American Horror Story

America's survival guide to an illegitimate Trump Presidency

Reuters/Nacho Doce

Americans are grappling with so many unknowns as they endure this final week before the presidential election.  Amidst all the uncertainty, there is one thing we can be sure of regardless of how the voting goes: Donald Trump will declare himself the winner.  The social chaos and potential violence that ensues should frighten Americans more than the most terrifying haunted house they will enter this Halloween night.  Something wicked this way comes and it will be waiting for us not on the night of October 31st but on the night of November 5th.  

Many variables will determine whether the horror story Trump inflicts on America will read more like a campy farce or a gruesome fascist nightmare.  Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on October 27th blended both elements of buffoonery and chilling omens of calculated plans to overturn election results through legal trickery and mob violence.  Pollsters will not have the time to adequately gauge what impact the Madison Square Garden spectacle of MAGA grotesquery will have on the election results.  Maybe it will fire up Trump’s base enough for him to build on the momentum he has enjoyed over the past month, allowing him to win the Electoral College or even the popular vote legitimately.  Such a result would inspire much soul-searching in the American public and subject Democratic Party leadership to scathing scrutiny, but at least it would spare us the chaos and Constitutional crisis that comes with a stolen election. Or maybe the orgy of MAGA crudity at Madison Square Garden will provide a last-minute wake-up call for undecided voters, especially nonwhite males who might not take kindly to Trump’s cronies’ flippantly racist jokes about blacks carving watermelons instead of pumpkins and Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage.”  Maybe this final putrid gasp of MAGA mouth breathing will be enough for Kamala Harris to win by margins even wider than Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, making Trump’s inevitable whining about a stolen election a pathetic joke to everyone other than his most mentally unstable followers.

Time will tell, but the odds favor an outcome other than a resounding victory for either Trump or Harris.  With so many pivotal swing states so excruciatingly close, November 5th will likely be a long, agonizing, and inconclusive night filled providing more questions than answers.  When sleep finally comes it will likely bring nightmares of the chaotic weeks following the 2000 and 2020 elections. 

What follows is an attempt to start thinking about how we will respond to the worst-case version of the most likely scenario: a tight election won by Harris but with voting results undermined by illegitimate allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities that create the chaos needed by Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson to act on their “little secret,” allowing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to install Trump as President with the blessing of an increasingly pliant Supreme Court.   What will we do if Trump succeeds where he failed on January 6th, 2021?  The time to start making a plan of action is now. 

Vote, Vote, Vote

As paradoxical as it sounds, even if Trump is determined to steal the election, every vote will still matter as much as ever.  Margins matter.  The national nightmare after the 2000 election was triggered by a vote count in Florida that gave George W. Bush an official lead of 537 votes.  While many states in 2020 were close, Trump’s inability to steal that race resulted from win margins for Biden wide enough to render legal challenges moot, as none of the contested irregularities would result in enough votes to swing Trump into the lead.  Georgia, the state Trump lost by the slimmest percentage margin in 2020, was decided by 11,779 votes.  A razor-thin margin for sure, but Biden’s cushion in Georgia was over 20 times larger than the difference between Bush and Gore in Florida in 2000.  We all know the ensuing drama and ongoing legal reverberations of Trump pressuring Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find him 11,000 votes.  The point is, while the difference between 537 and 11,779 votes may seem trivial, it meant a world of difference in 2020 compared to 2000.  Kamala Harris will not need significant leads in crucial swing states before the illegitimacy of Trump’s thievery becomes apparent to anyone not in on the crime.

But what if margins be damned Trump and Mike Johnson move forward with their “little secret” and claim obvious Harris victories too narrow and problematic to be certified?  Once again margins matter to the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency and his ability to advance his agenda.  If Trump commits blatant electoral theft then every disenfranchised Harris voter becomes a potential ally in the resistance to Trump’s illegitimate regime.  The more voters the Democrats send to the polls by November 5th, the stronger the coalition of resistance they will have in the aftermath. With time running short, Trump’s attempted theft should give Democrats even greater motivation to get out the vote.  Every vote counts, even in a stolen election.  

Prioritize Local Democracy over National Politics, Civil Society over Social Media Activism

As Trump lays an orange hand on one of his Chinese-manufactured $60 Bibles, you will feel a buzzing in your pocket.  You will check your phone and read a text like this: Felon Trump being sworn in at illegitimate inauguration. Chip in NOW to the 2026 Midterms Action Committee and join Barack Obama, Barbara Streisand, and George Clooney for a 1000% match to CRUSH Trump’s dictatorship.  You will get numerous notifications from social media apps showing friends who have changed their profile photos to the words Not Going Back.  You will see pictures of other friends with their fists clenched,  marching at resistance rallies across the country.  For all the talk of “not going back,” it will feel like 2017 all over again, triggering more feelings of nausea than nostalgia.  

