John Podhoretz already expanded on the implications of last night’s Democratic wave—and it was a wave. Democrats took control of the governor’s mansion in New Jersey and held Virginia’s. They captured the legislatures in New Jersey and Washington. As of this writing, they’re on track to retake the Virginia House after a 14-seat gain—a total that is likely to rise. They won mayoralties in Charlotte, Manchester, St. Petersburg, and New York City, and they captured legislative seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Hampshire. They won two seats in Georgia’s House of Representatives that were considered so safe Democrats didn’t even contest them in 2016. And in Maine, voters ratified Obamacare by approving the state-level expansion of Medicaid.

The only question now becomes what the GOP can do to prevent the coming onslaught. The first step would be to stop bargaining away their losses. Post-game analysis on Wednesday among Republican partisans has so far been an exercise in self-delusion. Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, was either too Trumpy or not Trumpy enough. The congressional GOP hadn’t secured enough legislative achievements to keep the base enthused. And so on. Republicans can negotiate with themselves all they like, but they’re now locked in to a course from which they cannot divert. And voters are likely to punish them for it.

Don’t take my word for it. Republicans in the House have been getting out of Dodge for weeks, long before the writing on the wall became so self-evidently clear. Fixtures in the House of Representatives, such as Jeb Hensarling, Lamar Smith, Frank LoBiondo, and Ted Poe, are heading for the exits. Moderates, such as Dave Reichert and Charlie Dent, have determined that Washington D.C. is no place for a Trump-skeptical Republican.  Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have already departed for ignominy or careers in television, while others are vacating their seats to seek higher office. By comparison, Republican retirements in the Senate, which Democrats are unlikely to be able to retake in November, are historically low.

Some of these targets are out of reach for Democrats. In a wave election, though, seats you never expected to fall tend to surprise; as long as there is a warm body on the ballot, they’ll get votes. And Democrats have managed to scare up a lot of bodies. As of September 30, 391 prospective Democratic candidates for the 2018 midterms had raised at least $5,000 for their forthcoming bids. By comparison, at the same point in 2009, just 184 Republican challengers had met or passed the $5,000 mark. Democrats need only 24 more seats to retake the House. As of today, the Real Clear Politics average shows Democrats with a 9.1 percent advantage on the question of which party voters would prefer to control Congress.

There’s still a whole year between today and the midterm elections. Maybe it’s not the time to panic yet. Things can change, right?  Maybe not. For a variety of reasons, disaster for the GOP seems increasingly unavoidable.

The Democratic Party alienated independent voters and generated a massive Republican wave in 2010 because the party was so active. Legislative efforts ranging from Keynesian stimulus spending, to regulating the finical industry, to imposing a “cap and trade” system on the economy, to restructuring the entire health care system fomented a backlash against Democratic activism. What are voters saying today? The GOP’s push for reforms is unpopular, but the Democrats who turned out last night were not motivated to vote by Republican legislative overreach in Washington. They certainly weren’t registering their satisfaction with the Democratic Party, which is more unpopular today than at any point in the last quarter century. They were sending a signal to Washington, but it had less to do with the GOP than with the president.

In Virginia, Ed Gillespie’s flirtation with Trumpian cultural issues endeared him to voters in what pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson calls “Trump-land,” but it did nothing for him elsewhere. “Trump won 44.4 percent of votes in Virginia in 2016,” she writes. “At press time, Ed Gillespie had won 45 percent of the vote in 2017.” A Trump-like campaign wins Trump-like numbers. Without Hillary Clinton on the ballot, though, that’s a losing proposition. Republicans who might be tempted to run away from the president will find, though, that their core constituents are not so forgiving of a GOP that abandons Trump. With the possible exception of Mike Pence, Trump is the most popular Republican among Republicans, and it’s not even close. Republican incumbents have races to win, too, and the insurgent wing has already demonstrated that it can knock off flawed establishmentarian candidates.

The weight of history and the eyes of the donor class are on the congressional GOP. They have an increasingly narrow window to secure at least one legislative achievement; tax code reform is the most likely. Unfortunately for the GOP, the proposal already has the disadvantage of being linked to the party’s unpopular president. According to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, “President Trump’s tax plan” is already 10 points underwater. Nearly 4 in 10 voters have no opinion on the matter, but they soon will and only after the unpopular president has devoted himself to selling the public on the proposal.

Ominously for the GOP, the unpopularity of this plan and the failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act mirror similarly unpopular reform proposals. George W. Bush’s social security privatization push in 2005, Obamacare, and the Stimulus all helped to catalyze an opposition wave in the impending midterms. If Republicans are hoping that strong GDP and job growth will save them, those factors did not deter voters from registering their satisfaction with the GOP on Tuesday.

So what is the GOP to do? It’s members cannot abandon Trump for fear of alienating the base. They cannot mimic Trump without mobilizing an overwhelming coalition of Democrats. They cannot simply pass nothing without sacrificing their duty both to posterity and to their core constituents, but they can’t pass what they want to pass without fueling a backlash. Events may still intervene on the GOP’s behalf, but the party’s present trajectory should distress Republican partisans.

This is not a particularly satisfying prescription for Republicans, but the bill for 2016 had to come due at some point. And that may be galvanizing. If the wave is inevitable, Republicans in Congress will have to make the next 14 months count for all they’re worth.

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