Why even a Trump win might signal the end of Trumpism

Something was missing from Donald Trump’s announcement this week of his 2024 presidential tilt. Call it vitality, perhaps. This wasn’t the launch of a scandalous, unthinkable insurgency. It was instead something well-worn and familiar. The lines were basically the same. The slogan was exactly the same. But the spectacle seemed smaller, the overall energy lower. This felt less a sequel than Trump being a tribute act to himself. Everyone knew the motions and Trump faithfully went through them.

Of course, these are subjective impressions which might be entirely worthless. But there are some more objective differences for Trump this time, too. He comes to this campaign as a serial loser: Republicans lost the House in the 2018 midterms under his presidency; then he lost the presidency; then last week, voters dismissed his handpicked midterm candidates. That’s significant baggage for someone for whom being a loser is about the worst thing you could be, and who pitched himself as a relentless winner: “We’re gonna win so much, you’re gonna get tired of winning,” he was fond of saying circa 2016.

Donald Trump announces he is running for US president.Credit:AP

Sure, many in Trumpland insist he did win. But it’s telling that this week, after the midterm failures, Trump didn’t really invoke his stolen election. That claim isn’t enough any more. And that helps explain the other thing that’s changed: now when Trump announces his candidacy, everyone expects him to be challenged. Specifically, by Ron DeSantis who just romped to the governorship of Florida. Trump no longer has unrivalled control of the Republican Party.

If it comes to pass, as widely anticipated, that will be a deeply significant contest. One of the big questions surrounding the Trump phenomenon is whether it could outlive its creator; whether Trump would usher in Trumpism, which might then be inherited by a more skilful, disciplined political operator – a version of which we’ve seen in far-right parties in Europe. The basic division is over whether Trump is a style, a mood, a cult of personality, or rather represents a view of the world – akin to an ideology. If the latter, it can be passed on, and presumably deployed without the chaos, the wild U-turns, the moments of incompetence.

On paper, DeSantis is precisely the man to do it. His politics tracks Trump’s so closely that when DeSantis ran for Florida governor in 2018 and was asked to name an issue on which he disagreed with Trump, he didn’t. Trump supported DeSantis’ gubernatorial run, and DeSantis was happy to drape his children in “Make America Great Again” paraphernalia and teach them how to “build a wall” in his campaign ad.

But DeSantis is also a politician: a former member of the US House of Representatives for six years who has spent the past four running a major state. And he’s a winner. He has never lost an election, and won his most recent one by Florida’s largest margin in 40 years. No doubt that was inflated by his “vote-fraud squad” which seemed a naked attempt at voter suppression. But that isn’t enough to explain a margin of nearly 20 per cent.

Ron DeSantis (left) and Donald Trump. Credit:AP

DeSantis, then, is in so many ways Trump’s opposite: a former soldier with little flair or charisma, but with a law degree and who can work with the law to get what he wants. He’s unlikely to fall into the mire of criminal investigations that might eventually swallow Trump. And he has no need to buy into January 6-style conspiracy theories about a stolen election to pursue his agenda. As one DeSantis fan explained to a television crew recently, he gives a certain kind of Republican the policies they want, without embarrassing them at dinner parties.

But none of that works if Trump’s relationship to voters is personal. And there are good reasons to suppose it is. One of Trump’s remarkable achievements has been his ability to get his followers to adopt positions they would never have dreamed of considering. The stolen election myth is only the most spectacular example. But well before that, he took the party of Reagan, and got 40 per cent of them to regard Russia as an ally or friendly, so they weren’t alarmed when they heard Russia tried to meddle in the 2016 election. That sort of thing is surely not a matter of sober persuasion. Trump didn’t argue them to this position. He established his audience’s loyalty, then herded them to it.

That loyalty has several roots. His pop-culture presence as a boss firing apprentices on TV, who must therefore be a brilliant and successful businessman, was obviously a good starting point. This allowed him to adopt a unique pose in American politics: the non-politician who knows how the system works, and could therefore destroy or game it for his people; the insider turned outsider. He therefore had to be unconventional in every way. No political experience, no military background, no propriety, no limits. And it was exactly this that meant that, however much he lied or backtracked, he could remain a symbol of authenticity. If you were part of his club, you didn’t need to be anyone but yourself.

He didn’t even want to change his supporters’ lives by selling them the dream they could be something else – much less billionaires like him. He pledged instead to restore power and esteem to who they already were. They would have to apologise for nothing. The guy who fires people would start firing the sneering elites. In this version, it wasn’t just the message that was magnetic, but the messenger. Both were indispensable.

Right now, that magnet may seem a little decayed. But can anyone else revive it? Trump’s derisive nickname for his new nemesis – Ron DeSanctimonious – is perfectly targeted at that exact question. It’s Trump saying “he’s not one of us”, and that by extension, the only authentic expression of this movement lies in Trump himself. The looming Trump v DeSantis contest therefore provides the first test of the meaning of Trump, and with potentially ironic results. A DeSantis win probably entrenches Trump’s ideological legacy in the Republican Party. Meanwhile, a Trump win might signal the end of Trumpism.

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