Donald Trump's victory, combined with Republicans regaining the majority in the Senate and retaining control of the House, made 2024 a bad year for Democrats.
Evidence suggests it could be worse: a historic defeat that puts Republicans in the political driving seat for a generation or more.
That's because the exit poll showed that more voters said they were Republicans than Democrats — for the first time in a presidential election since 1928.
Such a result had not happened since talking pictures were new and Babe Ruth hit home runs at the original Yankee Stadium.
No one alive today has never Vote in the presidential race where this happened.
To be sure, Republicans have won elections in the nearly 100 years since then. But they were always fighting upward.
They had to convince voters who leaned toward Democrats to give Republicans a chance.
That's why winning candidates like Dwight Eisenhower called themselves “modern Republicans” and pledged to preserve the welfare state created by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
This is why both Presidents Bush campaigned as “kinder, kinder” candidates who were willing to expand government.
Even Ronald Reagan made sure to tell his fans that he voted for Franklin Roosevelt four times.
His famous “There you go again” quip to President Jimmy Carter helped him win, but few remember that he said it in response to Carter's accusation that Reagan opposed health care and would threaten the popular program.
Reagan's comment emphasized that he had never opposed the principle behind the massive entitlement program and would not attempt to seriously repeal or change it.
Each of these men knew they needed Democratic votes to win. Obtaining those votes meant they had to concede important policy points that partisan Republicans strongly opposed.
Republicans have forgotten this fact at their own peril.
Newt Gingrich's historic victory in 1994 gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. Polls even showed the GOP tied with Democrats on party identification.
It was no stretch of the imagination for Gingrich to think he could break the Democrats' hold on power, but he got away with it all through a budget strategy that relied on cuts in popular programs like Medicare.
President Bill Clinton responded by saying, “The era of big government is over,” while promising to protect those social programs.
By early 1996, after two state elections failed to unseat Clinton, Gingrich was defeated. Opinion polls showed that the Democrats regained their historical role as America's favorite party.
But in recent years, Democrats' rapid movement to the left has undermined their historic position.
Combined with President Biden's incompetence and failure, only 31% of Americans called themselves “Democrats” this year — down from 37% in 2000.
A larger number of voters, 35% in the exit poll, said they were Republicans, while the rest described themselves as independents.
This meant that all Trump had to do was maintain his base and keep his margin with independents close.
Harris did what Democrats have done for a century: She rallied her base, won 95% of Democrats, and even won independents by 3 percentage points.
In any other election since the Great Depression, she would have won.
But in Republican-leaning America, applying the old Democratic rules of the game is no longer good enough.
Harris had to court Republicans to win, and her pathetic use of former Rep. Liz Cheney to do so shows that she and her senior leadership have no idea how to do that.
This result gives Trump a historic opportunity.
If he can extend the Republican Party's lead over the next four years, he will have begun the first realignment since Ronald Reagan brought the two parties to near parity in the early 1980s.
A world in which Republicans lead Democrats by 8 to 10 points in partisan preferences is a world in which Republican preferences and priorities prevail.
Like the Republican Party of the last century, Democrats could win only by running as “me-too” candidates, advancing a slightly less aggressive version of the Republican agenda.
However, this is not set in stone: Trump needs a successful term.
If the economy declines, illegal immigration continues, or Trump goes to war with China or Russia, GOP voters will flee like rats from a sinking ship.
Trump could also make a mistake by prioritizing issues on which he did not run.
George W. Bush did just that in 2005, when he tried to reform Social Security without first getting a mandate to do so.
Barack Obama also in 2009 and 2010, when he made passing Obamacare his focus even after running as a centrist.
It is possible that Trump will make one or both mistakes. Failure and inability will be punished.
But imagine if he didn't.
Imagine America in 2028 living at peace, with illegal immigration effectively ended, the awakening tsunami subsided, and the economy booming.
This is an America whose voters will want to reward the party that gave them what they wanted.
This reward would put Republicans in the political lead for the first time since Henry Ford's Model T was popular.
Henry Olsen, a political analyst and commentator, is a senior fellow at the Center for Ethics and Public Policy.
