You wouldn't bank your future on someone you don't know. Financial advice is simply better when your banker gets to know you. That's what City National Bank believes. The better they know you, the better they can help you achieve your goals. See what personal can do for you at CNB dot com. I'm Carol Masser, our cover story this week. Whatever the GOP one stood for voters today associated with
one thing, Donald Trump. Republican politicians at every level have learned that the path to success in the Trump era entails praising and emulating the president, and November thirds better than expected results are unlikely to drive a reform movement with the GOP even without Trump as president, Trump is m is here to stay. The biggest wild card in the GOP's future is Trump himself and what path he
chooses next. So don't be shocked to see Trump if he ends up losing, turn around and immediately file to run for president again. Trump is um isn't going away. Neither is Trump. If he's defeated this time, he could even run again. In twenty twenty four by Joshua Green. As the ballot counting drags on at press time, President Trump's fate looks grim but is still unsettled. The fate of Trump is um, on the other hand, is clear. It isn't going away, and Trump himself may remain in
the political spotlight even if he loses. As the electoral college battle extends into overtime. The results already highlight the ways in which Trump's four years in office have imprinted his stamp on the American political map. Even if he squeaks through with just enough support to secure another term, He's changed US politics in a way that is perilous for the Republican Party and will be difficult to undo. Whatever the GOP once stood for, voters today associated with
one thing, Donald Trump. Democrats went into the election believing this would be an unalloyed disaster for republicans fortunes. It wasn't. Instead of a blue wave, the result was a royaling cross current that drove GOP gains in the House of Representatives and limited Democrats advances in the Senate, even as it shifted key states in the electoral map to Joe Biden. The clearest sign of why that's a problem for Republicans
comes in the races that have been called. The election results confirmed the movement of suburban voters away from the GOP, even though it retreated in some places from Regardless of the outcome, the realignment of the suburbs from red to blue has picked up astonishing speed during Trump's tumultuous tenure. In Even while losing to Trump, Hillary Clinton bested Barack Obama's performance in the suburb heavy states of Arizona and Texas.
Voters outsted Republican incumbents in suburban areas around Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, the District of Columbia, Northern Virginia, Minneapolis, New York, Northern New Jersey, and Philadelphia, handing Democrats control of the House of Representatives. That eroding Republican support, especially among white college educated professionals, looked to be a bad omen for Trump,
but no one could be certain. In it wasn't really apparent how unpopular Trump was in those suburbs because there was no presidential race that was being tested on the ballot, says David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. On
November three, there was, and the verdict wasn't great. The suburban revolt against Trump and the GOP held up in most of the area's Democrats won two years ago, but it didn't extend to the smaller red leaning metro areas such as Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis that they hoped to add this cycle or reach house districts in Texas they'd expected to gain, and the blue wave from eighteen ebbed costing Democrat seats in suburban districts like Oklahoma's fifth
and South Carolina's first, where Republicans regained control after the twenty eighteen election. A popular refrain among Republican strategists was that the suburban voters may not love Trump, but they were happy to cast a ballot for their local Republican representative. At least in red states. That still appears to be true. Nevertheless, over four years, Trump has driven the Republican Party to near extinction in suburbs across America because most voters there
find him repellent. This trend is most pronounced in the areas of the country that are growing the fastest, places such as Arizona's Maricopa County, which encompasses the Phoenix suburbs. In twelve, Mitt Romney beat Obama there by forty seven thousand votes. In Trump edged Clinton by this year, when all the ballots are counted, Biden could cement Arizona, a bedrock of the Republican electoral coalition for decades, as a
new battleground state. Republicans can't build a solid governing coalition without first figuring out how to fix their suburban problem. It's simple to say, harder to do, says Kirk Adams, the Republican former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives who represented a suburban Phoenix district. People in the suburbs want government to work. They want it to be effective and to solve problems. They don't want to be associated
with anything that has even a tinge of racism. For the GOP to win them back is going to require candidates who speak to issues that they care about and do it in a way that is civil and smart. But for the past four years, all the momentum has gone the other way. Republican politicians at every level have learned that the path to success in the Trump era entails praising and emulating the president, and November three is
better than expected. Results are unlikely to drive a reform movement breaking away from him now, even if he loses maybe impossible. Currently, many Republican voters evince more excitement about Qwan on the pro Trump, anti Democratic conspiracy theory than for returning to the sober competence of Amit Romney. Trump's approval rating with GOP voters hovers round, and the moderates and never Trump Conservatives who oppose him have either left
