The Flight 93 Candidate

Some analysts credit Trump with saving the GOP. They're not wrong.

Nov 14, 2024

It’s difficult to overstate the optimism that Democrats and liberals came away with after two events that occurred in the early-21st century: the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the first American president of color and the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the U.S. Obama represented what the left believed to be the dawning of their demographic destiny, the advent of the winning, multiracial, youth-driven coalition that progressive analysts had been promising, one that would propel Democrats into perpetual dominance. Obergefell, meanwhile, represented what they believed to be their mandate to remake society and usher in a new, liberal era.

This, of course, is the ultimate goal of liberal politics, just as ushering in a conservative era is the goal of conservative politics. Political factions of all stripes share the same ultimate objective: political dominance and the ability to design the world of their dreams that comes with it.

After Obama and Obergefell, both left and right sensed that this goal was nearly within the left’s reach. Proponents for racial justice, gender equality, immigration reform, abortion rights, gun control and other lefty movements were emboldened, seeking to seize on the momentum generated by the success of the marriage movement in order to push their own agendas forward.

Obama tried to build on the momentum generated by Obergefell by instituting his own LGBT-forward policy in 2016, as his Department of Education issued “guidance” to all K - 12 schools that receive federal funds—in other words, almost all of them—that that they were obliged to let transgendered students participate in school activities that are designated for those of their gender identity (e.g. team sports), as well as letting transgender students use the restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identities.

It was the biggest advance yet for the transgender cause. It also represented a very aggressive maneuver in the culture war, which Obama probably felt emboldened to take because, at the time, his side was winning the conflict in a rout.

Meanwhile, in 2015, Obama’s heir apparent, Hillary Clinton, publicly declared that “religious beliefs” would have to be “changed” in order for women around the world to be guaranteed “reproductive health care.” But, even beyond her advocacy of universal abortion access, Clinton’s words raised the specter of a frontal assault on one of the pillars of conservatism: religious liberty. Because, while religions do change, and they sometimes change in response to societal events, their evolution is typically driven from within—unless the change is forced upon them through coercive power. That’s what Clinton’s words seemed to portend, and, in this case, the coercive power was that of the state.

In sum, by the mid-2010s, with the left poised to gain enduring control of the political sphere to accompany its enduring control of the media, educational, entertainment and cultural spheres, the right feared extinction. In early 2016, at a reunion for staff members of his 2000 and 2004 administrations, George W. Bush openly fretted that he would be “the last Republican president.”

Conservatives’ existential dread was most famously articulated in The Flight 93 Election, an essay published in the September 2016 edition of The Claremont Review of Books, which vociferously made the case that it was imperative for conservatives to unite behind Republican candidate Donald Trump against Clinton in the 2016 presidential election or face oblivion. The author, Michael Anton, who wrote anonymously under the name “Publius Decius Mus,” argued that conservatives who “recognize the threat she poses, but somehow can’t stomach [Trump]” should consider the alternative. Anton warned of the likely outcomes, as he saw them, if Trump’s candidacy failed: “Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see… which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three.”

Invoking Flight 93, to warn of conservatives’ political predicament was audacious and, to critics, outrageous. The name is a shorthand reference for the fightback and ultimate act of sacrifice by hostages on one of the planes on September 11, when they forcibly crashed the hijacked plane into a remote, rural field instead of letting it hit the White House or Capitol. It’s meant to be a unifying tale of uncommon American heroism, not a partisan call-to-arms.

Yet, this was the comparison which, to the right, most aptly described the stakes facing the Republican party and the broader conservative movement in 2016. As Anton put it in his essay, “charge the cockpit or you die.”

Anton bluntly the acknowledged the risks. “You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees,” he wrote. “Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain.”

The publication of The Flight 93 Election was critical to getting Republicans to coalesce around Trump, who was eventually able to marshal enough support to stitch together an electoral college win. For his part, Anton would go on to serve on Trump’s National Security Council.

But, from the outset of his first term, Trump provided ample reason to doubt that he was able to pilot “the plane” of American democracy or even that of Republican governance. He demolished stylistic norms, trampled on convention and showed unprecedented willingness to cross lines. He went out of his way to escalate his war with the press, academia and other institutions (to be fair, these institutions also went out of their way to escalate their war with him). Most of all, his approach to governing somehow managed to increase the distance between red and blue America, which were already on the brink of a national divorce before he took office.

