Political eras rarely have the courtesy to end while their founder is still in the building. The Trump era has managed it anyway. Donald Trump retains the pen, the podium and the Truth Social account. What he no longer has is the House, the Senate or, most deliciously, Texas.

Texas, the state that exports grievance the way it once exported crude, elected its first Democratic senator since 1988 and, for good measure, threw out Greg Abbott. Trump had carried it by nearly 14 points two years ago. It is as if the Vatican had gone Unitarian.

But the surest sign came from Ohio, where Vivek Ramaswamy, a man who has never met a silence he couldn’t improve upon, ran the most despicable ad of a despicable decade. Amy Acton has spoken of being sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, a man criminally charged for it, and was removed from her mother’s care at 12. In the campaign’s closing weeks, Ramaswamy spent $4 million putting that estranged mother on television to call her daughter a liar.

The Trump years have been one long geological survey in search of the floor. Ramaswamy found it and kept drilling. Trump pronounced the ad “very powerful.” JD Vance praised Ramaswamy’s “audacity” and added that whether the ad was appropriate was “not really my concern,” a phrase that could be carved above the door of this administration and save everyone considerable time.

Ohio’s voters, it turned out, were concerned. Ramaswamy lost by nearly eight points in a state Trump won by eleven, despite more than $100 million in advertising, and finished behind every other Republican on the statewide ticket. That last detail is the one to frame. For ten years, cruelty had passed for authenticity. In Ohio, enough Republicans finally looked at what was being done in their name, called it cruelty, and declined to sign for the delivery.

None of this means the party will wake up refreshed and resume being the party of Lincoln, or even of Romney. Cowardice, like any skill, improves with practice, and these people have put in their ten thousand hours. Trump’s own response to the rout was to make Stephen Miller his chief of staff, which is certainly one way of reading the room.

There will be aspirants to the MAGA mantle. They will discover what Ramaswamy learned, at a personal cost of more than $41 million in campaign loans: the tactics were never transferable. Trump could get away with Trumpism because he was Trump. Everyone else inherits the liabilities without the license.

The first understudy in line is the gentleman who so admired the audacity. Whether he survives his own performance is, happily, not really my concern.

A Vedantin would observe that I enjoyed writing this more than a man of equanimity should. The Gita describes the wise as bearing ill will toward no being. It says nothing, I notice, about adjectives.

So: take the cruelty seriously and hold the victory lightly. Tides turn because that is what tides do. The work is to remain the kind of people who would still say no to cruelty if it were wearing our colors.