Yet large numbers of Americans believe the founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation, and many believe it should be one.

Such views are especially strong among Republicans and their white evangelical base. Already such views are being voiced by supporters of Donald Trump amid his bid to recapture the presidency.

The idea of a Christian America means different things to different people. Pollsters have found a wide circle of Americans who hold general God-and-country sentiments.

But within that is a smaller, hardcore group who also check other boxes in surveys — such as that the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God and that the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation, advocate Christian values or stop enforcing the separation of church and state.For those embracing that package of beliefs, it’s more likely they’ll have unfavorable views toward immigrants, dismiss or downplay the impact of anti-Black discrimination and believe Trump was a good or great president, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey.

This latter group reflects a movement widely called Christian nationalism, which fuses American and Christian values, symbols and identity and seeks to privilege Christianity in public life.

It creates a sense of “national innocence,” so adherents resist confronting uglier parts of U.S. history, he said.

The belief connects to other beliefs past and present, from the Manifest Destiny doctrine that justified continental conquest to Trump’s America First and Make America Great Again slogans, said McDaniel, a co-author of “The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics.”

Trump has echoed some of these ideas, vowing to bar immigrants who “don’t like our religion.”

Many conservatives and Republicans embrace the idea of Christian national origins, even as many reject the “Christian nationalist” label.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has proclaimed that America is and was founded as a Christian nation and that Thomas Jefferson was “divinely inspired” in his writing of the Declaration of Independence, according to a 2015 sermon that drew wider attention with his recent election as speaker.

WallBuilders, an organization Johnson credits for its “profound influence” on him, has spread materials claiming that “revisionist” historians have downplayed America’s Christian origins, but the group has been widely criticized for historically dubious claims.

A lawsuit on its behalf is challenging the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s refusal to run its bus ads touting the purported beliefs of founders.

Vocal supporters of Trump have described current politics as spiritual warfare for the destiny of a country that former Trump aide Steve Bannon described as the “New Jerusalem” and conservative activist Charlie Kirk said was founded by “courageous Bible believing Christians.”

Recent Texas, Oklahoma and Kentucky Republican Party platforms proclaim the country was founded on “Judeo-Christian” principles.

“I’m not claiming that all of our founders were Christians,” he said in an interview. “Some were deists, some were atheists, but the majority were Christians. I’m also not saying that non-Christians shouldn’t have the same rights as Christians in our country.”

But he said “there’s a case to be made that the Judeo-Christian faith was the foundation for our laws and many of our principles.” He cited founder John Jay — the first Supreme Court chief justice — asserting it was Americans’ duty “in our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

Jeffress said he doesn’t believe America is privileged by God but, as with any nation, “God will continue to bless America to the extent that we follow him.”

Anthea Butler, chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said history precludes any idea of a Christian nation.

“It doesn’t mean that Christians weren’t a part of the founding of this nation,” said Butler, a historian of African American and American religion. “What it does mean is that if you believe that America is a Christian nation and you happen to subscribe to Christian nationalism as a part of that, you’re buying into a myth.”

That America-as-a-Christian-nation idea is “a trope of exclusion,” she said, centering American history on white Anglo-Saxon Protestants as “the ones that are willing and should be running the country both then and now.”

That justifies viewing others as “heathens,” including the enslaved Blacks and the Native Americans whose land was being taken.

Those arguing for a Christian America are generally not historians and not really talking about history — they’re talking politics, said John Fea, author of the 2011 book “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?”

“They appeal to a false view of the founding, or at least a partial view of the founding, to advance political agendas of the present,” said Fea, a history professor at Messiah University, a Christian university in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. “These agendas are built on a very weak historical foundation.”

The belief in America’s Christian origins is mainstream.

Six in 10 U.S. adults said the founders intended America to be a Christian nation, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey. About 45% said the U.S. should be a Christian nation. Four in five white evangelical Protestants agreed with each assertion.

By some measures, Democratic President Joe Biden might be seen in that category, citing the importance of his Catholic faith and calling for God’s blessings on America and its troops — but also invoking shared values “whether you’re Christian, whether you’re Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or any other faith, or no faith at all. ”

One-third of U.S. adults surveyed in 2023 said God intended America to be a promised land for European Christians to set an example to the world, according to a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)/Brookings report.

