In politics, it can be tempting to extrapolate grand assumptions from individual electoral events and assume that they’re applicable until further notice. Doing so, however, can also be risky. Since 2016, it’s been abundantly clear that much of the received bipartisan wisdom about how to win elections is actually bunk. If Donald Trump becoming president isn’t an occasion to throw old assumptions out the door, then surely nothing is.

After last November’s midterms, however, much of the conventional elite wisdom about American politics yet again has reasserted itself. Among other things, Trump’s continued visibility had clearly hurt the GOP, and Democratic and Republican operatives alike began to envision a 2024 cycle that restored the familiar patterns and moved beyond him.

For Democrats, the result was cause for celebration but also affirmation of the long-standing centrist belief that elections can only be won by appealing to suburban moderates. To elite Republicans, it was an opportunity to finally cast off the Trumpian albatross and anoint a less mercurial figure like Florida governor Ron DeSantis — who could presumably be counted on to throw red meat at the base during the primaries before making the standard general election pivot toward the center. Normalcy or something approximating it, so it seemed, had finally returned.