What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

Nathaniel shared a tweet earlier about the rare nature of the losses that the GOP has suffered while Trump was on the ballot, comparing Trump’s failures to Hoover’s. That comparison aside, it has reminded me of a nagging thought I’ve had throughout the Trump presidency: Will historians forget how much of the country believed in Trump’s vision just because a majority (very slim in some races!) voted him and other GOP politicians out? We don’t hear much about what happened to Hoover’s base these days, for example. Or even Nixon’s.

As many of my colleagues pointed out, Trump’s speech just now … was surreal. Trump repeatedly said that he had either won the election (he didn’t) or that he would never concede (he hasn’t).

But it made me think of this analysis from the AP published earlier in November. One thing they found in their reporting is that, “[S]ome Trump allies acknowledge privately that using the courts to actually reverse Biden’s victory isn’t the point of their efforts. … Rather than actually overturn the election results, Trump allies say the goal is to help keep the president’s most loyal supporters engaged and energized for whatever he might pursue after he leaves office — even if that means leaving them ill-informed about the reality of what has unfolded in the election.”

This, if true, is disheartening for our democracy, because there are signs it is working. Distrust in the electoral process — especially among Republicans — is now at an all-time high.

Of course, the fact that this is all anonymously sourced should give one pause, but that unfortunately is the reality of this administration — leaks with few willing to go on the record. And it’s hard to have watched that press conference and ascribe any real strategy in it, in fact, it might be dangerous to give that level of credence to Trump’s claims, but at any rate, this does set a true troubling precedent in our democracy that we can’t undersell.

To answer your question, Sarah, I actually do think that losing control of the Senate will serve as a turning point in elected Republicans’ relationship with Trump. It will be aided by the fact that Trump also won’t be in Washington anymore and every tweet will no longer be newsworthy.

The past four years haven’t been particularly fun for many Trump-skeptic elected Republicans, and I’m sure they would like to get out from under his thumb. But Trump’s bully pulpit, the base’s enthusiasm for the man and the muddled 2020 results made it difficult for them to make a discreet argument for why the party should distance itself. The high-minded ideas of decorum and democratic norms weren’t really working/didn’t work in 2016.

Now, the Georgia runoffs are a discreet, dramatic, highly televised event that Republicans who wish to turn on Trump can use to greater effect than probably anything else during the Trump presidency. After all, nothing else matters if you can’t win.

(Btw, Trump knows this intimately, and that’s why he has launched such a campaign to convince voters he won. He likely knows he’s leaving, but his future power depends on whether the base sees him as a winner or loser.)