Such surveys have found a smaller, more ardent group of believers in Christian nationhood. In another survey, PRRI identified about 10% of Americans as the most committed adherents.

The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office, and its First Amendment bars congressional establishment of any religion, along with guaranteeing free exercise of religion.

Defenders of Christian nationhood can point out that several of the 13 original states funded Protestant churches at their origins, though within a few decades all had followed Virginia’s example in halting the practice. They can point to Christian rhetoric by some founders, such as John Jay, Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams.

But several key founders would never pass a test of orthodoxy. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin viewed Jesus as a great teacher but not as God.

“Could you find stuff where John Adams talks about religion being the foundation of the republic, like George Washington said in his farewell address?” asked Fea. “Are there states where Christianity was privileged? Yes, you can find all those things. You can also find things to show the Constitution wants to keep religion and government separate.”

Some secular activists today advocate for an opposite view — that U.S. founders sought to banish religion from public life. Fea said that also goes too far: “When you’re dealing with the 18th century, nuance and complexity is essential,” he said.

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Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has flipped 15 colleagues to support him in dramatic votes for House speaker, making extraordinary gains on the fourth day and the 12th and 13th ballots of a grueling standoff that was testing American democracy and the Republicans’ ability to govern.

The changed votes from conservative holdouts on Friday, including the chairman of the chamber’s Freedom Caucus, put McCarthy closer to seizing the gavel for the new Congress — but not yet able.

The stunning turnaround came after McCarthy agreed to many of the detractors’ demands — including the reinstatement of a longstanding House rule that would allow any single member to call a vote to oust him from office.

That change and others mean the job he has fought so hard to gain will be weakened.

After McCarthy won the most votes for the first time on the 12th ballot, a 13th was swiftly launched, this time, just between McCarthy and the Democratic leader, with no nominated Republican challenger to siphon GOP votes away.

But six GOP holdouts still cast their ballots for unnominated others, denying him the majority needed.

‘We’re at a turning point’

A few minutes before voting began in the House chamber, Republicans tiring of the spectacle walked out when one of McCarthy’s most ardent challengers railed against the GOP leader.

“We do not trust Mr. McCarthy with power,” said Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida, as colleagues streamed out of the chamber in protest of his remarks.

Contours of a deal with conservative holdouts who have been blocking McCarthy’s rise emerged, but the agreement had seemed still out of reach after three dismal days and 13 failed votes in a political spectacle unseen in a century.

But an upbeat McCarthy told reporters as he arrived at the Capitol on Friday morning, “We’re going to make progress. We’re going to shock you.”

One significant former holdout, Republican Scott Perry, chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, tweeted after his switched vote for McCarthy: “We’re at a turning point.”

The showdown that has stymied the new Congress came against the backdrop of the second anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which shook the country when a mob of then-president Donald Trump’s supporters tried to stop Congress from certifying the Republicans 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.

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By almost any standard, this is a surprising overperformance by Democrats (or underperformance by Republicans, depending on how you look at it). But more than a week past Election Day, the shock has subsided a bit, leaving room to move on from racehorse politics to a more substantive discussion of what the next two years of American politics will look like.

By dint of their position in the White House and Senate, Democrats are going to hold onto most of the power in D.C., so it’s worthwhile to focus on what the next two years have in store for the Democratic Party in particular. On this front, there are several interesting and important questions about how the next two years will play out. Five are at the top of my mind: (1) Will Joe Biden run for reelection? (2) What will happen to Democratic leadership in Congress? (3) What parts of their agenda will Democrats be able to pass? (4) Is there a chance for Democrats to make any bipartisan deals? (5) Will progressives and moderates fight or find unity?

The next two years will likely feature a few bumps for Democrats. But if Joe Biden runs for reelection as I expect him to, and once the contests for Democratic leadership in the House have concluded, Democrats will be on a glide path toward party unity.

Will Biden Run in 2024?

Joe Biden has been running for president for the past 35 years. Ever since his first doomed bid for the 1988 Democratic nomination, Biden has imagined himself as the leader of the free world. In 2020, he finally realized that vision when he toppled Donald Trump. And now that Biden has finally achieved his life’s ambition, he has to determine if he is satisfied with one term as president or if he wants another.

