Where, Exactly, Are the Republicans Headed?

credit: iStock / ilbusca

Let’s first establish a little context.

• In our 2016 presidential election, almost 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. Nonetheless, due to peculiarities associated with our Electoral College, Trump was elected as our president, fair and square.
• In our 2020 presidential election, roughly 7 million more people voted for Biden than for Trump, and Biden received 306 Electoral College votes compared to Trump’s 232. What’s more, the Democrats achieved a federal trifecta, with majorities in the House and Senate, in addition to the presidency.
• So far Biden’s approval rating is running somewhere between 53 and 60%, whereas Trump’s rating never cracked 45.5% during the comparable period of his presidency, and his popularity never topped 50% during his entire four-year term.
• Trump’s public image has been very consistently and strongly built around an ethos of winning.
• By any objective evaluation, Trump’s presidency was mostly a failure (see this summary from Business Insider as one example). As a populist candidate, he promised to help out ordinary Americans. But his signature tax cuts mostly benefitted the rich, without spurring any notable new investments. He promised to replace Obamacare with something better, but instead simply did all he…