IN DEFENSE OF DOOMERISM

After President Trump announced that his lawyers were working on an executive order banning mail-in voting in America, Jamelle Bouie was one of several commentators who were dismissive:

and also, an executive order banning mail-in voting has the legal authority of a social media post

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) August 18, 2025 at 8:46 AM

He expressed contempt for people who think Trump might get away with this:

need people to understand that accepting or conceding that he has the authority to do these things is tantamount to giving him the authority, and so your preemptive dooming is actively counterproductive

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) August 18, 2025 at 8:55 AM

I'm one of those doomers:

I don't accept that Trump has the authority to do these things. I accept that six members of the Supreme Court will assert that Trump has the authority to do these things, and that will decide the matter.

— Steve M. (@stevemnomoremister.bsky.social) August 18, 2025 at 10:39 AM

Bouie believes that you simply can't be a doomer if you understand how congressional elections work. As an example, he uses his home state of Virginia, where Democrat Abigail Spanberger is likely to win this year's gubernatorial race, and then appoint a new secretary of the commonwealth, who will oversee the state's 2026 congressional elections.

"trump will just end mail in balloting in a blue state" yeah, so, how exactly is trump going to force the elected secretary of state to break state law and end mail-in balloting?

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) August 18, 2025 at 5:45 PM

like, is trump going to force governor spanberger to appoint a new secretary of the commonwealth next year?

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) August 18, 2025 at 5:47 PM

Probably not -- but what will prevent Trump from rejecting the certification of Democratic victories in Virginia's elections, or in elections in any other state, citing nonexistent mail-ballot fraud as the reason for the rejection? And if you say that nothing in the law gives the president the right to decide these things (I agree), do you seriously believe that the lame-duck Republican Congress will defy Trump and insist that these Democrats be seated, especially if seating them will result in a change in party control of the House, and possibly the Senate? And even if the Supreme Court doesn't ultimately ratify this radical move, doesn't the recent history of the Court suggest that it might allow Trump to have his way while a case challenging him gradually works its way through the lower courts, on the premise that seating members of Congress who didn't really win is a mistake that can be reversed in the future without irreparable harm?

I'm not a doomer because I want people to give up hope. I'm a doomer because I want people to recognize how many angles Trump and his partners in crime might be trying to work, and how far all three branches of government have strayed from the law and the Constitution. I want people to be ready to fight abuses of power they previously assumed couldn't take place in America.

It's obvious that Trump and his fellow Republicans don't intend to just let the chips fall where they may in 2026. They're redisticting in Texas, and while California and a few other Democratic states hope to retaliate, there are more Republican than Democratic states where redistricting could happen. In addition, there's talk of a mid-decade census. And there's this:

The Department of Justice is conducting a state-by-state review to scrutinize how officials manage their voter rolls and remove ineligible voters.

The effort is so far focused on battleground states....

In nearly identical letters to state election officials in Minnesota, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the DOJ asked them to describe how they identify people who are felons, dead, nonresidents, or noncitizens, and how they remove them from their voter lists.

That's from a late July USA Today story. AP now reports that this fishing expedition has spread to 19 states, the majority of them Democratic.

And there was this, from the meeting between Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy:

During one part of their press conference, the U.S. president latched onto a statement by Zelenskyy about pausing elections during wartime, and spun it to hint at the possibility of him outlasting his two-term limit in 2028.

"So you're saying during the war you can't have elections," he said, interrupting the Ukrainian president's remarks. "So, let me just say, three and a half years from now... if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections. Oh, that's good."

That's Trump trolling us, but maybe he's not trolling, and maybe he's not just talking about 2028.

America, unlike Ukraine, conducts elections during wartime. It conducted elections even during the Civil War in 1864. But there's been a massive reordering of American life based on Trump's claims of nonexistent emergencies and "wars" that aren't wars -- for instance, against immigrants. We've now seen two cities occupied by masked federal troops, with more undoubtedly to follow. If you're sure Trump can't do anything to rig the 2026 midterms because the law and the decentralized nature of our elections makes rigging impossible for him, can you say with certainty that Trump won't have his goons at the polls in blue cities fifteen months from now?

If you respond to this with despair, that's a you problem. I think the proper response is a concerted effort to warn America of what Trump and the GOP might be planning. Prominent Democrats should publicly describe some of these scenarios and make the White House and congressional Republicans deny that they have any such ideas in mind. Democrats should accuse the Supreme Court of being a thumb on the scale for Trump, in the hope that they'll shame the Court into backing off.

We need to alert people to what the GOP is trying to do before we wake up and found out that it's already happening. We need to direct Americans' attention to how corrupt and un-American Republicans have been, in all three branches of governmnent, and put those Republicans on notice that we're on to them now. That's the purpose of doomerism.