America’s political stasis, worsened by Trump, cannot continue

The indictment of Donald J. Trump provides one more demonstration that our politics is deadlocked in a dysfunctional form of political stasis. Trump remains the leading Republican 2024 presidential candidate, and 76 percent of his fellow partisans believe the federal charges leveled against him are politically motivated. 

Immediately after the indictment was unsealed Trump’s Republican rivals rushed to his defense. 

Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) tweeted, “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.” 

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) agreed: “What we’ve seen over the last several years is the weaponization of the Department of Justice against the former president.” 

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley tweeted, “This is not how justice should be pursued in our country.” 

Vivek Ramaswamy, a long-shot for the Republican nomination, went even further: “I commit to pardon Trump promptly on January 20, 2025, and to restore the rule of law in our country.” 

Only former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) directly attacked Trump, with Hutchinson saying the former president should quit the race and Christie calling the details contained in the indictment “devastating.” 

A CBS News/YouGov poll shockingly revealed that even if convicted, 80 percent of Republicans believe that Donald Trump should be able to serve as president. The prospect of a convicted felon taking the constitutional oath of office proves Trump was correct when he boasted in 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Today, 61 percent of Republicans want Donald Trump to be their party’s 2024 nominee. Trump leads his closest rival, DeSantis, by nearly a three-to-one margin. 

When Donald Trump Jr. boasted on Jan. 6, 2021, “This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” he wasn’t lying. Two years later nothing has changed. 

Thus, there is a high probability that 2024 will be a rerun of 2020’s Biden-Trump contest. Thanks to red states getting redder and blue states getting bluer, the election will come down to just six states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. The remaining 44 states and the District of Columbia will almost certainly follow the same red-blue patterns that have defined our politics for the past two decades.  

Our political stasis has also produced divided party control of the federal government. Given their advantages in rural areas, Republicans are favored to control the Senate. Gerrymandering of House districts has led to a deadlock between the two parties. At the presidential level, Republicans have won the popular vote just once since 1992, but the structure of the Electoral College means that Republicans can offset Democratic margins in large metropolitan areas.  

But this sclerosis cannot last forever. In the past three presidential elections, young voters have overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Whenever existing political coalitions have been upended, young voters have led the way. During the 1930s and 1940s, they were a source of strength for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats. By the 1980s, young voters turned to Ronald Reagan and the Republicans. First-time voters are shaped by the formative presidents of their age and often stick with that party for a lifetime. Today, the Reagan bubble still exists, as these now middle-aged and older voters continue to pull the Republican lever. 

But in 2024, millennials and Generation Z will form nearly half of all voters, and be a majority by 2028. These voters are poised for change. They strongly dislike Donald Trump and the Republican Party. In 2022, young voters gave Democratic candidates majorities in an election that should have seen Joe Biden’s Democrats suffer significant losses. Not only do young voters find Donald Trump repellant, the Republican party’s positions on abortion and gun control are also anathema to them. The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 moved abortion into a top-tier issue with these voters. The results have been surprising. Kansas rejected a constitutional amendment to ban abortion in 2022. A year later Wisconsin gave a Democratic state supreme court candidate a landslide majority. 

Other signs of fracturing are also appearing. Donald Trump remains extremely unpopular with all voters, with 57 percent having an unfavorable view. Even more telling, 63 percent label “taking classified documents from the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them” as a serious crime. And 62 percent believe Trump should not serve as president if he is convicted. 

When party coalitions break apart, they do so quickly. A good analogy is an iceberg that cracks and then collapses. Suddenly, the landscape changes into something unfamiliar. Something akin to that is happening. A third Trump defeat in 2024, coupled with the losses he suffered in 2018, 2020 and 2022, presents the Republican Party with a clear choice: Acclimate to a post-Trump era and find new voters or shrink into political irrelevance.  

Put simply, Republicans must adapt or die. And should the Republican party cease to be no more, the two-party duopoly that we have taken for granted in the United States will be swept away with it.

John Kenneth White is a professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. His latest book, co-authored with Matthew Kerbel, is titled “American Political Parties: Why They Formed, How They Function, and Where They’re Headed.” He can be reached at johnkennethwhite.com.