Donald Trump recast the Republican party in his own image, and on election day the Republican party paid a price. Despite low unemployment and a booming stock market, Team Trump lost control of the House of Representatives. America’s voters said: “It’s not just the economy, stupid.”

Rather, they made the election about the president, his persona, and Republican indifference to working Americans and hostility to the world around them. Pre-existing conditions became a Democratic rallying cry.

Sometimes cultural resentments can provide a path to victory. In other instances, they can go too far. Without Hillary Clinton on the ballot as a target and a distraction, enough of the US focused on Trump and did not like what they saw staring back when it came time to vote. In congressional races, the Democrats outpolled the Republicans by more than 2.3m votes nationally – shades of the last presidential elections.

To be sure, the president and his party could smile at their gains in the US Senate. The Republican party picked up seats in places like North Dakota, Indiana, Florida and Missouri. As a result, the federal judiciary will remain under the Republicans’ collective thumb.

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On the other hand, in Michigan – where Trump won in 2016, but which twice voted for Barack Obama – voters elected a Democratic governor. Similarly, Pennsylvania, another Trump state, re-elected a Democratic governor and US senator by double digits despite Trump’s in-state rallies.

In the Great Lakes, pro-Trump is not automatically synonymous with pro-Republican. Indeed, even in rock-ribbed landlocked Kansas, Kris Kobach, the state’s nativist attorney general, lost his bid for the governorship.

Looking back, Trump’s closing argument sought to instill a miasma of dread, just as he did during the 2016 campaign. This time, however, the president and his administration were the folks in charge, and that makes it that much more difficult to point the finger elsewhere. When you fly regularly on Air Force One, it’s tough to claim outsider status, even if you’re lugging a massive chip on your shoulder.

The president’s brazen nods and winks to race-baiting hit their targets in Florida and Georgia. Elsewhere, not so much.

When Fox News refuses to continue to air a Trump campaign ad on the grounds that it is racist, that is saying that the president has gone too far. As 2020 looms just around the corner, the question of how loud Republicans can dog-whistle without alienating the silent majority remains unanswered.

Apparently, “modern presidential”, Trump’s preferred mode of communication, generally hurt more than it helped. Outside of rural America, Trump’s message often sounded like nails on a blackboard. Throw in the abolition of the deductibility of state and local income taxes under the Trump tax law, and even those who are doing well have plenty of reason for dissatisfaction.

Until Tuesday, Trump and Company continually pandered to their base. Instead of seeking to unify the country, they sought to perpetually agitate and galvanize their voters, and to sate their donors’ appetites. Said differently, when the party’s leadership is yearning to pare back benefits to the elderly to plug the hole in budget caused by the Republicans’ giveaway to the rich, it’s a huge problem.

Yet it is unclear what lessons Trump and the Republicans will actually draw. Unfortunately, some of those lessons may be counterintuitive.

As the ranks of the remaining House Republicans will be coming from diehard deep-red Trump districts, look for them to elevate Trumpian orthodoxies to the level of religious creed. Going back two decades, losses in the 1998 midterm elections actually emboldened Republicans to impeach Bill Clinton. Being chastised by the electorate didn’t matter.

Think less tolerance for straying from the party line, not more. Unlike senators who represent an entire state, more often than not congressional districts can be bubbles of demographic and ideological conformity.

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Indeed, the likelihood of Representative Nancy Pelosi wielding the speaker’s gavel will only make Republican true believers all the more insistent on digging in their heels – from the border wall to the budget to Bob Mueller, the special counsel – except now they won’t be holding the congressional subpoena pad. That honor will belong to Democrats like Elijah Cummings, Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters, who are capable of exercising oversight over a corrupt administration.

Looking ahead, the conservative Freedom Caucus stands to control the Republican party’s megaphone in the House. No longer the majority, congressional Republicans will probably feel emboldened to further put principle ahead of pragmatism. For them, compromise was and will remain the devil’s word.

Yet not every Republican who won did so by taking a page out of the Trump playbook. In Democratic strongholds like Maryland and Massachusetts, voters re-elected their Republican governors. Moderation need not be a vice. Too bad the president doesn’t appear to be watching.