The past three weeks have been filled with optimism -- for obvious reasons -- so I thought I'd write a truly optimistic column today. Democrats are now feeling very enthusiastic about the chances for victory in November, and the polls are starting to back this feeling up. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are now leading by four points in each of three critical battleground states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) according to one prominent poll, and the national polling has also taken a turn for the better, with Harris beating Trump regularly (by a margin of around three points, give or take). So I'm just going to assume for the sake of argument here that Harris goes on to win the presidential election (yes, I realize this is an enormous assumption to make, but as I said I'm in a rather optimistic mood). My question is whether such a victory can not only defeat Donald Trump but also Trumpism itself.

If Harris does win, it will be a triumph of cheerful good feelings over gloom and doom. That's important, because even Joe Biden's win over Trump in 2020 didn't have this exact dynamic working for it. If Harris wins, it will represent a huge mood shift in the country at large, to put this another way. But will that be enough for the fever in the Republican Party to break?

Biden thought his 2020 victory was going to do exactly this, if you'll remember. But (obviously) it didn't. Trump responded by throwing the biggest sore-loser tantrum in all of American history -- a tantrum that continues to this day. Because he is a narcissist and a megalomaniac, he refused to admit that he lost. The election was rigged, he insisted. It was stolen from him. The Democrats somehow cheated. Trump got millions of people to believe this fiction, despite there being not a shred of evidence to support his wild Big Lie. And then he ran for president again and easily secured the Republican nomination.

So what will he do this time, if he loses again? The first part of the answer to that seems pretty obvious. He will, once again, refuse to believe that he lost. He will trot out his Big Lie 2.0 and rant and rave about it to his millions of followers. "It was rigged again!" he will tell them, and they will believe him again (without a scintilla of any evidence of it being true). He will throw his legal might into contesting the election results, anywhere and everywhere. All of this seems like a foregone conclusion, really.

The bigger question is what will his followers do? Will there be widespread violence? It's certainly a possibility. Will there be monkey wrenches thrown in the mechanics of certifying the election results? Also a distinct possibility. Will Trump try to get Republicans in Congress to go along with his Big Lie in an effort to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote? Probably... but the laws governing this process have been changed, making it a lot harder to bring such challenges. Since I am being optimistic today, I am going to assume (another gigantic assumption, I do realize) that all of this adds up to nothing more than a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing -- that at the end of the day, the system will work once again and Kamala Harris will be sworn in as our next president right on schedule.

What I wonder is what would happen next? Trump, of course, is not going to fade into the woodwork and quietly go away. He's going to be just as loud and obnoxious as ever. He may even declare that he's going to make another run for the presidency in 2028.

But what will the rest of the Republican Party do? How much farther are they going to follow a two-time loser who is increasingly divorced from reality? If Democrats sweep the election and wind up in control of both houses of Congress, the message will be pretty clear: following Trump equates to losing, over and over again. How many Republicans are going to be willing to stay on Trump's bandwagon when they can clearly see for themselves what it has led them to?

Will Joe Biden's prediction come to pass, four years later? Will the Republican Party's MAGA fever finally break? Or will they continue to follow their Dear Leader until he keels over one day? I have no idea what the chances of either of these things coming to pass is, I should mention -- my crystal ball is kind of cloudy on the question.

If Trump loses, he will be the same age as Joe Biden is now when 2028 rolls around. He will not change his personality one iota -- he will still be an angry old man, filled with grievances and thirsting for revenge. But his mental fitness has already been slipping (which the news media has thankfully finally woken up and realized) so it's a fair assumption to think that he'll be even more unhinged and incomprehensible in four years' time.

Also, his legal problems may catch up to him, after the election is over. He's successfully delayed a lot of them, but that's not going to last forever. While he probably won't get sentenced to prison in the one case where he's already been found guilty, it's still a distinct possibility in the others. Win or lose, fighting his legal battles is going to take up an enormous amount of Trump's time and energy.

His followers probably won't care about any of this. Trump's army of MAGA-hatted voters probably isn't going to walk away from him any time soon. So the same dynamic within the Republican Party will exist -- plenty of politicians who know full well that blindly following Trump equals losing elections, but also know that if they challenge him directly they'll wind up being drummed out of the party (just like Liz Cheney was). They all will have to rely on plenty of MAGA voters to get re-elected, so directly poking the bear will still be tantamount to political suicide in the GOP.