Ambitious political animals like Biden don’t just give up on the dreams of their own accord. There is only really one reason I can see Biden choosing not to run for reelection: his health. Biden will be 81 by the time of the 2024 election, and it’s not hard to imagine him having a serious health incident that inhibits his ability to perform the duties of the president. And even if that doesn’t happen, there still could be a viral moment that is perceived as evidence that Biden is too old and feeble to be president. In either situation, Biden could face enough political, familial, or physical pressure to pass the presidential baton.

Barring that, though, I find it unlikely that Biden will retire early. The strong Democratic performance in the midterms gave Biden a new lease on life. If he faces any internal party pressure to resign, Biden can just point to the party’s midterm success as proof that he’s the right guy to continue leading the party. Biden says he’ll make his official decision “early next year.” We’ll have to wait and see, but my instinct is that the decision’s already been made.

Democratic Leadership in Congress

On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi announced that she would be stepping down from her position as leader of the House Democrats, ending 20 years in the top role. The decision is bound to set off a scramble for power within the Democratic conference. It remains to be seen exactly what Pelosi’s longtime deputies—Steny Hoyer from Maryland and James Clyburn from South Carolina—plan to do. If they decide to retire from leadership alongside Pelosi, which seems likely, it will usher in a new generation of Democratic leadership.

No matter what Clyburn and Hoyer decide, however, competition for jobs up and down Democratic leadership will be fierce, unpredictable and incredibly difficult to follow for those who don’t already know the players.

Just consider the fight for minority leader: In corner A, we have Hakeem Jeffries, an ally of Pelosi’s who is currently the #5 Democrat in the House. But Jeffries is despised by some on the left for forming Team Blue PAC, which was designed to protect Democratic incumbents from being primary, but which progressives saw as a way to stymie progressive insurgents. In corners, B and C are Hoyer and Clyburn, who may decide that they’re not ready to step down alongside Pelosi and that it’s their time to lead the conference. In corner, D is the candidate that the progressive wing of the caucus will likely enlist to compete with the more moderate (or “corporate,” as his detractors call him) Jeffries.

My money would be on Jeffries: He’s already in leadership, and he has allies across the conference. He’s also young and Black, representing a sharp break from the 80-something-year-olds who currently lead the party. But in reality, exactly how this will play out is anybody’s guess. The race will be complex, will rely on hundreds of relationships and personalities and will be tough to follow. And the same is true for the other top Democratic spots: whip, caucus chair, caucus vice chair, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair and on down the list

Again, exactly how these fights will play out depends on what Hoyer and Clyburn decide to do. If they step down, there will be a scramble for their leadership posts. And even if they stay, they may still face competition from younger upstarts who decide that now is their moment. In any case, it will be worth becoming familiar with whoever comes out on top in these leadership fights, because they will likely be pivotal figures within the Democratic Party for years to come.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, machinations are much less exciting and less complicated. Chuck Schumer is going to hold onto his job as Majority Leader. And his top deputies — Dick Durban and Patty Murray — will hold onto their jobs too.

The Legislative Agenda

Legislatively, Democrats will be stuck. Any hope they had of building on the past two years and passing more of their agenda died when it became clear that Republicans would take control of the House. But this setback could play to Democrats’ benefit in an electoral sense, as they won’t be allowed to overplay their hand and pass an unpopular progressive agenda. If, for instance, Joe Manchin hadn’t put the brakes on the $2.4 trillion Build Back Better legislation that passed the House, Democrats would likely have faced much more backlash in the midterms for forcing through a massive spending package. With the House in Republican hands, Democrats need not worry about getting out over their skis and enacting an electorally unpopular agenda.

That said, it’s not as if Democrats won’t be able to do anything. With Democratic control of the Senate, Biden will be able to keep churning out judicial appointments and fill the federal bench with more progressive and diverse judges. Similarly, he could continue to sign executive orders (with occasionally dubious constitutionality) pushing progressive priorities, as he did when he canceled billions of dollars of student debt. There are plenty of other things Biden could try to do with his presidential pen: On the progressive wish list are changing cannabis’s category so that it’s no longer a Schedule I drug, making more Americans qualify for federal benefits by changing how poverty is calculated, restricting oil drilling on federal lands and so on.

But the president can only do so much alone. Ultimately, if Democrats want to pass any legislation, they’ll need some level of bipartisan support to do so.

