DEMOCRATS MIGHT SHELLAC THE GOP, BUT WE'LL STILL BE IN "THE TRUMP ERA"

At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Paul Campos writes:

I keep seeing pundit musing about the end of the Trump era....

I think it’s highly likely that Democrats gain thirty or forty seats in the House next week, and win enough Senate races to control that chamber by four or five votes.

I think Democrats will make big gains in the House. I'm less sanguine about the Senate. Too many of the races Democrats are counting on are still well within the polling margin of error, at a time when there are signs that Democrats are much more willing to respond to pollsters than Republicans are. If I had to guess, I'd say that Democrats will fall short in at least some of the states where the polls say they're leading. My guess is Democrats will get to 51 or 52 seats, though I agree it's quite possible they'll do better.

But the question is: what then? Donald Trump and his base have no commitment to democracy because, among other reasons, they’re not democrats in even the loosest sense. Trump is a straight-up authoritarian, at the head of a mass anti-democratic political movement that at this point has most if not all of the hallmarks of contemporary neo-fascism.

Trump has already engaged in open flagrant sedition, in an attempt to overturn the results of a national election. He did this at a time when the upper reaches of his administration were not nearly as stacked with unhinged zealots and cultists as they are at present. That crime was also committed at a time when the Republican party was not nearly as all-in on supporting him no matter what he might do as it is now....

Why, given all this, do so many people seem so confident that Trump will in any sense whatsoever accept the results of an unambiguous electoral repudiation of his party and his movement? Because there will be nothing he can do about it? But that assumes a very great deal about how far Trump and his supporters throughout the federal government, the military, the courts, the governments of red states, the mobs in the street, etc. are or are not willing to go in the face of democratic repudiation.

I think we'll avoid the worst outcomes, for a couple of reasons.

First, Donald Trump is an authoritarian, but in one sense, he's not a "straight-up" authoritarian. A straight-up authoritarian would study the battlefield -- American democracy -- and identify and set in motion the most effective ways he could neutralize it. A straight-up authoritarian wouldn't spend hours every day on architectural projects, wouldn't be writing 1,318-word social media rants about a streaming-cable political comedian, wouldn't be entrusting his attempted election steal to government lawyers who struggle to obtain indictments. He'd figure out what works and do more of it.

How far are Trump and his supporters willing to go in the face of democratic repudiation? This seems like a scary answer, but on one level it isn't: they're willing to go far as Trump tells them to go. It's still much, much farther than they would be permitted to go if this were a well-functioning democracy, but they don't seem to be getting the go signal for a true authoritarian crackdown. Trump and Pete Hegseth don't appear to have mobilized the military. Mobs of MAGA thugs aren't launching unprovoked pre-election attacks on Democrats all over the country. Trump is appealing the many, many court rulings that have gone against him, but he isn't defying them.

I continue to believe that Trump isn't prepared to stop a Democratic wave election by any means necessary. What he is prepared to do is empower his administration to put together a dog's breakfast of anti-Democratic acts that don't add up to a comprehensive election-stealing plan but make him feel good.

So at a time when Democrats are likely to win a double-digit margin in the House, he's targeted precisely one specific House candidate, Ilhan Omar. She was elected in 2024 by a margin of nearly 50 points, and she'll probably win by an even bigger margin this year. Maybe he'll obtain an indictment against her. Maybe she'll be in a cell when the new Congress is sworn in. But Democrats are still likely to have a large House majority without her.

Trump's other gambit for saving the House seems to be the Justice Department's effort to block voting in California unless the state agrees not to count ballots from approximately 20,000 people the feds claim are illegally registered voters. Democrats are likely to win 47 of the state's 52 House races; if the Trump regime could take all those seats off the board altogether and convene a California-less House in January, Republicans would likely retain their majority. But the courts have rebuffed this effort so far, noting that there's no reason contested voters' ballots can't be challenged between Election Day and the scheduled election certification in December.

(Keep in mind that approximately 20,000 voters -- many of whom will undoubtedly prove to be citizens or non-voters -- spread out over 52 congressional districts average out to approximately 400 per district. It's likely that no House race in California will be decided by a margin that small.)

In the Senate, Republicans might have struck pay dirt with the story of Democratic operative in Alaska recruiting a candidate with the same name as the GOP incumbent. Alaska's Republican governor has ordered an investigation and says the state might not certify a win by Democrat Mary Peltola, even though there's no evidence that she was personally involved, and even though the state Supreme Court okayed the candidacy of the same-named candidate. This one could get tied up in court for months. But the feds' pursuit of Peltola is a strategy to try to win one seat. It's not an overall strategy to steal the Senate.

Yet I think Trump would be satisfied with this. Like millions of other Fox News grandpas, I think he's content -- in a way a true authoritarian wouldn't be -- with the opportunity to turn on the TV and see a lot of ragebait stories hinting that the evil Democrats are getting away with something. A true authoritarian would have a plan to prevent the opposition from winning; Trump seems content to have Attorney General Todd Blanche as his personal content creator. Alaska was rigged! An immigration fraudster won in Minneapolis! There was massive cheating in California! Trump seems as if he'd be satisfied believing that Republicans should have won.

It might get worse than that -- thugs at the polls, mobs in Washington. But it looks as if lawsuits rather than jackboots are Trump's go-to this year. The key person seems to be Blanche, not Pete Hegseth or Markwayne Mullin or Stephen Miller. That's Trump's lifelong happy place: employing lawyers to make trouble for his enemies in court. Unlike a true authoritarian, I don't think he cares if it works, as long as he's certain he's right, and as long as he keeps on fighting.

This is why we can't talk about "the Trump era" ending on Tuesday. We'll still have to endure this exhausting and extremely Trumpian post-election battle. Peltola and Omar might be targets long after the new Congress is sworn in. Trump will still command attention, even if it's in defeat. We'll probably save democracy from him for the most part, but we won't be able to get rid of him that easily.