With the electors set to vote in two weeks, the presidential election is not over yet, but things are not looking good for Donald Trump. Legal challenges, though they still continue to trickle in from the President’s legal team (who I believe really haven’t done a good job), just aren’t coming together in a way to change the current course.

Meanwhile, Never Trump certainly believes they’ve come out victorious, and they want everyone to know about it. Rick Wilson, who apparently is the ‘Editor at Large’ for The Daily Beast for some reason, wrote a blistering rant of idiocy just the other day opining about the coming purge of the “bad” Republicans. They believe Trump has been repudiated and that a return to business as usual is just around the corner.

But they didn’t think this through.

Thank you! A lot of Senators and House Members are very happy that I came along. Think I’ll stick around for awhile! https://t.co/stOYWuAJ13

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2020

Trump is not going anywhere. In fact, all Never Trump did was extend his time on the national stage. If they thought the tweets, the media appearances, and Trump’s influence on the party would end if he was defeated (especially in an election this close in the swing states), they thought wrong.

Consider this. If Never Trump really wanted to limit damage to the country, and I mean real damage, not silly concerns about decorum, the best thing in the world that could have happened was for Trump to get re-elected so he could continue to push back on the left and then ride off into the sunset in 2024. You know what’s going to happen now? Trump is going to suck up all the oxygen for another four years, Biden is going to do irreparable harm to the country, and then Trump’s going to run again in 2024 where he’ll be the odds on favorite to win the GOP primary. Against someone as awful of a candidate as Kamala Harris, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see him elected again.

Even if someone wasn’t a big Trump fan, the right play was always to do what was best for the country (i.e. defeat liberalism in 2020), ride out the personality quirks you don’t like, and move on in 2024 with a completely clean slate. That won’t happen now, and it didn’t have to be this way. Never Trump had a chance to actually consider all the angles. Instead, they were so concerned with the D.C. cocktail scene returning in full force that they didn’t consider Trump might not go away if he lost. Of course, no one ever accused Never Trump of being deep thinkers.

So congrats to them. They wanted Trump off the national stage, and all they got was Trump on the national stage for even longer.

(Please follow me on Twitter! @bonchieredstate)