Chances for Bipartisanship

During his time in Congress and as vice president, Joe Biden earned a reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker. He made a point of befriending colleagues across the aisle—to the extent that progressives attacked him during the presidential primary for the friendships, he forged in the 1970s with racist and segregationist senators. During the first two years of his presidency, Biden has managed to get bipartisan support for several major pieces of legislation, including bills on gun safety, infrastructure and semiconductor investments. Though his bipartisan bona fides certainly took a few hits when he labeled his Republican opponents as “semi-fascist,” Biden is still, at heart, a guy who likes a good old-fashioned compromise.

This is why I’m moderately confident that Democrats and Republicans will at least attempt to come together on some bipartisan legislation. It’s unlikely that they’ll make deals on any particularly contentious issues of the day, such as immigration or healthcare, but some policy spheres have enough overlap that some bills may find their way through the House and Senate.

Three policy areas, in particular, have the potential for compromise. The first is addressing the threat posed by China. The semiconductor bill passed earlier in the year is one example of this kind of legislation, and it’s not hard to imagine Congress passing more bills to invest in domestic manufacturing of technology, strengthen the non-China supply chain, further restrain trade with China, force TikTok to split from its Chinese owner, Bytedance, or support Taiwan militarily.

The second area where Republicans and Democrats may come together is on restraining “big tech.” Populists on both sides of the aisle, from Republican Senator Josh Hawley to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, believe America’s major technology companies are exerting a nefarious influence on Americans. While their diagnoses for exactly what’s wrong can diverge (Democrats are generally worried about dis- and misinformation, while Republicans are more concerned with censorship and biased content moderation), both sides of the aisle have expressed concern about the monopoly power of companies such as Facebook, Apple and Amazon, and policymakers have been moving legislation through the Senate to address some of these concerns.

The third area with potential for bipartisanship is criminal justice issues. The libertarian-leaning right often is sympathetic to reforms in policing and criminal justice. Further, Republicans and Democrats were able to pass the First Step Act, a bipartisan bill championed by Republican Senator Tim Scott and signed by President Donald Trump in 2018, which made several reforms to federal prisons and criminal sentencing and instituted programs to reduce recidivism. Perhaps there’s room on this front for a Second Step.

Also, some contentious policy areas may unexpectedly command bipartisan support. Immigration is a polarizing issue, but maybe there’s room for the GOP to moderate and sign a Dream Act into law in exchange for more funding for border security. Or maybe populists will come together to ban congress members from trading stocks. There’s also the chance that smaller or less flashy bills could make it through, such as reforming the permitting process (a pet project of Joe Manchin’s and something Republicans could seemingly get on board with) or making it easier to open a bank account (an issue on which Republican Tim Scott and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto have worked together). In other words, despite the tenor of politics, I wouldn’t count out the possibility of bipartisanship completely.

Polarization or Party Unity?

There’s no getting around the fact that the upcoming fights for Democratic leadership in the House are very likely to be contentious. And if I am wrong and Joe Biden decides not to run for reelection, the presidential primary is also likely to be a fierce battle between moderate and progressive wings of the party.

But once the leadership team is in place, and if Biden announces his reelection campaign, there’s reason to believe that Democrats will be relatively unified over the next two years. With Republicans taking control of the House and likely launching investigations that Democrats see as spurious, Trump running for president and DeSantis entering the national scene, Democrats will have no shortage of foils on the right.

Furthermore, Democrats saw last week that running against the GOP is actually a pretty good strategy for winning elections. With the stakes so high heading into 2024—many Democrats see a second Trump or a DeSantis presidency as a threat to the country’s very existence—the party will find it morally and electorally necessary to tamp down internal squabbles and unify against the GOP. The fact that Republicans are going to hold the House will make this even easier, because Democrats won’t really have any chance of passing a positive agenda, meaning there won’t be fights over how far to push their legislative goals.

We’ve already seen some progressive Democrats start to circle the wagons. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, published an opinion essay in The New York Times saying that “this [midterm] electoral success belongs to Mr. Biden”—a man she was pillorying just three years ago for being insufficiently progressive. None of this is to say that Democrats will find complete unity and all intraparty disputes will evaporate, but most fights will either not take place at all or will happen behind the scenes. The unity will look especially stark when compared with the intraparty feuds that are barreling toward the GOP.

