There is no doubt that Trump brought a new combativeness to the GOP, sensed a hunger among the party’s voters for new departures on immigration and trade, and won the presidency in 2016 based on an electoral map few thought possible. But Trump has lived off the legend of 2016 — only he knows how to win or fight, and he holds the key a working-class-based electoral coalition that no one else understands as instinctively or as well.

Trump’s image as the wizard of winning was always doubtful. In 2016, some Republican Senate candidates notably outperformed him in their states. In 2020, Republican House candidates also outperformed Trump, not by enormous margins, but enough to make a difference. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution points out, if Trump had gotten the same number of votes in Georgia as Republican House candidates, he would have won the state by 16,000 voters, rather than losing it by 12,000, thus saving Sidney Powell the trouble of coming up with elaborate fantasies for why he lost and making the lives of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger much easier.

Trump’s magic was to a large extent based on running against a very unpopular candidate, Hillary Clinton, and in a race where he could lean on the Electoral College. He never had to aim for 50 percent plus 1, but 47 percent and just the right breaks in the battleground states. This is not a sustainable or readily replicable model.