One week ago Thursday, a Manhattan jury finds Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. That afternoon, Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson hold a hastily-arranged joint press conference where they proclaim that Trump has had his day in court like any other American and—now that a jury of his peers has found him guilty—it is time for him to suspend his presidential campaign.
Almost immediately, prominent Republican senators and representatives echo their call for Trump to step down. So do Republican governors across the country. With snap polls showing Trump losing to Joe Biden by over 10 points, the chorus of Republicans demanding a different nominee reaches a crescendo.
Trump remains defiant as the pressure builds for him to go. But by the weekend it’s clear to Trump’s campaign brain trust that their candidate has lost the support of his party’s elite and has no choice but to step aside. On Sunday morning, Trump announces on Truth Social that he is no longer a candidate for president.
That’s what would have happened in the country where we once lived.
Actually, it never would have come to this. Trump would have been abandoned by Republicans when he was indicted, if not earlier when he was under investigation. Or he would have been convicted by Republicans after being impeached a second time for fomenting an insurrection against the government.
Politicians usually can’t run fast enough from leaders who threaten to take them down, and being associated with a convicted felon is an extraordinarily risky proposition.
Yet Republicans are embracing Trump more tightly than ever. Why?
The answer lies in the structural complexity of our political moment. MAGA is a reactionary movement attempting to prevent dramatic generational changes from taking hold, and we are quickly approaching the moment that will determine if they succeed. Diverse generations of Millennials and Zoomers are poised to supplant Gen X and Boomers as the largest voting bloc in the next few years. The slow-rolling generational realignment that’s been roiling our politics for the past decade-plus is poised to take root. MAGA has perhaps one more chance this November to stop it.
Which means Trump isn’t going anywhere.
Trump’s voters are invested in their leader as the only one who can halt the perceived erosion of their status and power at the hands of others who don’t look like them, live like them, or share their values and experiences. No felony convictions can get in the way of that. And with Trump effectively securing a hostile takeover of the Republican party, Republican officials and candidates are beholden to Trump and his voters for their livelihoods.
So Trump’s supporters who feel they are under attack can readily believe that their leader is being unfairly targeted by hostile forces, and rank-and-file Republicans have no choice but to go along.
This dynamic will stay in place until the political calculus changes—until Republican officials and candidates believe the price they pay for aligning with Trump is greater than the price they would pay for abandoning him.
The fastest way to make that happen would be for Republicans to lose broadly in November. To get them to recalibrate the value of supporting Trump, they need to view MAGA as a net loser. That means Trump needs to lose to Biden by a larger margin than he did in 2020. Republicans need to lose the House and fail to take back the Senate. The loss has to be large enough to make Republicans reconsider their political future as a MAGA party.
Donald Trump’s pre-conviction track record suggests this is not an impossible outcome, regardless of polls that right now show the race is a toss-up.
An objective appraisal of Trump’s electoral track record reveals what a disaster he has been for the Republican party. A blue wave in 2018. The loss of the White House, House, and Senate in 2020. A fizzled red wave in 2022 followed by another blue wave in 2023. Trump himself has never won the popular vote.
And now he has to run as a felon.
This may not be an issue with his base, but his base isn’t enough for him to win the election.
Which means it falls to the rest of the country to decide whether they are comfortable putting the nuclear codes in the hands of someone who would have trouble getting work as a security guard.
This dynamic will stay in place until the political calculus changes—until Republican officials and candidates believe the price they pay for aligning with Trump is greater than the price they would pay for abandoning him.
Now, it’s always a little risky to assume what the American public will and will not do. A lot of people back in 1980 believed that a washed up second-rate movie actor could never be elected president. There were similar conversations in 2016 about an inexperienced real estate mogul who had failed at every venture he tried.
But it was also reasonable for people to see Ronald Reagan not as a Hollywood has-been but as a two-term California governor. Less reasonable—but as influential—would have been viewing Trump through the prism of the character he played on The Apprentice, where he was portrayed as a decisive and successful leader.
So while you could argue about whether the career histories of Ronald Reagan and the 2016 iteration of Donald Trump made them suitable presidential candidates, the worst you could say is they were unqualified to hold office.
But 34 felony convictions? With that you can reasonably argue that Trump should be disqualified from holding office.
The difference is subtle but important. There is no good rationale for electing a felon.
So will America do it anyway?
A stable America would not. Deep down, I believe we will not—even in this precarious moment. Reason says that Trump’s conviction is going to weigh him down with voters he needs to win. It certainly creates an opening for the Biden campaign to spin an expanded narrative about the danger Trump poses.
But the torment and anguish of acute change opens the door to things that would be impossible at other times. Nothing is automatic in a crossroads year when two dramatically different futures are on the ballot.
You seem less confident than normal, Matthew.