A Caveat About Political Punditry

The tight margins in both the Senate and the House mean that there is a good chance of something unexpected happening and changing the course of American politics. A political scandal, a rogue progressive or conservative, a stubborn moderate or any number of political surprises could all upset the apple cart. And the election in Georgia, though it won’t decide control of the Senate, will determine how much breathing room Democrats have to lose support from moderate senators such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

In other words, everything that happens is contingent on the personalities and incentives of hundreds of politicians and the quirks of political fate. It would be foolish to assume we know exactly how the next two years of politics will play out. But it would also be foolish not to try, given all that’s at stake.

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Democrats have already won control of the Senate, securing 50 seats with a runoff in Georgia next month that could give President Joe Biden’s party an additional seat. The GOP came into the election needing to gain a net of just five seats for House control.

Nearly a week after the midterm elections, Republicans were closing in on the majority, giving conservatives leverage to blunt Biden’s agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a slim numerical advantage will pose immediate challenges for GOP leaders and complicate the party’s ability to govern.

The full scope of the party’s majority may not be clear for several more days — or weeks — as votes in competitive races are still being counted. Still, the party was on track to achieve 218 with seats in California and other states still too early to call.

Even barely achieving 218, though, means Republicans will likely have the narrowest majority of the 21st century. It could rival 2001, when Republicans had just a nine-seat majority, 221-212 with two independents. That’s far short of the sweeping victory Republicans predicted going into this year’s midterm elections, when the party hoped to reset the agenda on Capitol Hill by capitalizing on economic challenges and Biden’s lagging popularity.

Instead, Democrats were able to largely blunt an expected big GOP election, holding on to moderate, suburban districts from Virginia to Minnesota and Kansas. The results could complicate House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s plans to become speaker as some conservative members have questioned whether to back him or have imposed conditions for their support.

The narrow margins have upended Republican politics and prompted finger-pointing about what went wrong. Some in the GOP have blamed Donald Trump for the worse-than-expected outcome. The former president, who is expected to announce a third White House bid on Tuesday, lifted candidates during this year’s primaries who struggled to win during the general election.

Despite its underwhelming showing, the GOP will still see its power in Washington grow. Republicans will take control of House committees, giving them the ability to shape legislation and launch probes of Biden, his family and his administration.

There’s particular interest in investigating the overseas business dealings of the president’s son Hunter Biden. Some of the most conservative lawmakers have raised the prospect of impeaching Biden, though that will be much harder for the party to accomplish with a tight majority.

Any legislation that emerges from the House could face steep odds in the Senate, where the narrow Democratic majority will often be enough to derail GOP-championed legislation.

With such a slim majority in the House, there’s a potential for legislative chaos. The dynamic essentially gives an individual member enormous sway over shaping what happens in the chamber. That could lead to particularly tricky circumstances for GOP leaders as they try to win support for must-pass measures that keep the government funded or raise the debt ceiling.

The GOP’s failure to notch more gains was especially surprising because the party went into the election benefiting from congressional maps that were redrawn by Republican legislatures. History was also on Republicans’ side: The party that holds the White House had lost congressional seats during virtually every new president’s first midterm of the modern era.

In the first national election since the Jan. 6 insurrection, one Republican who was outside the Capitol on the day of the mob attack, Derrick Van Orden, won a House seat. He won a seat long held by Democrats in Wisconsin.

Republican candidates pledged on the campaign trail to cut taxes and tighten border security. GOP lawmakers also could withhold aid to Ukraine as it fights a war with Russia or use the threat of defaulting on the nation’s debt as leverage to extract cuts from social spending and entitlements — though all such pursuits will be tougher given how small the GOP majority may end up being.

As a senator and then vice president, Biden spent a career crafting legislative compromises with Republicans. But as president, he was clear about what he viewed as the threats posed by the current Republican Party.

Biden said the midterms show voters want Democrats and Republicans to find ways to cooperate and govern in a bipartisan manner, but also noted that Republicans didn’t achieve the electoral surge they’d been betting on and vowed, “I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”

The president was also blunt in assessing his party’s dwindling chances, saying Monday of the House, “I think it’s going to be very close, but I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

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But this week’s elections will have repercussions beyond who controls the 118th Congress—and among the most important to watch will be how the results affect Donald Trump’s political future.

