Chuck Darwin<p>Donald Trump is behind. </p><p>He trails in the pivotal postindustrial swing states <br />and is treading water in the Southern and Sun Belt states <br />— Arizona, Georgia and Nevada <br />— that could help him find an alternative path to 270 electoral votes. </p><p>In just a few months, Trump may join the exclusive club of🔸 two-time presidential losers.🔸</p><p>Of course, it is still too early to make any real prediction about November. <br />But the sharp reversal in Trump’s electoral fortunes raises an obvious question worth thinking about now: </p><p>❓If Trump loses, and perhaps especially if he loses badly, <br />what comes next for the Republican Party?❓</p><p>As striking as the relative electoral weakness of the Trump-era Republican Party <br />is its ♦️total inability to either govern or police the boundaries of its coalition. ♦️</p><p>Trump himself has no program beyond his own prejudices and impulses. </p><p>🔹“Build the wall” and “mass deportation now” <br />reflect a deep-seated hostility to nonwhite immigrants that has no basis other than <a href="https://c.im/tags/rank" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>rank</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/bigotry" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>bigotry</span></a>. </p><p>🔹“Stop the steal” and Trump’s broader obsession with so-called election integrity <br />is nothing more than an attempt to operationalize his core belief that he <a href="https://c.im/tags/cannot" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cannot</span></a> actually <a href="https://c.im/tags/lose" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>lose</span></a> an election, or anything for that matter. </p><p>🔹Fittingly, the Trump-led Republican Party declined to devise a platform for the 2020 presidential election <br />and produced a set of Trump-esque <a href="https://c.im/tags/slogans" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>slogans</span></a> for its 2024 one. </p><p>To the extent that there is a Republican agenda, it is a product of the hard-right <a href="https://c.im/tags/ideologues" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>ideologues</span></a> and conservative <a href="https://c.im/tags/organizations" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>organizations</span></a> that<br />💥 see Trump as a willing vessel and vehicle for their own interests.💥</p><p>Trump’s leadership has also occasioned the 🔸total collapse of the boundaries 🔸(such as they were) <br />separating the far-right <a href="https://c.im/tags/fringe" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>fringe</span></a> of American politics from its <a href="https://c.im/tags/mainstream" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>mainstream</span></a>. </p><p>The former president provides license for<br />— and inspiration to <br />— a large crop of right-wing extremists <br />who 🔥disdain democracy and openly fantasize about the use of violence 🔥<br />to eliminate their political opponents. </p><p>♦️“Some folks need killing,” Mark Robinson, the Republican Party’s nominee for governor in North Carolina, declared at a church event in June.</p><p>Trump’s Republican Party is a paradigmatically “<a href="https://c.im/tags/hollow" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>hollow</span></a>” party, <br />according to the argument laid out by the political scientists Daniel <a href="https://c.im/tags/Schlozman" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Schlozman</span></a> and Sam <a href="https://c.im/tags/Rosenfeld" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Rosenfeld</span></a> <br />in 👉“The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics.” 👈</p><p>For all its activity, a hollow party “demonstrates fundamental <a href="https://c.im/tags/incapacities" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>incapacities</span></a> in organizing democracy.” </p><p>Its zombielike commitment to tax cuts and deregulation notwithstanding, <br />the Republican Party from this vantage point is little more than <br />💥“a personal vehicle for Trump’s vendettas and fantasies.” 💥</p><p>It offers nothing to the public, they observe, “besides praise for its leader.”</p><p>❓So what happens if and when that leader loses yet another national election for his party? ❓</p><p>What happens when, <br />❗️in the face of conditions that seem as favorable as they could be, ❗️<br />the Republican coalition led by Trump 🌟still falls short?🌟<br /><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion/trump-republican-party-loss.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion</span><span class="invisible">/trump-republican-party-loss.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare</span></a></p>