Two years ago, Trump thought he had a historic mandate. On Tuesday, he was rebuked in historic fashion. It’s only going to get worse for him.

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Two years ago, it looked like Donald Trump had a mandate. He had returned to power after attempting a coup in 2021 and then, just five months before the 2024 election, being convicted of dozens of felonies related to the Stormy Daniels hush-money scheme. And somehow, despite this flagrant lawlessness, he had won more convincingly than ever before, winning not only the Electoral College but also, for the first time, the popular vote, thanks in part to unprecedented gains with Black, Latino, and young voters, particularly men. It wasn’t just a political victory, either: Star athletes began celebrating scores with the “Trump dance.” He wasn’t just normalized. He was American culture.

Or so it seemed at the time. That conclusion had already aged poorly before this week, but Tuesday’s election results make it look ridiculous. What we are seeing almost defies description. South Carolina and Texas will soon have Democratic senators. So will Kansas. Georgia just elected the country’s first-ever Black woman governor. There are many explanations for this blue tsunami—Iran, tariffs, horrific GOP candidate selection—but the simplest is also the most persuasive: This is a historic rebuke of Donald Trump and his party.

Far from being the dawn of a new political epoch, Trump’s return to power was something closer to a flash in the pan. By last summer, he had squandered what little political capital he had entered office with. And now, he will have to deal with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. There will be investigations. There will be accountability. And there will likely be a furious, perhaps unprecedented response from the president and the MAGA loyalists who surround him. But make no mistake: Trump’s downfall has begun. The only question is what happens to the political movement he has led for the last 11 years.

Trump, it turns out, had not really won hearts and minds in 2024. He won because Joe Biden had overseen a period of rampant inflation, which was not his fault, and had held onto a doomed reelection campaign despite widespread concerns about his age, which was. Trump’s victory two years ago, in retrospect, was a massive, foolish risk by voters that he would govern more or less like he did during the pre-Covid period of his first term, which is to say erratically but not destructively.

Those of us who saw Trump’s victory in sweeping cultural terms were wrong. But that is also how those surrounding him saw his victory—and they promptly overplayed their hand. They should have understood their mandate as largely limited to bringing down soaring costs. Instead, they eviscerated the federal government. They invaded U.S. cities with masked goons. They deported law-abiding immigrants and murdered U.S. citizens seeking to protect them. They started two wars—one economic, the other literal—that caused prices, which the Biden administration had just started to bring under control, to soar again.