Elections force political parties to self-reflect, and such an assessment inevitably influences the course that parties ultimately decide to chart in terms of policy, messaging and future candidate selection. For Democrats, the impact this year will be muted because they have Biden to act as a party unifier and undisputed leader. That’s not to say that there won’t be important intraparty debates and competitions for power, but Biden’s hold on the party’s top spot and agenda will limit the extent of Democratic power jockeying.

Republicans do not have such a figure, and not even Donald Trump will be able to exert the same kind of control from Mar-a-Lago that Biden will be able to from the White House. Throughout the election season, different leaders and blocs within the GOP have been supporting different candidates and pushing different messaging strategies. Inevitably, some of these party influencers will come out looking ascendant and effective while others will look weak and foolish, a dynamic that will set the stage for the looming GOP family feuds. While these fights will include wrangling over important congressional committee assignments and leadership positions, these are all undercards when compared to the main event: the 2024 presidential nomination.

When it comes to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Trump is the current clear favorite. While the former president has not yet announced that he is running, almost everyone in the political world believes that he will. This expectation is based not only on speculation: Trump’s political camp, and even Trump himself, have said that he plans to run and have begun to lay the groundwork for him to do so.

If he does run, it’s unclear just how easy Trump’s path to the nomination would be. Some polling indicates that he would have no problem locking up the nomination for the third time in a row. For instance, according to a recent USA Today/Ipsos poll, 59% of Republicans say that “Trump should be the Republican nominee for president in 2024 and deserves re-election.” Similarly, when asked who they would vote for in a Republican primary, 62% of Republicans chose Trump. On the other hand, 41% of Republican voters say that “it’s time for a change within the Republican Party, and President Trump should not run for re-election in 2024.” Perhaps most concerning of all for the former president is that only 33% of Republicans view themselves as more loyal to Trump than the Republican Party, while 58% say the opposite.

In short, the 2024 presidential nomination at this point is far from settled. Other potential candidates, including Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin and Tim Scott, have taken note, and have been laying the foundations for potential bids of their own. All of this should be ringing alarm bells for Trump, who up to this point has acted as if Republican voters and the nomination are his for the taking.

And so what happens in this year’s midterms could be a pivotal time for the former president. Because Trump has exerted his influence in shaping the GOP’s electoral slate, how his chosen candidates perform has the potential to make him look like either a canny party leader or an egotistical millstone around the party’s neck.

Trump can claim at least some responsibility for the nomination of many of the GOP’s candidates in the nation’s most competitive Senate and gubernatorial elections. These candidates include Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan. While the extent to which Trump championed these candidates varies, he did play a significant role in each of their nominations. As such, as a shorthand they can reasonably be deemed the “Trump Slate.”

Though the course of politics is impossible to forecast with certainty, it’s worth considering and gaming out how different outcomes for this Trump Slate would play out for Trump and the future of the GOP.

Scenario 1: The Trump Slate Performs Well

There has been significant worry by GOP party leaders that Trump’s selected candidates would be too extreme for the general electorate to swallow. If this is proven incorrect, Trump will reasonably be able to claim that his brand of politics is an electoral strength. The media and Republican voters will likely agree, and the midterms will be read as a vindication for Trumpism. This will give the former president a significant boost in terms of his stature and the presumed power he holds over the party.

Another result of a Trump Slate victory would be that Trump would now have a number of loyalists in key elected positions. In any future contest in which he decides to compete, Trump could expect to have their endorsements and political support. And in a party primary, which is fought state-by-state rather than in a single national popular vote, the support from statewide elected officials can be particularly influential.

Together, a validation for Trumpism at the polls and the election of Trump loyalists would, in my mind, make the presidential nomination his to lose. It would be difficult for any competitor to try and wrestle the title of party leader away from Trump. With the momentum on his side, the voters validating MAGA politics and a new crop of loyalists in office, an overwhelming victory by the Trump Slate would clear the road for a Trump return in 2024.

Scenario 2: The Trump Slate Performs Poorly

If the opposite happens and the Trump Slate suffers devastating losses, Trump himself would take a hit, too. The takeaways would be the opposite of Scenario 1: By meddling in the primaries and elevating the most extreme and unelectable MAGA candidates, Trump put his pride over the well-being of the party.

