Regardless of the US presidential election outcome, Trumpism lives on

When all the votes are counted, the presidential election may deliver defeat for Donald Trump. But it did not deliver defeat for Trumpism.

Democrats had hoped that four years of turmoil, attacks on norms and institutions and mendacity – plus a pandemic that cost 230,000 lives – would result in a quick, clean and overwhelming repudiation of the 45th president.

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That would have been clarifying about the direction of the country, a warning to the Republican party that it must take its 2013 “autopsy” report off the shelf and reinvent itself.

But on another miserable night for pollsters, it did not turn out that way. Trump proved resilient and increased his vote in Florida, Texas and other states. He found even more white working-class voters than last time and chipped away at Democratic support among Latinos. His cult-of-personality campaign rallies were as enthusiastic and rambunctious as ever.

His victory in 2016, it turns out, was no fluke attributable to Vladimir Putin or James Comey. In 2020 his sexism, racism and lie-telling have been legitimised and emboldened.

When some Americans protested “This is not who we are”, Trump voters replied: “This is exactly who we are – and we’re not going anywhere.”

“The so-called moral outrage around Trump’s presidency did not produce any substantive shift in his Republican support,” tweeted Eddie Glaude, a professor at Princeton University and author of Democracy in Black. “In fact, he expanded his base among white voters. Trump continues to flourish in the intersection of greed, selfishness and racism.”

Now, if Trump wins the election, Trumpism wins. But if Trump loses the election, Trumpism wins too.

A sense of grievance over a narrow defeat, fuelled by the president’s bogus claims of fraud and amplified by conservative media, will thrive again a Democratic president. The “Make America Great Again” movement – with its nostalgia for a country that never was – was built for opposition rather than incumbency.

There’s more, Republicans appear to be on course to hold their Senate majority and may end up gaining seats in the House of Representatives. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Lindsey Graham were rewarded, not punished, for normalising Trump and enforcing his will. The message to other Republican aspirants is clear. This is Trump’s party now.

Furthermore, McConnell would prove an implacable foe to a President Biden. The majority leader memorably declared that his top priority was to make sure Barack Obama was a one-term president. He failed in that but proved a master of obstruction.

Now he is likely to repeat the formula with the man who served as Obama’s vice-president for eight years. It is precisely the opposite of what America needs right now: a White House, Senate and House working together and thinking big like Franklin Roosevelt to tackle the pandemic, rebuild the economy and reform healthcare.

Instead, expect more gridlock as a Democratic White House is parried at every turn by a Trump-fuelled Republican Senate majority. It is frustration with that type of dysfunction that fed the forces of Trumpism in the first place. The president continues to present himself as an outsider intent on shaking up the system and draining the swamp.

Expect also a fusillade of attacks on Biden and scaremongering about what it would mean if he is succeeded by his running mate, Kamala Harris, a woman of colour. That will fire up the base even more.

There was a school of thought that a crushing defeat for the Republican party, perhaps even in Texas, would be the best thing that could happen to it, the mother of all wake-up calls.

But there was also a theory that – whatever the outcome – Trumpism was deep in the Republican party’s bones, and it would take two or three elections to purge it. Now, indeed, the party is clearly committed to his strain of raw populist nationalism, overthrowing the old consensus on trade, immigration and other issues.

Likely candidates for 2024? Don’t rule out Donald Trump Jr. Or, for that matter, Donald Trump himself.