Trump Turned Republicans Into Losers

President Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has tanked his poll numbers. It has cost his party control of the Senate. It led to the historic disgrace of the Capitol Hill riot. And it never stood a chance of keeping Joe Biden from taking office. But it has been a success in one respect: It has kept the stench of failure from settling over Trump among Republican voters.

Trump has nourished their sense that they almost prevailed, but that elites — vote-stealing Democrats, weak-willed and treacherous Republicans — denied them the victory they could have had. That’s a half-truth. Biden did win narrowly. If he had received 43,000 fewer votes across three states, the electoral vote would have been tied. Trump would almost certainly have won the resulting vote of state delegations to the House.