At times like these, outward gestures of resistance and donations to political parties are necessary.  But if we find ourselves subjected to a second Trump presidency we will have clear proof that social media posting, marching, and donations to the Democratic Party are not sufficient to ensure the survival of our republic. Trumpism is an organism that feeds off social media outrage, street clashes, and the corrupting influence of money in politics.  All the hashtag campaigns, rowdy protests, and billions of dollars in campaign donations will not stop a Trump dictatorship.

For all the Democratic talk about fascism, the greatest threat of a second Trump presidency is anarchy, not authoritarianism.  Government dysfunction and corruption, mass shootings by lone-wolf ideological fanatics, and social chaos are all greater risks than the demented, lazy, and sloppy Trump overseeing a well-oiled fascist regime.  The best way to resist Trump is to calm the chaos and heal the hurt that he inflicts, not fulfill his fantasies of radical left violence.  The best resistance is to rebuild civil society and restore trust in the virtues of democratic government.  We must be peacemakers without making peace with Trump policies that threaten the most vulnerable Americans.  There will be much healing to do in Trump’s America.  Resist him by volunteering for your local food bank to help the families struggling under a cost of living crisis worsened by an absurd tariff policy.  Resist by serving in volunteer fire departments and EMS companies strained by Project 2025 budget cuts.  Keep a watchful eye over migrants, pregnant women, LGBTQ youth, and anyone in your community put in harm’s way by MAGA extremism.  

One of the most effective ways to resist is to run for local office if you are a Democrat, Independent, Third-Party member, or a non-MAGA Republican.   MAGA is a form of anti-politics. It is shock theater and revenge fantasy masquerading as a political movement.  MAGA Republicans only want to trigger the libs, fan the flames of culture war, and throw monkey wrenches into government operations.  They do not want to do the necessary yet humble political work of ensuring our roads are paved, our first responders are staffed, our food is uncontaminated, and our rail lines are safe.  If these unsexy acts of service appeal to you get involved at a local level and run for office.   Be a quality representative, a person your neighbors can trust and count on, the face of someone who restores their faith in the ability of government to make all of our lives better. Restoring faith in government and faith in humanity is the most powerful form of resistance we have against the cynicism and cruelty that is the dark heart of Trumpism

Learn to Love the Inefficiencies of American Government

Getting things done through government is not easy in America.  As a local representative, I can tell you something as simple as getting a pedestrian crossing installed might require talking to county and state transportation officials, neighboring municipalities, councils of government, and even your representatives at the federal level if you want to get things done without your constituents footing the entire tax bill.  America’s overlapping and intertwined levels of government make it pretty hard to do good things.  

But the inefficiencies of American government also make it hard to do bad things.  If Trump installs himself as President, Democrats should learn to love the Federalist system of government they so often deride.  Casual talk of ending the Electoral College or packing the Supreme Court is not just unhelpful but downright dangerous when reigning in an opponent like Trump who wouldn’t hesitate to tear up provisions of the Constitution that stand in his way, especially with a docile Supreme Court in his corner.  Depending on how the Senate elections break, Democrats might even learn to love the much-maligned filibuster. They could pull the debt-ceiling shenanigans used by Republicans to derail the agenda of Barack Obama. But most importantly, they must keep their resistance within the Constitutional guardrails that also keep a power-hungry Trump in check.

The last thing Congressional Democrats should do is pull a purely symbolic stunt that disrupts the proper functioning of government in a way that provides Trump with the “state of exception” aspiring dictators use to “save” a Constitution by violating it. “The justification for dictatorship consists in the fact that, although it ignores the existing law, it is only doing so in order to save it,” wrote right-wing German philosopher Carl Schmitt in the 1920s. Trump will seize upon any deviation by Democrats from the normal course of governance as grounds for overstepping his own Constitutional limits. Boycotting or walking out of Congress might feel like a righteous act of civil disobedience by Democratic lawmakers. Yet such antics will only give Trump the justification he craves to bypass the legislative branch entirely and move his agenda along unchecked. For once the tedious, laborious, and inefficient functioning of the American political machine can be turned to the Democrats’ advantage. To reign in Trump and burnish their image as the party of law and order, Democrats must do everything in their power to preserve the normal functioning of government.

Choose Your Own Adventure

After years of fear about a second Trump presidency, a tight race during the final week can feel like the beginning of an American horror story.  But not everyone perishes in horror movies. Those who stay calm, have a plan, and trust in their own power can survive and sometimes even defeat the monster in the end. It is those who are paralyzed by fear who perish. With just a few days until the election, there is no time left for debilitating doom. Perpetuating the notion that another Trump presidency will be the end of us all is just the kind of victim mentality that gets you offed first in a slasher flick. There is still time to get out the vote, still time to control our fate and write how this story ends. Hopefully, in these final days, Democrats will realize that fear of fascism has been their weakest argument in the eyes of undecided voters, especially compared to economic populist arguments highlighting how families will fare far better under Kamala’s policies than those proposed by Trump. The Democrats’ final push must be fueled by hope, not doom. Even if the worst comes to pass and Trump wins illegitimately we must remain confident that we will still have the power to prevent our most dystopian nightmares from becoming reality. Trust in your own strength, keep faith in the resilience of our republic, and have a Happy Halloween!