This argument may not be totally true. And the “Never Trump” narrative is clearly self-serving — of course a group of conservatives who feel like they don’t fit in the current Republican Party prefer a more conservative Democratic Party that they can align with.

But true or not, this narrative matters because it has mirrored and likely influenced the Democratic Party’s post-Trump strategy. Since Trump’s victory, Democrats have done a lot of soul-searching. Is the party too left? Or is it too establishment and centrist? Are Democrats ignorant of the concerns of the Americans who don’t live on the coasts? Are they too focused on nonwhite voters — or not focused on them enough?

Faced with these complicated questions in 2017 and 2018, Democrats took an approach that was broadly similar to the “Never Trumpers” — attacking Trump as a uniquely dangerous threat to American democracy while resisting more liberal policy ideas and recruiting fairly centrist candidates in key congressional races. This approach led some “Never Trumpers” to get behind Democrats in the midterms — moving beyond simply opposing Trump to fighting the Republican Party more broadly…

It’s hard to quantify exactly how many anti-Trump conservatives backed Democrats in 2018 and how big a role they played in Democrats taking the House and winning many key governor’s races.8 But that temporary alliance between “Never Trump” Republicans and Democrats was strengthened in 2019 for two reasons. First, “Never Trump” Republicans found there was little appetite in the GOP for a primary challenge to Trump — another illustration of their declining influence within the party. And second, in a final blow for some of them, Republicans largely stood by Trump even as details emerged about his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.