In Pennsylvania, the Chester County Republican Committee has postponed a vote on censuring Sen. Pat Toomey for voting to convict Donald Trump of waging an insurrection against the government of the United States of America. The proposal could come up later this week, but is more likely to be shelved pending action by the statewide party. Nonetheless, the language of the censure resolution is interesting, in part, because it blames Toomey for a recent wave of voters dropping their registration with the Republican Party.

Former Rep. Ryan Costello, a Republican who represented Chester County in Congress from 2015 to 2019, finds this preposterous: “No reasonable person can deduce that anything Pat Toomey has done or said has resulted in anyone leaving the Republican Party.” In truth, an examination by the Philadelphia Inquirer finds that the exodus is driven by high-propensity voters who were offended by the insurrection. These folks were much more likely to have voted by mail than the average registered Republican voter. Some of them voted for Trump in November, but soured on him when he refused to accept the results and violently attacked the certification of Pennsylvania’s election.

The immediate unfortunate result is that the makeup of the Republican primary electorate will be more Trump-friendly rather than less. This means that people like Pat Toomey and Ryan Costello, no prizes themselves, will be less likely to represent the GOP in the future. There’s nothing Republicans can do about this. The devolution of the party is accelerating, as every time a decent person leaves in disgust what remains is even more deplorable.

It’s a mistake to think this won’t affect the nature of the Democratic Party. It will have to more risk-averse, not just because it needs to hold onto Republican defectors, but much more so because the country is depending on them not to lose and hand power to a Trumpist party. In fact, the danger is so high that it’s simply not viable to go about politics as usual, thinking that the Democrats can win elections in perpetuity. The truth is, the Democratic Party isn’t that popular, as was evident by their terribly disappointing performance in House and Senate races in 2020.

It’s nice to win the presidency, and there’s reason to believe that the Democrats will grow as the Republicans shrink. But what’s most critical is that the GOP either cease to exist or find its way back to respectability. It’s tempting to think we can do okay with a repeat of the period between 1933 and 1995 when the Democrats dominated Congress with only brief interludes. But those brief interludes could be fatal with this present version of the GOP which, as I’ve pointed out, is actually getting worse rather than staying the same.

If Lincoln Project-style Republicans are helpless to stop the slide, it’s hard to envision what Democrats can do to change the trajectory the GOP is on, but they can begin by not lazily accepting the realignment of the parties on the theory that they’re going to benefit. The Democrats have to find a way to recapture some of the support they’ve lost among lower class whites. This should begin with aggressively supporting unionization of the labor force. But it has to go beyond that to addressing some of core issues that hollowed out middle America. This includes health, like the opioid crisis, but it mainly involves economic opportunity. This is where an anti-monopoly agenda is key, because global competition isn’t the only thing that destroyed the entrepreneurial vitality of small town America. Lax antitrust enforcement is the culprit here, and if we ever want to see towns full of shopkeepers again, we need to limit the market share of major corporations. Regional inequality is a related villain and that can addressed in a variety of ways, including through transportation policy. We need more airhubs so medium-sized cities can compete with the Atlantas and Charlottes of the country.

Policy is the way to fix this, even though it will take some time. It won’t work by directly changing people’s minds, but more slowly through millions of small interactions and experiences that lead to significant changes in outcomes and culture.

Perhaps some billionaires can get together and try to form a new center-right party to replace the GOP, and I have some ideas on the best places to start. But that too is out of our control. What the Democrats can do is make it a high priority not to sit back idly, taking easy wins where they can get them. They can’t just focus on delivering for the people who put in them in office, although that can’t neglect this either. The job is to do both. They have to keep their promises to their base, but also find a way to break the fever in Trump’s half of America before they can take power and destroy the world.