Democracy is Dead

The day after Trump was elected for a second time in November 2024, I wrote an essay called “The Democracy We Couldn’t Keep”. I made some predictions regarding the death of the American experiment and the end of democracy here that are on the precipice of coming true. It did not take a crystal ball or a trip to Delphi, the writing was on the wall when Trump was elected a second time that things were going to be different this time around. As is often the case with him, an off-the-cuff remark, often disguised as a joke amid the myriad of lies, telegraphs exactly what he is going to do. “In four years, you don’t have to vote again”.

When he uttered this on the campaign trail, it merely confirmed what many already knew ever since he instigated the insurrection – he would never relinquish power again. And now, after a year into his presidency, the push towards controlling the midterm election results is well under way. His categorical attacks on mail-in-voting, the pushing of the SAVE act through the House to the Senate floor meant to disenfranchise students, the poor and women voters, the rampant state redistricting and the broad assault and intimidation of people of color across the nation to dissuade them from voting when the time comes is all designed to greatly tip the scales in this burgeoning fascist regime. He must do it this way, because he does not have the power yet to send the military out to grossly tamper with the elections. The enormous pushback and uproar from the murder of two white citizens in Minnesota means that we have not reached the 1930s Soviet period. We are not yet at the point where he can order a truck full of his secret police to transport and machine gun them in the woods outside of cities. It should be noted that he is compiling his list of dissidents as Stalin once did. Stealing the Georgia voter roll data is just one recent example to add to their list of people that voted against the regime. Surveillance companies like Palantir and companies that kowtow to Trump like social media moguls are already selling your data which certainly has enough information to hang you in their eyes. It is heading in this direction but there is still significant resistance that he cannot get away with this, yet.

Yet. That is the key word. Because after the midterms, if he is successful at tampering enough with it that we do not get a blue wave of unprecedented House and Senate victories, then I suspect it will get much harder. This is why he is pushing the Trump 2028 merchandise in the White House and “playfully” saying he should run again. I am aware of the constitutional amendment that was ratified during Eisenhower’s administration, but if you think that this administration will respect this particular law when they have managed to evade all the others they have gratuitously broken, you have not been living here since Jan 20^th, 2025. The consolidation of the levers of power continues from the purges and resignations of the non-loyalists from government and the military means that may not be the case forever. This is our line-in-the-sand moment. If you were thinking that the military would stand up to his regime and would not follow illegal orders, please see the Iran war that began Friday, February 27th, 2026. Every single American military service member engaged in illegal attacks without congressional authorization. No, the military will not save us. A good number of service members voted for this and are likely loyalists, anyway. Unless it stops at the midterms, we become the future’s case study for the birth of one more fascist nation.

It has taken more than a year of his second presidency, but I think it is abundantly clear to far more citizens now prior to the election of just how historically bad President Donald Trump has been. James Buchanan is frequently at the top for failing to prevent the Civil War or Andrew Johnson for his role in botched Reconstruction and his failure to prosecute Confederate traitors. I would argue that Donald Trump is worse because of his intentional designs on the destruction of the US democracy. Even if the Union was on shaky ground from the failings of both of those past presidents, there is no credible evidence that they wanted the Union to fail. I can say that there is overwhelming evidence for this, and it is past argument that this is what Trump wants.

What I will say is that none of this is sitting well with the electorate because Donald Trump and his policies have been wildly unpopular. How do I know that many more people are seeing just how bad things have deteriorated in the United States? The number of Democrat legislative positions that have been won since his election. This is by far the best evidence we have of the real pulse of American beliefs.  It is not only that Democrats have been winning, but also that they won by such large margins in places where Trump dominated in November 2024. Some may say that this is evidence that he has not been able to rig it, and I would agree that is somewhat true. Voter disenfranchisement and redistricting is going on of course, but it just not has not had enough of an effect to swing the elections in the Republican direction. At least for the moment. But all sorts of laws, ploys and intimidation can go down between now and November 2026.

What worries me the most, is that while all of us fighting to keep democracy alive in the United States have a stake in this, the Trump Regime has a bigger one. The amount of blatant criminal and unconstitutional acts committed by them are legion and because of that, they know they are going to prison if they lose power. If they are potentially going to prison for the rest of their lives and are as unburdened by morals as these people are, I have no doubt they will burn the country down before turning over the reins. This will make them more desperate and dangerous as we approach the midterms. Yes, I am aware that Trump is still president if there is a blue wave, but his policies will be severely curtailed and his ability to consolidate power before the 2028 Presidential Election will be hamstrung. It is even possible that if the blue wave is large enough and enough seats are flipped in the House and Senate that he can be impeached and removed from office and so can much of his cabinet.  We need to be more aggressive about going out in force. Numbers are the only things this administration fears. We can hope that voting laws are upheld and maybe they will be, but this regime does not follow the rule of law and will not if it means they lose and go to prison.

Moving up to the election, everything that can be done must be done to safeguard the integrity of the elections. Trump cannot submit an executive order to gain control of the state-held elections unless people bend to that. Governors will need to develop a comprehensive plan of how to safeguard elections in their state that may need to include deploying the national guard to polling centers and escorting of votes and staff. ICE and other paramilitary groups will need to be repelled by sheer numbers of Americans at polls to protect persons of color trying to exercise their voting rights.

 We need to be prepared for several scenarios. I do not pretend to have all the answers and have this mapped out, but I do think it’s important to question this early and prepare in advance certain contingencies and what the resistance may look like.

What do we do if elections are cancelled in November under the pretense that we are at war with Iran now? There is ample precedent for elections proceeding up to and including the Civil War. Both in foreign and domestic wars, we have an established tradition of maintaining elections and transfers of power. If he decides to pursue that route, which some will say he cannot legally since midterms are administered by states, what will that look like and how can we counter that? We will need to counter it with the court system of course, but that is a process that will take time. Perhaps the regime will legally challenge the authority of the elections and force a delay until the courts resolve the issue and that may go to the Supreme Court to decide and maybe they will decide in the autocrat’s favor as they have in the past. This area is certainly murky to me because I have no legal training, and this is treading on territory that has never been attempted in this country before to my knowledge. Ultimately, we need to be prepared with the scenario that his secret police or a branch of the armed services deploys in swing and democrat states to prevent elections from proceeding. I wonder at the feasibility of deploying the national guard to counter that scenario which will instigate a clash directly between different branches of the US military. This may be when our cold American Civil War turns hot.

The other major scenario that gnaws at me is that if the midterms do proceed as normal, then what they will do to ensure it is rigged. In this scenario, I think they will deploy their secret police to intimidate persons of color away from polls and to commandeer polling locations and the collected votes. Again, I wonder if it will be prudent for state governors to prepare the national guard to be available leading up to election night. At this point, even if there was an entirely fair election, it would strain credulity if there was not a blue wave. I know that sounds dangerously like not accepting the result of the election and you-know-who started that rhetoric. But the Biden administration did not employ the same herculean effort to interfere with voting like this administration has. Republicans are the ones that created the precedent for this with the denial of the 2020 Presidential Election results. The level of outcry must be massive if there is no blue wave in November. This means marches that shut cities down. It means strikes. It means governors must be prepared to consider things as desperate as secession. Because even if it is a legal election, it will not be a fair election. The people that know more than me about law and history will say that it cannot be done. I would say that if they can break the rules and not follow constitution, then we have a duty to do whatever necessary to prevent the consolidation of fascism in this country and the tyranny it will mean for the millions of people living here.