The American two-party system is built around the old British principle of a party of the “court” that is in power and a party of the “country” representing those who wish to replace those currently in office, not to overthrow them. A loyal opposition, which wishes to extract concessions or shift the balance of power within the system, is tolerated. A revolutionary opposition, which threatens to shake up the entire system, is not tolerated. Candidates with the support of only a minority of the American elite such as Richard Nixon, Teddy Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan, are tolerated, though often undermined. Those who are viewed as a threat to the entire system – i.e., Donald Trump – are a different matter.
Since the founding of the United States, a loose alignment of professionals, businessman, politicians, and local elites who hold social power has proved remarkably effective at uniting to prevent candidates who do not accept the premises of the system, or, more often, do not understand them, from reaching the presidency. From Alexander Hamilton to Patrick Henry, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, and Ross Perot, these candidates are isolated and painted as a danger.
Occasionally, however, they will win a major party nomination. That happened in 1896 when Williams Jennings Bryan captured the Democratic nomination and in 1964 when Barry Goldwater won the Republican nod. In both cases, the candidates found themselves crushed under the weight of a financial and social mobilization unprecedented for decades.
This was precisely what was supposed to happen in 2016 when Donald Trump won the Republican nomination. Had the 2016 election resulted in the expected victory for Hillary Clinton, voters would have been reminded that going against the preferences of college-educated professionals is fatal.
Democrats, too, would have been reminded that with the support of that constituency, a candidate as flawed as Hillary Clinton can become president. The Republican Party would have obediently nominated a moderate, pro-business, pro-establishment candidate in 2020, and by strategically swinging between the two parties, white college graduates would have maintained their control of both.
That is not what happened. Donald Trump won, and in doing so, he risked doing something more. If he showed that it was possible to win without the approval of elites, then it was possible politics would polarize along educational lines. If he succeeded in winning again after having done so, it would potentially break their power permanently.
Forget abortion. Forget mean tweets. Forget Putin. The unprecedented mobilization of largely white college graduates in the professional sphere after January of 2017 was an act of self-defense. When they spoke of Donald Trump as an existential threat to norms, they meant their ability to set norms for American society. When they talked of a threat to “our democracy,” they meant the two-party system as it has functioned in American history.
Policy did not matter. Higher taxes did not matter. Riots did not matter. They needed to show that Donald Trump could not win again, and they were willing to burn down the entire country to do it.
There is more at stake than the presidency this November. If Donald Trump loses, Republican politicians and voters will look at the $600 million Kamala Harris has raised since entering the race and conclude they cannot financially compete with that sort of power, even with an Elon Musk. They will be convinced that it is not possible to win a national election without the support of the elites and spend the next decade seeking to bid against the Democrats for their favor. They have tried four times to build a new coalition of African American and Latino men, working-class whites, and Asians, and even when it has delivered votes, it has been difficult to compete with the institutional power wielded by the professional classes.
The likely outcome of a Trump loss would be that the MAGA project would be abandoned. Republicans will give up on efforts to appeal to the non-white voters, who Democrats will be able to safely ignore along with rural America, as both compete to win over the corporate water cooler and golf course vote. After all, isn’t the definition of insanity repeating the same approach over and over again expecting a different outcome?
It will not matter if Republicans feel the game is rigged. If someone is powerful enough to set the rules, then those are the rules. If the GOP is too weak to do anything about Democrats changing voting rules in the middle of campaigns or manipulating media coverage, then Republicans need to figure out a way to win with those rules. Which means appeasing, not defying, those formidable enough to set them. The institutional Republicans would see such an outcome as proof that it is time to ask for terms.
Those terms would be a repudiation of everything the party has tried to stand for since 2016. So-called “conservatives” who somehow believe that Donald Trump’s defeat will usher in a new age of Reagan, rather than the rise of an American David Cameron, are delusional. As are pro-lifers who believe that a defeat will lead the party to retreat from Trump’s moves toward the middle of the electorate. In fact, everyone would know who and what (money) defeated him if he loses, and the money, by almost a ten-to-one margin, is on the pro-abortion side. So are the suburban voters, not because they are ideologues, but because forcing the base to drop their pro-life position will be proof of their submission. A candidate abandoning the pro-life cause in 2028 will be the required proof that the GOP is sorry for having scorned them.
There are those who will argue this neo-Romneyism will be a dead-end, having already proven electorally fruitless in 2008 and 2012. If so, MAGA and populist conservatism can merely wait out a cycle and return when the “New Republican” loses in 2028. That is a dangerous assumption, because there is every likelihood this brand of “conservatism,” having been suitably domesticated, will be allowed to succeed, much as David Cameron’s toothless Toryism was in the U.K.
For all the talk about Republicans becoming a permanent minority party, that is not in the interests of those funding Harris’s campaign, or those who installed Joe Biden in 2020. The power of the elites depends on the willingness of a certain group of voters, primarily college-educated voters, to swing between the parties in such a way as to punish defiance with defeat. Donald Trump’s victory did not just undermine their influence in the GOP. By denying the elites the ability to threaten to defect from the GOP, it threatened their leverage with Democrats, something they realized to their horror after 2020. They will be overjoyed to accept the surrender of the Republican Party and to champion the comeback story of a “new Republican.”
Championing a Republican David Cameron in 2028 would solidify elite control of both parties. Rewarding submission with political power would entrench the new Republican approach. Reminding the Democrats that the financial and structural advantages they enjoy exist at the sufferance of others will prevent the party from beginning to dream about dangerously revolutionary ideas. The ultimate goal, the restoration of the Bush/Clinton status quo, will have been achieved.
For those who conflate American democracy with a two-party system in which one party serves the interests of professional elites in office while the other auditions to do better, that is a restoration of norms. For anyone who actually cares about the entropy that system produced – failing cities, rising debt, the hollowing out of American manufacturing, falling birthrates, fentanyl, and the steady expansion of Chinese power – it will be a disaster. As much of a disaster as the last 14 years of “conservative” rule proved in the U.K., or Merkel’s 16 years of “conservative” government proved for Germany.
Herein lies the opening for Donald Trump. Plenty of high-income white college graduates are willing to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris despite disagreeing with her on policy in order to entrench their own power. But there are far greater millions of Americans who do not like or agree with Donald Trump but who have everything to lose from his defeat and everything to gain from his victory.
African American and Hispanic men will find their concerns ignored when Republicans have abandoned efforts to appeal to them and Democrats can take their support for granted. More likely, they will find themselves in the position they were in during the 1990s: punching bags for both parties.
By contrast, if Donald Trump is victorious and, more importantly, victorious with their support, they will find themselves at the center of American politics. An American politics where rural America, non-white men, and conservative women are no longer the forgotten Americans but its decisive swing voters. Donald Trump needs to make clear that what is at stake is not his own future, or that of the Republican Party, but the future of every demographic but the one who ruled America for decades before 2016, and has now set the country on fire in a bid to restore its power.
Democrats are right about one thing. Democracy is on the ballot this November.
Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.
