You’d think Donald Trump’s remarkable comeback would inspire some soul-searching in the Democratic Party.

You’d be wrong.

Rather than a deep reflection about their coalitional strategy and an adjustment of policy emphases, pundits are instead looking for scapegoats.

First culprit: sexism. Peter Baker in the New York Times is a representative example: “Mr. Trump’s latest victory also adds ammunition to the argument that the country is not ready for a woman in the Oval Office.”

Some Democrats, led perhaps by Barack Obama, Kamala Harris’ surrogate-in-chief in recent weeks, will blame Joe Biden.

By refusing to accept the reality that he had grown too old for the job, they’ll argue, Biden forced the choice of a successor too late and outside the normal consensus-building primary process.

Whoopi Goldberg argued on “The View” that, in fact, Kamala had done a great job, the problem was she just didn’t have enough time.

Biden will also be blamed for his epic gaffe last week of calling Trump’s supporters “garbage.”

Other Democrats will argue that they were just unlucky. Inflation was under control, but that fact hadn’t yet filtered into the public consciousness, they will claim.

They may argue that the assassination attempt offered an unearned reset for former President Trump while simultaneously increasing public sympathy for him.

More Democrats will indict Trump for conning the American people and fearmongering to attract working-class minority votes.

As the Times’ Lisa Lerer wrote: “He wooed Black and Latino voters with false claims that migrants were stealing their jobs and were responsible for a wave of violent crime.”

Having absolved themselves of full responsibility for their loss, Democrats will then see no reason to change.

Instead, they will do exactly what they did in the first Trump term: Resist.

They will advance the narrative that Trump’s White House is an unprecedented and chaotic engine of constitutional norm-breaking, international instability and dangerous authoritarianism.

The bureaucracy, especially the national security and diplomatic arms, will collude with their trans-Atlantic counterparts and the American media to try to convince the American public that we are entering a new era of world-historical danger.

Efforts by Trump and Congress to rein in the bureaucracy, get control of the border, and deal with the unprecedented number of illegal immigrants on US soil will all be tarred as illegal, unconstitutional, reactionary, or a violation of international law.

What many in America will regard as a return to policy sanity and constitutional propriety, Democrats will call “cruel” and “extreme.”

Starting in early 2026, the Democratic Party will focus all its energies on retaking Congress.

If it’s successful, Trump will likely be impeached a third time, and perhaps even convicted. I will venture out on a limb to predict that Trump will not deserve it.

What we can be certain the Democrats will not do is the thing that used to be the common response of political parties when thrust into the wilderness: recalibrate a positive policy vision for the country while sidelining, as best they can, the extreme and unpopular wings of their coalition.

It is not they who are alienated from the American people. America is simply full of ignorants who have not seen the light of their wisdom.

It is not they who are responsible for the failures of American diplomacy abroad or the cultural decay and economic decline at home.

Americans were deceived by con artists and disinformation specialists into thinking they were a lot worse off than they really are.

This inability of Democrats to tack back to the popular center of American public opinion on matters such as race, sex, gender, immigration policy, and crime was their undoing on Tuesday — and will be in the next presidential fight with JD Vance in 2028.

A contest which I expect to be a GOP blowout win the likes of which hasn’t been seen in American politics in nearly half a century.

Ryan P. Williams is president of the Claremont Institute and publisher of the Claremont Review of Books and The American Mind.