Trump won’t move on, but most Americans want to

People in love can’t see straight; sometimes they can’t see at all. That’s where the expression “love is blind” comes from. 

People in love often toss common sense over the side; they’re not rational. They’ve been known to make bad decisions.

Yes, I’m talking about Donald Trump and his most passionate supporters, the ones who are madly in love with him and who believe, as their fearless leader does, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen; the ones who are convinced that he won and that Joe Biden isn’t a legitimate president. (Of course, this follows more than two decades of Democrats and many political journalists insisting that Republicans stole two previous elections, first from Al Gore in 2000 and then from Hillary Clinton in 2016, and that Republicans George W. Bush and Trump weren’t legitimate presidents either … but I digress.)

Their love for Trump has made them blind to a political reality: While they adore him, most Americans don’t. Most Americans don’t even like him — and that includes more than a few Republicans, even some who voted for him simply because he wasn’t Biden. His approval rating never reached 50 percent during his entire presidency. Likability in politics, as in life in general, is a powerful force, and yet, somehow, Trump, the “stable genius,” never figured that one out.

And because love is blind, voters who adore Trump don’t blame him for all the damage he’s done to the Republican Party. In four years he managed to turn the House, the Senate and the White House over to the Democrats. But despite all that, they still love him. It’s one of the great mysteries — right up there with “Where’s Jimmy Hoffa buried? Who was Jack the Ripper? And what really happened to Marilyn Monroe?”

While Trump is wallowing in the past, elections are about the future. Swing voters, and even moderate Republicans, don’t want to hear sob stories about supposed election fraud in 2020 — they want to know what the Republican vision is for tomorrow. 

Trump just won’t go away, though; the spotlight is his oxygen. He recently put out a statement that sounded not like something from a politician who lost an election but more like a proclamation issued by the “King of Mar-a-Lago.” Here’s what it said: “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!”

Note the language — “… from this day forth.” Who talks that way these days? 

If history is any guide, the GOP probably will take back control of the House next year, with or without Trump’s proclamations. But there are no guarantees in politics. And so, as long as Trump’s looking at the world through his rearview mirror, the Democrats will have a better chance of hanging onto the House than they otherwise would.

As we get closer to next year’s midterm elections, GOP candidates will be asked if Joe Biden is a legitimate president. If they say, “Yes, Biden won fair and square,” there’s a good chance they’ll lose devoted Trump supporters who believe what their leader has told them — that the election was stolen. And if the candidate echoes Trump and says, “The election was stolen, Biden is not a legitimate president,” then he or she will likely lose those swing voters and moderate Republicans who have had more than enough of Trump’s narcissistic delusions.

In other words, it’s going to be more difficult for Republicans to win with Trump at the center of GOP politics — and it’s going to be tough for Republicans to win without his supporters. It’s hardly breaking news to state the obvious: Everything is always about him.

Most voters, I suspect, are tired of the whining about how he really won the election. He may not want to move on — but most Americans do. 

And here’s something else Trump hasn’t figured out: He and the voters who love him aren’t the only ones who want him to stay right there in the spotlight. So do Democrats, along with their loyal allies in the media, because the longer he’s at the center of GOP politics, the more time they can spend talking about him — and the less time they’ll have to spend explaining away the mess at the southern border, higher taxes, higher prices and the transformation of American culture by a president who is channeling Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

House Republicans purged Liz Cheney from her leadership role because, they said, she wouldn’t let go of Trump. But Trump won’t let go of the last election — and, before this is over, that may be a bigger problem for Republicans than Liz Cheney ever was.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Patreon page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.