The future of Trumpism does not only depend on Trump

WashingtonIn the last decade, Donald Trump has become the central figure of the ultra-conservative movement. But he did not invent Trumpism. The Republican became the catalyst for a deeper phenomenon that began with the Tea Party during Barack Obama's first year in the White House and in the middle of the epicenter of the great economic crisis at the end of the 2000s. Trump is the symptom of a change in the political cycle that had much deeper and structural roots. Once the dog is dead, the rabies is gone, the saying goes. The president has been left wounded, but that does not mean the movement is as well.

The disastrous electoral defeat of the Republican Party in the midterm elections is a punitive vote for two years in which Trump has been governing as if he would never have to submit to the polls again. An assumption that is true given that the Republican is already 80 years old and that the Constitution prohibits US presidents from running for a third term. Precisely, the electoral defeat has been so painful not only because the loss of votes took place in the groups where Trump managed to gain ground in 2024, but also because of how the movement's base has reacted.

White men and rural areas—considered the pillar of the MAGA movement—changed their voting patterns. In its analysis comparing territorial results from 2024 with those of 2026, the Washington Post points out that there is a shift of about 15 points toward the Democrats in rural areas and in territories with a much higher proportion of white, non-college-educated population. However, changing one's vote in an election does not automatically translate into an ideological shift.

"They haven't become Democrats. They simply no longer see Trump as the way to achieve their goals," notes Laurel Harbridge-Yong to ARA, a political scientist at Northwestern University specializing in political polarization. "Their punishment may also have simply been staying home and not going to vote," she adds. Despite reaching record figures in a midterm, turnout remains lower than that of the 2024 presidential election, 15.2% less, according to estimates by the Washington Post.

A future prediction?

Then there is the other big question: the result of midterm elections has very rarely served to predict what will happen in a presidential election. Statistician Nate Silver compares other great historical waves in the midterm –whether Democratic or Republican – with the current bluenamiactual. For example, under the presidency of Harry Truman, the Republicans swept the 1946 midterm elections and took control of Congress from the Democrats. Despite the political wear and tear, Truman won the 1948 presidential election. The underlying reason why this happened, according to Silver, is that there was a broader political cycle that he describes as the "long liberal era".

A more recent case: the electoral defeat of the Democrats in 2010 did not translate into the end of Barack Obama. In 2012 the Democrat prevailed over his rival, Mitt Romney, and secured his second term. Afterwards, the Democrats chose Hillary Clinton and Trump arrived.

For Silver, midterm elections that did indicate the end of a U.S. president and also that of a cycle were those of 2006, with George Bush. The Republican was reaching the midpoint of his second term very worn down by the Iraq War and the poor handling of Hurricane Katrina. As a result of all this, the Democrats swept Congress, and two years later Obama arrived. According to Silver, the great conservative period that Ronald Reagan started ended with Bush.

Trump's emergence could well be a political realignment within the new era that was inaugurated with Obama, or perhaps truly a new cycle. The conservative movement that propelled the current president was born right during this new political period that opened with Obama, and it managed to triumph through the political formula proposed by the tycoon: an ultra-conservative populism.

A project that goes beyond Trump

Trump brought a way of doing political communication that had not been seen until then. But the ideological content came from the whole circle of ultra ideologues, such as Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, who advised him. The problem is that, in a way, the republican's megalomania has led to a progressive personalization of a political project that is much bigger than Trump himself. One only needs to remember the Project 2025 published by the Heritage Foundation to use the republican presidency as a vehicle to completely transform the USA into an ultra-conservative country.

"If there is one thing Trump and his movement have shown, it is that they are very resilient," says Harbridge-Yong, who recalls that after the 2021 Capitol riot, both the MAGA movement and Trump's political career were considered dead. But in 2024, the republican returned even stronger, all thanks to the way the movement continued to build networks both in terms of policy and communication.

In the victory two years ago, the entire alternative media ecosystem of influencers from the far right who had continued to feed the followers, while simultaneously broadening the base, was relevant. Steve Bannon, with his podcast War Room, is the most notable case, as well as Charlie Kirk, who was murdered last year and was the idol of the Trumpist youth. Joe Mitchell, one of the Generation Z candidates for Congress in these midterm elections (who lost to the democratic wave), explained that the one who inspired him to get involved in politics was Kirk.

Another notable fact of these elections is that conservative podcasters, as the war against Iran progressed, spoke less and less about Trump and focused on other issues, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal.

War of succession

Trump himself is aware of the danger of falling into irrelevance if the movement and the Republican Party decide that his figure is no longer useful for their respective political projects. Speculation about who his successor will be had already begun before the election results were known. Mainly for two reasons: he cannot run for a third term and he is 80 years old. But that does not mean Trump is resigning himself. The decision to remove Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff and replace her with the ultra-hardliner Stephen Miller is a good initial indicator of what may happen in the next two years.

By choosing Miller, Trump is not accepting the defeat and even less considering that the protest vote is speaking to him. Internally, the Republican will try to secure a position of influence so that he can designate his successor and continue to have some weight. Especially, after there is already a split in Trumpism that wants to challenge his control of the base.

The serial of the Epstein papers caused an unthinkable divorce between Trump and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had been one of the most loyal figures to the tycoon. Greene left her seat as a representative, and opened a space through which other dissident voices have been slipping: Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, presenter Tucker Carlson, and former counterterrorism director Joe Kent.

In August, this small group sat down by candlelight with the intention of opening a new path. Carlson shared the photo of the scene on social media and wrote: "The MAGA movement has been betrayed. All of us have been. The time has come to open a new path".

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how the rest of the Republicans within the party structure will react. Vice President J.D. Vance, the logical successor, was the first to distance himself by acknowledging that the cause of the defeat was Iran. The Secretary of State and one of the other names being floated, Marco Rubio, categorically denied the leaks about his possible departure from the government to prepare for 2028. This Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published that the White House had warned all conservative organizations that it was closely following their reactions and messages.

"During this last decade, many Republican congressmen have turned loyalty to the president into the defining trait of their way of exercising political representation. I do not know if we will see a complete reversal of this dynamic or if they will continue to calculate that the voters in the Republican primaries are still loyal to Trump," points out Harbridge-Yong. The unknown is what all the voters who have stopped seeing Trump as the way to achieve their goals will do between now and 2028.

The dog is wounded, but not dead.