There are three avenues by which this could cause significant harm to Trump. First, some Republican voters would be discerning enough to see that Trump is more of a liability than an asset to Republican party prospects. Perhaps this seems unlikely given how long GOP voters have remained loyal to the former president. But the overriding reason that Democrats nominated Joe Biden in 2020 was because of his electability, and it’s not hard to imagine strategic Republican voters rejecting Trump in favor of someone seen as more electable.

The second avenue by which this might hurt Trump is the right-wing media reaction. If the right-wing media—most importantly Fox News, but also less mainstream sources like Breitbart, One American News Network and Newsmax—sees that Trump is costing them electorally, they’re likely to begin defecting from the former president. (The process may in fact have already begun: Fox News has been giving Trump less positive attention and fewer invites onto the network’s programs recently.) The more conspiratorial media outlets and figures will claim that the Trump Slate only lost because of voter fraud and stolen elections, but such claims won’t produce any legislative or political victories for the right. If right-wing media figures want those kinds of substantial achievements, they will begin to take electoral incentives into account. A wipeout of the Trump Slate would indicate a non-Trump future may be more fruitful. I don’t imagine this would take the form of a wholesale rebuke of the former president. Rather, it would look like a growing acceptance that the 2024 nomination is an open competition accompanied by chatter about potential contenders like DeSantis or Youngkin.

The third way a Trump Slate drubbing could hurt the former president would be through party elites. The mechanism here would be similar to that of right-wing media: Republican elected officials and political leaders would see the loss as a rejection of Trumpism and proof that his brand of politics just isn’t popular among the general voting public. Mitch McConnell made a similar claim earlier in the year when he complained that the GOP’s “candidate quality” problem could cost them the Senate. McConnell and like-minded leaders who are driven more by winning than fealty to the president would see that their incentives lie with a non-Trump nominee in 2024. They would then be able to work behind the scenes to recruit, fund and build support for alternative candidates.

In sum, a wholesale defeat of the Trump Slate would be terrible for Trump. It would show voters, media figures and Republican elites that the party may be better served by a non-Trump nominee in 2024. That’s not to say that Trump would be out of the running by any means. He still will command significant support and might still be the candidate to beat in 2024. But a loss by the Trump Slate would open the door for such a beating come primary season.

Scenario 3: The Trump Slate Does Just OK

If the results are mixed for the Trump Slate, much will depend on which candidates prevail and which do not. Take, for instance, Pennsylvania—in which the more moderate Oz and the more extreme Mastriano will be on the ballot together. Were Oz to win and Mastriano to lose, it would likely kick off a blame-fest within the GOP. The party’s more moderate bloc might argue that they need to nominate fewer Mastrianos and more Ozs. Meanwhile, the more extreme elements of the party might try to explain away the results by claiming that Mastriano’s competitor was a stronger candidate than Oz’s. Whichever argument convinces right-wing power brokers and Republican primary voters would help decide the mood of the party heading into 2024.

And yet, for my money, I’d bet that there won’t be a clear narrative like this coming out of election night. I think that some on the Trump Slate will win, others will lose and none of this will fit neatly into a clean political analysis. In such an ambiguous environment, the status quo for 2024 would prevail: Trump won’t get a major boost, but neither will he face serious questions from voters and the party elite about his viability. Heading into a Republican primary, Trump would remain the odds-on favorite, but he’d still have some vulnerabilities that other candidates—most notably DeSantis—could potentially exploit.

Ultimately, we’ll have to wait for Tuesday to begin making a more informed assessment of where the GOP is headed. While it’s useful to think through how different election results will impact the future of the party, trying to drill down too deeply into specifics is like playing a “choose-your-own-adventure” game with an infinite number of plotlines. Even small quirks, like whether election results are immediately known or not, will determine exactly how much impact midterm results have on the news cycle and political atmosphere.

On election night and the weeks following, I’ll be keeping an eye on what right-wing media figures (Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity among them) and party leaders (like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz and Mike Pence) have to say. If they begin to criticize the Trump Slate for being poor quality candidates, and especially if they hit Trump himself for supporting them, then we should expect a real competition for the nomination.

