivering a string of electoral wins or otherwise reshaping the political landscape. Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan all defined and redefined their respective parties, but they did so in the context of strong political organizations and movements that could deliver consistent, and sometimes crushing, victories over their opponents.
Not so with Trump. One of the defining attributes of his leadership of the Republican Party is the extent to which he has so thoroughly reshaped Republican identity while leading Republican politicians to a string of national election defeats. Following his surprise win in 2016, Republicans either lost or underperformed in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Trump himself was a one-term president, the first since George H.W. Bush lost his bid for re-election in 1992. And the closer Republican candidates tie themselves to Trump in a competitive election, the more likely it is they will lose, from Kari Lake in Arizona to Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania.
As striking as the relative electoral weakness of the Trump-era Republican Party is its total inability to either govern or police the boundaries of its coalition. Trump himself has no program beyond his own prejudices and impulses. “Build the wall” and “mass deportation now” reflect a deep-seated hostility to nonwhite immigrants that has no basis other than rank bigotry. “Stop the steal” and Trump’s broader obsession with so-called election integrity is nothing more than an attempt to operationalize his core belief that he cannot actually lose an election, or anything for that matter. Fittingly, the Trump-led Republican Party declined to devise a platform for the 2020 presidential election and produced a set of Trump-esque slogans for its 2024 one. To the extent that there is a Republican agenda, it is a product of the hard-right ideologues and conservative organizations that see Trump as a willing vessel and vehicle for their own interests.
Trump’s leadership has also occasioned the total collapse of the boundaries (such as they were) separating the far-right fringe of American politics from its mainstream. The former president provides license for — and inspiration to — a large crop of right-wing extremists who disdain democracy and openly fantasize about the use of violence to eliminate their political opponents. “Some folks need killing,” Mark Robinson, the Republican Party’s nominee for governor in North Carolina, declared at a church event in June.