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◼ ELECTION Bloomberg Businessweek November 9, 2020▶ Neither is Trump. If he’sdefeatedthistime,
he could even run again in 2024TRUMPISM
ISN’T GOING
AWAY
As the ballot-counting drags on at press
time, President Trump’s fate looks
grim but is still unsettled. The fate of
Trumpism, on the other hand, is clear:
It isn’t going away. And Trump himself
may remain in the political spotlight
even if he loses.
As the Electoral College battle extends
into overtime, the results already high-
light the ways in which Trump’s four
years in office have imprinted his stamp
on the American political map. Even if
he squeaks through with just enough
support to secure another term, he’s
changed U.S. politics in a way that is per-
ilous for the Republican Party—and will
be difficult to undo.
Whatever the GOP once stood for,
voters today associate it with one thing:
Donald Trump. Democrats went into
the election believing this would be
an unalloyed disaster for Republicans’
fortunes. It wasn’t. Instead of a “blue
wave,” the result was a roiling cross-
current that drove GOP gains in the
House of Representatives and limited
Democrats’ advances in the Senate,
even as it shifted key states in the elec-
toral map to Joe Biden.
The clearest sign of why that’s a
problem for Republicans comes in the
races that have been called. The elec-
tion results confirmed the movement
of suburban voters away from the GOP,
even though it retreated in some places
from 2018. Regardless of the outcome,therealignmentofthesuburbsfromred
tobluehaspickedupastonishingspeed
duringTrump’stumultuoustenure.
In2016,evenwhilelosingtoTrump,
HillaryClintonbestedBarackObama’s
performance in the suburb-heavy
statesofArizonaandTexas.In2018,
votersoustedRepublicanincumbents
insuburbanareasaroundDallas-Fort
Worth,Denver,theDistrictofColumbia
(Northern Virginia), Minneapolis,
NewYork(northernNewJersey),and
Philadelphia,handingDemocratscon-
troloftheHouseofRepresentatives.That
erodingRepublicansupport,especially
amongwhite,college-educatedprofes-
sionals,lookedtobea badomenfor
Trump—butnoonecouldbecertain.
“In 2018 it wasn’treallyapparenthow
unpopularTrumpwasinthosesub-
urbsbecausetherewasnopresidential
racethatwasbeingtestedontheballot,”
saysDavidWassermanofthenonparti-
sanCookPoliticalReport. OnNov.3 there
was,andtheverdictwasn’tgreat.
ThesuburbanrevoltagainstTrump
andtheGOPheldupinmostofthe
areasDemocratswontwoyearsago.
Butit didn’textendtothesmaller,red-
leaning metro areas such as Cincinnati,
Indianapolis, and St. Louis that they
hoped to add this cycle, or reach House
districts in Texas they’d expected to
gain. And the blue wave from 2018
ebbed, costing Democrats seats in sub-
urban districts like Oklahoma’s 5th andSouth Carolina’s 1st, where Republicans
regained control. After the 2018 election,
a popular refrain among Republican
strategists was that suburban voters may
not love Trump, but they were happy to
cast a ballot for their local Republican
representative. At least in red states, that
still appears to be true.
Nevertheless, over four years,
Trump has driven the Republican Party
to near extinction in suburbs across
America because most voters there
find him repellent. This trend is most
pronounced in the areas of the coun-
try that are growing the fastest—places
such as Arizona’s Maricopa County,
which encompasses the Phoenix sub-
urbs. In 2012, Mitt Romney beat Barack
Obama there by 147,000 votes. In 2016,
Trump edged Clinton by 41,000. This
year, when all the ballots are counted,
Biden could cement Arizona, a bedrock
of the Republican electoral coalition for
decades, as a new battleground state.
Republicans can’t build a solid gov-
erning coalition without first figuring
out how to fix their suburban prob-
lem. “It’s simple to say, harder to do,”
says Kirk Adams, the Republican for-
mer speaker of the Arizona House of
Representatives, who represented a
suburban Phoenix district. “People
in the suburbs want government to
work. They want it to be effective and
to solve problems. They don’t want to
be associated with anything that has
even a tinge of racism. For the GOP to
win them back is going to require can-
didates who speak to issues that they
care about and do it in a way that is
civil and smart.”
But for the last four years, all the
momentum has gone the other way.
Republican politicians at every level
havelearnedthatthepathtosuccess
intheTrumperaentailspraisingand
emulatingthepresident.AndNov.3’s
better-than-expectedresultsareunlikely
to drive a reform movement. Breaking
away from him now—even if he loses—
may be impossible. Currently, many
Republican voters evince more excite-
ment about QAnon, the pro-Trump,
anti-Democratic conspiracy theory, than
for returning to the sober competence of