Two years after Trump clambered into the captain’s chair, Americans signaled their displeasure with his flying. Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives after the 2018 midterm elections, winning 41 seats.

Although there were no clarion calls like The Flight 93 Election issued beforehand, the 2020 election represented an even bigger Flight 93-moment for Republicans. Trump’s reelection chances, which were already iffy, had been badly damaged by what was seen as his weak response to the pandemic. On Election Day in 2020, Trump trailed challenger Joe Biden by more than eight points, according to polling site 538. If the margin held, Democrats were projected ride Biden’s coattails to a cataclysmic electoral wipeout of Republicans at virtually every level of government.

But, somehow Trump found more people to rush the cockpit. Shrugging off the predictions, he frenetically barnstormed America in the final days of the campaign, ultimately managing to raise his vote total by more than 11 million ballots from his 2016 total, getting more than 74 million votes. It wasn’t enough, however, as Biden eventually garnered more than 81 million votes and 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.

Still, it was days after Election Day until the race was called for Biden, not hours as many pundits had projected. In the end, Trump managed to cut the anticipated size of his loss in half, which translated to Republicans gaining a dozen seats in the House—reducing the Democrats’ margin—instead of losing dozens of seats as expected.

Yet, in the election aftermath, Trump again provided reason to question whether he should ever be entrusted with control stick. Instead of basking in Republican praise for a heroic, comeback attempt that resulted in down-ballot wins and using that to position himself for a 2024 return, he embarked on what was possibly the most pronounced bout of sore-loserism in American political history. He refused to attend Biden’s inauguration and still refuses to acknowledge the 2020 result. He and others who supported his cause filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the election’s outcome, some of which didn’t conclude until several years into Biden’s term in office. Most of all, his efforts to overturn the election were the animating force of the January 6 uprising, and Trump himself was hit with federal and state charges for his actions to that end.

And, as much as Trump had boosted Republicans in the election, his post-election conduct began to drag down the party’s fortunes, culminating in a Democratic sweep of Senate run-off elections in Georgia, which traditionally had been a red state. This also gave Democrats control of the chamber and, with it, unified control of government.

Trump’s intention to run for a third time in 2024 was clear before Biden was even sworn in. But, by the 2022 mid-terms, Trump’s influence appeared to have diminished substantially. While Republicans retook the House, it was by a far smaller margin than forecast. And, not only did the party not gain the one seat it needed to seize the Senate, it actually lost a seat instead. And, according to NBC News, 32 out of 33 Trump-endorsed candidates who echoed his claims about the “stolen” 2020 election lost their races.

Still, Trump rampaged through the Republican primary field in 2024 to become the party’s nominee for a third, consecutive cycle. The party quickly fell in line once more because, once more, Republicans were feeling those Flight 93 vibes.

While the party was better positioned to sustain election losses than it was in 2016—thanks to Trump’s coattails in his previous races—Kamala Harris nevertheless represented a new, existential danger. She seemed poised to reassemble the Obama coalition and turn the map as blue as he did in the process. Bluer, actually, because her candidacy carried the potential to draw an even higher level of support from women.

Also, Harris had expressed her support for ending the filibuster, motivated by the cause of codifying abortion rights. And, beyond the institutionalizing of abortion freedoms, with the filibuster out of the way, all Harris would potentially need to enact a wish list of progressive policies would be a single vote margin in the House and the tie-breaking vote of her vice-president in the Senate.

So, for a third time, Republicans turned to Donald Trump to save them. And, for the third time, he came through, this time getting a majority of the nation to storm the cockpit, as he earned his first popular vote win. He also propelled Republicans to reclaim the Senate with a six-vote majority and, most likely, helped them hang on to House too, which will give him a Congress that is friendly to his agenda.

But, beyond helping Republicans secure majorities up and down the ballot, Trump and his trio of Flight 93 elections bought the Republican party time to transform its identity such that it’s now well-positioned to compete in the present and the long-term. Because, in 2024, it wasn’t just Trump’s original base of white working-class voters that were rushing the cockpit. They were joined by almost half of Latinos and a growing percentage of voters of color.

Of course, nobody knows if Trump’s piloting skills have gotten any better since his last stint in the captain’s chair. But, thanks to “the Flight 93 candidate,” Republicans no longer have to approach every election with a mentality of “charge the cockpit or die.”

Portions of this post have been adapted from my book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down. Buy the book here. For the time being, it is only available digitally. To read, download the Kindle app to your phone, your iPad or tablet, your Kindle device or your computer.

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