Republicans are celebrating this week and Democrats are going through various stages of despair and disbelief, wondering what to do next. Over at the NY Times, Ezra Klein has a reminder which seems written for an audience of dejected Democrats but which is probably something Republicans should think about as well. 

There are really two messages, the first one is that the Obama coalition is dead and won't be coming back. Whatever glue once held that group of progressives and minorities together just blew up. Instead of a black candidate winning as Obama did in 2008, we had a black candidate losing. Instead of uniform rallying together of minority groups to support Democrats, we had Republicans hitting new high-water marks with Hispanic, Black, Jewish and Asian Americans. As Beege might say, kaboom!

Trump got the win in 2024 he could see only glimmers of in 2020. He got it despite Jan. 6, despite the criminal charges and convictions, despite the wild statements and weaving rants. Democrats did everything they could to convince voters Trump was unfit for office, and voters gave Trump his first-ever popular vote victory.

...Trump sharply improved his margin in New York City. These are voters angry about prices, about immigration, about a sense of disorder and failure. Trump seems to have made huge gains among voters making less than $50,000 a year. The Democratic Party is losing voters who lie at the core of its conception of itself.

But the other part of Klein's message is that we've seen this happen before. In 2004, George W. Bush won re-election by winning the electoral college and the popular vote.

I find myself thinking about the 2004 election. In my lifetime, until today, that was the most total rejection liberals experienced. In 2000, George W. Bush was this accidental president. He’d lost the popular vote. He’d won the Electoral College after winning Florida by a few hundred votes. But by 2004, the lies and the failures and travesties of his administration were clear. The disaster of the Iraq war was clear. And the result was that Bush went from accidental president to unquestioned victor. He won the popular vote cleanly. On the electoral maps, the center of the country was a sea of red. What made that loss hurt so much for liberals was that by 2004, Americans knew who Bush was and what he had done. They chose him anyway.

But it didn't last. As Klein points out, that 2004 victory was exciting for the right and dispiriting for the left but it didn't signal a new dynasty of right-wing politics. In fact, it was followed by 8 years of Barack Obama.

By the time of the next presidential election, Democrats had opened the door to a new politics that seemed almost unimaginable in 2004. Yes, Barack Obama’s convention speech in 2004 was startlingly good, but he was still an antiwar Black man with the middle name Hussein whose politics were forged in Chicago. That wasn’t what Democrats thought would win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Indiana in 2008. But it was. And the Bush administration’s overreaches, failures and scandals left the reputation of G.O.P. elites so absolutely smashed that the stage was set for Trump’s eventual takeover of the party.

...So is this the beginning of the Trump realignment, or will this end with Trump’s name and reputation as tattered as that of the Bush dynasty he destroyed?

Republicans are celebrating this week and Democrats earned every bit of the despair they are feeling. And yet, this too shall pass. The other 48% of the country won't disappear. They will take every opportunity to bash Trump every single day and over time it could work. 

It certainly worked on George W. Bush. Bush won the 2004 election but by the end of his second term Democrats were turning out for huge anti-war rallies seemingly every couple of weeks, carrying signs about Chimpy McHitlerburtion. Not surprisingly, those rallies all vanished once Obama was elected. It was always politics not principle that animated them. But the point is, they got what they wanted. And let's face it, they came very, very close to continuing Obama's 8 year run in 2016. Trump won that election by a hair.

Republicans won convincingly this week, but the time to start thinking about winning the next election is right now. The left is already making their own plans. They are gearing up the street protests once again. The will fight Trump in the courts. They will fight him in the media, which they mostly control already. Tuesday's victory only ushers us into the next uphill battle to make this into a lasting win, one that can benefit future conservative candidates.