Even more interesting and indicative, of course, will be whatever signals Trump’s potential competitors, as well as Trump himself, put out. Most of these candidates will initially be cagey about their intentions for 2024. (For reference, most of the Democratic candidates competing in 2020 didn’t announce until early 2019.) But potential candidates will be making public statements, sending off Tweets, conducting interviews, appearing on the Sunday shows—all opportunities for them to lay the groundwork for their future plans. Among the things to keep an eye on are if these candidates begin distancing themselves from Trump or otherwise acting as a political candidate might—starting a political action committee, campaigning in early primary states, releasing books, building intraparty alliances and the like.

Some of this analysis may seem tantamount to reading tea leaves. But even so, the coming days are going to be full of indications of what’s to come for the future of the GOP. And with stakes so high, it’s worthwhile doing whatever we can to try and understand where our politics may be headed as we turn to 2024.

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In Tuesday’s marathon hearing, Republicans aggressively questioned Jackson on the sentences she has handed down to sex offenders in her nine years as a federal judge, her advocacy on behalf of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, her thoughts on critical race theory and even her religious views. At one point, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas read from children’s books that he said are taught at her teenage daughter’s school.

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In a statement Sunday, former President George W. Bush congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their win.

“President Trump has the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, and any unresolved issues will be properly adjudicated,” Bush wrote. “The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”

Neither Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, nor Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, had issued statements about Biden’s victory as of Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, one of Trump’s top allies in the House struck a more combative tone once the race was called.

“There are still serious legal challenges that have been made, and until that process is resolved, the election is not final,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., tweeted on Saturday.

Scalise wrote the “election isn’t over until all legal votes are counted and certified,” language that echoes Trump’s repeated comments of counting only “legal” votes.

There has been no evidence of any widespread voter fraud or illegal election activity. And while Scalise and Trump both said the election isn’t over because the votes haven’t been certified, it’s worth noting that certifying results will not change the overall outcome of the election.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential nominee, said that while he would prefer the world to witness a “more graceful departure” of Trump from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., he ultimately believes the president will accept that he lost his reelection bid.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said he believes Trump will eventually "accept the 
inevitable" and concede defeat to President-elect Biden.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“You’re not going to change the nature of President Trump in these last days, apparently, of his presidency,” Romney told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “He is who he is and he has a relatively relaxed relationship with the truth, and so he’s going to keep on fighting until the very end. But I’m convinced that once all remedies have been exhausted, if those are exhausted in a way that’s not favorable to him, he will accept the inevitable.”

He added: “But don’t expect him to go quietly in the night — that’s not how he operates.”

Romney has long been critical of Trump, calling him a “phony” and a “fraud” during Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. He also famously broke with his party in voting to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of abuse of power.

Romney’s colleague, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., pointedly did not acknowledge a Biden victory, instead saying the media shouldn’t project a victory.

“The media can project, but the media doesn’t get to decide who the winner is. There is a canvassing process. That needs to happen,” Blunt said on ABC’s This Week.

“I said on Friday, I thought it was time for the president to turn this discussion over to his lawyers, time for the lawyers to make the case that they have, both in court and to the American people, and then we’re going to have to deal with those facts as they’re presented. That has to happen, and then we move forward,” Blunt said.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said that although he believes the projection of Biden’s victory is “probably correct,” he wants to let the process continue as the Trump campaign attempts to litigate the results.

“Seventy million Americans voted for Donald Trump, and they and the president deserve to have this process play out,” Toomey, who is retiring from the Senate in 2022, told CBS’ Face the Nation.

Meanwhile, Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md., put his stance on the matter bluntly: “It’s time to get behind the winner of the race.”

“We want to make sure every single vote is counted fairly, and I think there are legal processes, if you think there are mistakes,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “But I don’t think we’re going to see anything that’s going to overturn this election, and I haven’t seen any evidence of widespread [fraud]. This is the way our system works, whether you like it or not.”

“More and more people in my party are accepting the results, and a number of people also did congratulate the president-elect,” Hogan said. “Hopefully, the president’s team will do the right thing in the end.”

Still, other Republicans appear to be walking the line between supporting a candidate taking legal actions, like pursuing recounts in various states, and not endorsing the core of Trump’s argument that he should retain power because of conspiracies and illegal election activity by Democrats.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who unsuccessfully ran in 2016 for the Republican presidential nomination, reminded the public the day after Election Day that “taking days to count legally cast votes is NOT fraud” and that “court challenges to votes cast after the legal voting deadline is NOT suppression.”

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