With the 2018 midterm elections now in the rearview mirror, Republicans have been awakened to a simple fact: The laws of political gravity apply to President Trump. Democrats won sweeping victories in the House, kept their Senate losses to a near-minimum despite a brutal map, and took down-ballot races with alacrity. Republicans won heavily Republican districts, but they lost competitive districts. Their historical advantage among suburban voters flatlined. They lost ground in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona; they nearly lost ground in Georgia and Florida, too. Down-ballot Republicans even felt the heat in Texas.
All of which suggests that many Republican pundits’ seeming optimism in the election’s aftermath is wishful thinking. As the reality of the new landscape sets in, certain Republicans seem determined to come up with a new, policy-based form of Trumpism. This Trumpism is based on a recognition of two forces tearing apart the working class: the bifurcation of opportunity based on education and the breakdown of the nuclear family. In 2008, Ross Douthat, now of the New York Times, and Reihan Salam, now of National Review, wrote:
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