or been driven out of the party. There isn't an obvious candidate to steer the GOP back to the center. Recent history already includes one attempt at broad scale rehabilitation that failed. After Romney's loss in the presidential race, the Republican National Committee conducted an autopsy of what had driven
the loss and how the party could recover. It's conclusion that the GOP should embrace immigration reform and present a softer, more welcoming image to attract minorities, millennials, and LGBTQ people was roundly ignored. Instead, Trump emerged as the galvanizing figure, yanking the party in the opposite direction. It's a role he seems unlikely to yield regardless of this year's outcome. I don't see any appetite for an autopsy, not for the old one or for a new one, says Tim Miller,
a former top strategist for Jeb Bush. I think there will be a very slim minority of pencil heads in d C and a handful of people in Congress who want to look at how the party can revamp and broaden its appeal. But all the incentives in the small dollar donor world, on Fox News and on Twitter still point toward Trump's formula of doubling down on white grievance, owning the Libs, and pushing anti elite, populous nonsense. There's
just no appetite for reform. A party that remains in thrall to Trump's peculiar obsessions, antipathy to masks, Hunter, Biden's laptop, Kamala Harris's alleged socialism isn't likely to have an easy time coaxing back the voters it's driven away. Whether Republicans can correct course and appeal to suburban women and others who have switched over to the Democrats will depend on how the party comes to understand its plight. Even a Trump loss doesn't ensure that the GOP will embark on
the process of making the necessary adjustments. When a party loses, especially when it loses big, the question is what becomes the dominant interpretation within the party of why they lost, says David Hopkins, a professor of political science at Boston College. When Democrats lost four years ago, the dominant interpretation they
took away was don't nominate a woman With Trump. I think the question will become was it a personal disaster particular to the candidate, or will the interpretation be that Trump was a martyr to the left, destroyed by the media, the deep state, the phony mail in ballots, China, and so on. And the lesson is to fight even harder and go further than he did. The biggest wild card in the GOP's future is Trump himself and what path he chooses next. If he loses, he stands to be
robbed at the spotlight. He's commanded with punishing consistency since he became a candidate five years ago. For someone who craves attention and relevancy the way Trump does, that has to be a painful thought. But there's a simple way to avoid oblivion. He could turn around and immediately file to run for president again in twenty twenty four. Back in twenty seventeen, he filed to run for re election
on the day he was inaugurated. Doing that would guarantee him a platform, since he has enough support to credibly pursue the nomination, and would present a daunting obstacle for any other Republican hopefuls. Defining Trump's base is tricky, but there's a clear group of die hards, says John Sides, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University who helps oversee the
Democracy Fund u c L a Nationscape poll. We've been interviewing the same people over time, and those who have a consistently high view of Trump is maybe twenty of respondents. That's more support than any other Republican has. Declaring his candidacy could also appeal to Trump for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to get back to the
White House. He has privately expressed anxiety to allies about scrutiny from prosecutors in New York and possible federal probes into his business empire that could arise once he leaves office. One Democratic lawyer notes that if Trump were to lose and declare him self a candidate for four, he could claim that any investigation was politically motivated and designed to
thwart his return to the presidency. Some Trump allies envisioned no scenario where he willingly leaves the stage regardless of the election outcome, a possibility that would greatly complicate the party's effort to move beyond him and renew its appeal to the broad swaths of the electorate that have defected to Democrats. Only two things can happen. Trump wins or it's stolen, says Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist in the election.
Presumed Republican presidential hopefuls Josh Holly, Tom Cotton, Nicky Haley, and Mike Pompeo may not realize it, but they're running for VP on Trump's ticket. In Without a crystal ball, no one can know if Trump will return to the White House next year or in the future, or if he'll leaven try. Bannon has added incentive to tout Trump's strength and belittle his rivals, since he was indicted for fraud in August, and would ben of it from a
Trump pardon. But one prediction from him seems like a safe bet and one sure to induce Migraines and Republican leaders eager to move on from Trump. He's not going away, and that's the Bloomberg Business Week cover story this week. Check out more in the current issue of Bloomberg Business
Week Magazine. It's on newsstands, it's online at Bloomberg dot com, and of course always on the Bloomberg I'm Carol Masser, and be sure to also check out Bloomberg Business Week Radio that is live Monday through Friday starting at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio, and catch our daily podcast feed, and also check us out on YouTube. How is remote work impacting work life balance and employee barrel without regular commuting and socializing? The concept of burnout
has taken center stage. Joy Tammy Irwin, CEO of Verizon Business and Joey Fitzgerald, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer in Eli Lilly on November twelfth at the Bloomberg Breakaway CEO town Hall to hear how they are bringing strong leadership into focus and ensuring employees are getting the support they need during these unprecedented times. Chester Now at Blueberg Live dot com. Slash the New Normal