The case for dumping Trump is much more quotidian than anyone will admit

His time has done come and gone

In the great Stephen King novella The Langoliers, the principle characters accidentally travel back in time and discover that the past is not alive and bustling but dead and silent; nobody is there, food is tasteless, electricity is absent, sound is dull and muted. It eventually gets more grisly than that, of course, but before the monsters show up, there’s one great exchange in which our heroes really touch on the exanimate quality of the place:

"This place we’re in feels old and stupid and feeble and meaningless. It feels ... I don’t know ...”

Dinah spoke then. They all looked toward her. “It feels over, ” she said softly.

“Yes,” Bob said. “Thank you, dear. That’s the word I was looking for.”

I want to suggest that Donald Trump’s time in electoral politics is likewise over, and in ways that are similarly ineffable but feel no less comprehensive. There is a great deal of talk this week about how Trump is submarining his own prospects as he lashes out at his Republican allies, but honestly that just feels more like a symptom of his political decline rather than a catalyst of it. He’s felt over for a while now, hasn’t he?

But why is that? I don’t think it’s because he lost his re-election bid; guys have lost bids in the past and they haven’t felt over in the sense that Trump feels now. Mitt Romney lost in 2012 and he’s arguably even more relevant now than he was then, unfortunately; John McCain, may he rest in peace, put in another 10 working if not particularly distinguished years after his 2008 loss. George H.W. Bush couldn’t re-up in 1992, but he remained pretty ensconced in and quietly, respectfully relevant to Republican politics for nearly two decades afterwards (he had an obvious advantage there, but it wasn’t just that).

So why does it seem like Trump is done? Why does it feel like his arc is so terminal, like a North Korean rocket that sputters and falls into the Sea of Japan? Perhaps it’s the petulant, useless childishness with which he’s conducted himself following his defeat, insisting that he actually won the race but that he was waylaid by a “rigged” election and voter fraud and whatever else. I have no problem believing that’s possible, even probable, but nobody has substantiated any of it, and absent more compelling proof than complaining about it, you can’t really expect anyone of any substance to take you seriously after two years of evidence-free whining. A man who can only explain his misfortune via wild claims he can’t back up—he sounds like an over man. (He kind of sounds like Hillary Clinton after 2016, honestly, and if we’re being fair, she’s felt over since that year, too.)

Then too, it feels like Trump is running on essentially the same platform he presented in 2016, and he’s not stopping to think of how lame that looks. Barack Obama ran a very successful campaign in 2008 in no small part on the premise that it would be great to elect the first black president, but he had the good sense to try something else in 2012 rather than attempt an awkward, clumsy sequel. Trump, meanwhile, is basically doing the same thing—the rallies, the free-association rambling, the jabs at media and Republican rivals, the corny but funny nicknames for everyone, the tough-guy-get-’er-done attitude—and honestly, it’s still sort of entertaining, but only kind of in the way that it’s entertaining when your toddler does a funny stunt for the second time in a row after getting big laughs the first time around. It’s like, you know…eh. It feels over.

(Then again, what exactly will he run on? His record? The man can fairly boast of his Supreme Court picks, no doubts there—they helped bring an end to decades of federalized infanticide, his presidency was worth it for that alone—but what else, exactly? What did he do that he can present to people in 2024 and say, “This made your life better when I was president and it’s still making your life better today?” That’s a tall order and I’m not sure he can fill it.)

I think this all becomes a liability for Republicans in 2024, not because it provides Democrats with any meaningful ammunition for that race but because it provides conservatives with less ammunition. An over Trump will be boring, uninspiring, unmotivating; his down-ballot influence will be a fraction of what it used to be; Republican voters will stay home in droves and Joe Biden’s papery corpse will handily win another four years in the White House. Better for all of us—including Trump—to accept what was and what is and move on. Trump may be over but there is still much work to be done.