If there is any motion away from Trump within the GOP, it will have to be sugar-coated. It'll be couched as "more in sorrow than in anger" and be based on pragmatism. "Sure, I thought Donald Trump was the greatest president of all time and I supported him in 2020 and 2024, but it's just not working. I want our party to win again. I thank Mr. Trump for revitalizing our party, but we've got to nominate some people that can actually win -- I don't want to lose a third presidential election in a row." That, or some similar flavor of the same sentiment, is going to be how Republicans slowly start drifting away from Trump (if any of this comes to pass, that is).

Trump will still try to intimidate the entire party from the sidelines, of course. He will rage at "RINOs" who aren't sufficiently obsequious to him. He will threaten to primary any Republican who votes in Congress against his wishes. And he'll probably continue to wield a lot of power in this regard. Trump will also pounce on any bad news at all and take a "See? I told you so!" approach, painting an apocalyptic picture of the destruction of America under Democratic leadership.

Defeating Trumpism will require Republicans to reject Trump's endless negativity. It's going to require someone to show the Republican Party a different path -- one that might just lead to success. Nikki Haley tried her best to present this option to the voters in the primary season, and she made at least some inroads with some voters. Haley can also say: "See? I told you so -- the first party to dump their old man at the top of the ticket won, just like I predicted." She (or someone like her) could energize her party behind the idea of trying something (and someone) different. Someone that doesn't just rant and rave, but instead shows the way to a positive future ahead. Someone who smiles and occasionally even laughs, for a change. As Haley found out, it's a tricky tightrope to walk, because openly defying Trump will turn too many GOP voters off. It's got to be couched more in "Thank you for your service, President Trump, but we'll take it from here" language. This could give permission to a lot of Trump voters to conclude: "Well, I still love Trump, but we gotta try something different if we're ever going to win again."

Of course, there could be a curveball in the middle of all of this. Some of Trump's offspring (and/or their spouses) seem quite eager to create a Trumpian dynasty in the GOP. Would Donald Trump Junior or Lara or any of the others ever try to get Trump to pass the baton to them? This would be tough to do, since it would require Trump to essentially take a big step back -- something he is obviously not fond of doing. But even with Donald Trump officially anointing them, would any of them really command the same loyalty from the MAGA voters? Donald Trump is a unique individual -- he's a hard act to follow, to put it a different way. None of his family members really seem to have the same quality of apocalyptic anger mixed with the entertainment value that Trump provides. How many people would attend a rally for Donald Trump Junior or Lara? Probably a lot fewer than show up to see the original, that's my guess at any rate.

The fever in the Republican Party might not truly break until Trump dies. But a pragmatic approach -- still paying homage to Trump but also wanting to win again -- could at least allow the party to move on from Trump to some degree or another. Trump isn't all that tied to any particular political ideology (he pretty much makes his up as he goes along, and he can flip-flop on any issue without his followers even noticing all that much), which will make a transition to some other Republican standard-bearer a lot easier.

The question of whether Trumpism can truly fade away or not will hinge on who does emerge as a party favorite in place of Trump. If this turns out to be one of the "mini-Trumps" who have tried to tap into the same enraged bull-in-a-china-shop approach to politics, then Trumpism will live on even if Trump himself is sidelined. Trumpism might be defined as following Trump's persona -- endlessly fearmongering about some scapegoated group or another, lying shamelessly about anything and everything, refusing to ever admit a mistake or to being wrong on anything, and a willingness to fight using every trick in the book (and then some). And, of course, the main thing: making liberals angry. That's the heart of Trumpism, really.

If we ever get there -- after Kamala Harris wins, or perhaps at some date further in the future -- the Republican Party can finally go back to being a sane political operation that stands for certain things, rather than a personality cult surrounding a Dear Leader. Will Trump becoming a two-time loser usher this in? It's impossible to say, but there does seem to be at least a chance of the fever finally breaking in the GOP.

The alternative is to remain trapped in the infinite loop we've all been in, with Trump running for the presidency over and over again, with no one in the Republican ranks strong enough to wrest the party away from him, no matter how many times he loses. Trump could even announce his 2028 campaign just to be able to raise money to pay off his legal bills, after all.

As I said, my crystal ball's kind of cloudy, so I really have no idea which way the Republican Party is going to choose, if Harris wins in November. But at this point I have to be at least a little bit optimistic that the fever could indeed break and the Republican Party -- and the rest of America -- could finally move on from Trumpism and the political era it has spawned. Which would, obviously, be an enormous relief.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant