After the Midterms … the Nightmare?

Against my better instincts, I’ve been totally immersed in political news over the past few weeks, leading up to the midterm elections: drowning in CNN and MSNBC: scouring the daily newsletters from Politico and Axios; checking in regularly with Substack commentators like Paul Krugman and Heather Cox Richardson. Yes, I’m in a bubble. And the polls predicting a Democratic sweep next Tuesday do seem too good to be true. But, for my last political column of the year (I promise), I’m going to go out on a limb and do some prognosticating.

I’m both optimistic and fearful.

The optimistic part: Despite a history of polling mistakes and election-day disappointments, I do think a big blue wave is coming on November 3. Nearly everything has broken right for the Democrats. Gas prices, the Iran war, data centers — Trump and his party seem to be on the wrong side of every issue. Even if the Democrats don’t flip the Senate, a gain of 20 or 30 seats in the House will be a powerful statement, and will change the dynamics in Washington for the last two years of Trump’s term.

To be sure, Trump and his MAGA henchmen will do everything they can to overturn the results: filing lawsuits, interfering with the vote counting, maybe even refusing to seat newly elected Democrats in Congress. There will be chaos. But I think the system is strong enough to hold: the election results will be so decisive, the cries of fraud so specious, and the nation’s judges (even the conservative ones) so resistant to upending two and a half centuries of American democracy, that in the end the results will stand.

What happens after that, however, is where my nightmare scenario kicks in.

For all his wild rhetoric and brazen, often unconstitutional actions — starting a trade war with Canada, siding with Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine, bragging about an American “golden age” that no one but him is experiencing — Trump has been somewhat restrained by one thing: the looming midterms. Thus, he has backtracked on some tariffs, promised money to farmers suffering under high diesel prices, and announced that he won’t resume bombing of Iran — until (could the message be any clearer?) after the election.

What’s truly frightening is to imagine what Trump might do in the aftermath of a solid election drubbing, when he has to face the reality that he’s a lame duck who has been rejected by the country, with only two years left to wield his power.

Frustrated, angry, desperate to ensure his legacy, there’s no telling what he might do. Tear down the Kennedy Center? Why not the Lincoln Memorial too? Rename all the Great Lakes for members of the Trump family? Drop a nuclear bomb ? For a man without morals, no impulse control, and no fear of any electoral consequences (at least for himself; never mind those Republicans not named Trump who will be running in 2028), he is capable of almost anything.

It’s a scary prospect. But I cling to one sliver of hope. Unleashed, unhinged, more erratic by the day, Trump may finally go too far — even for members of his own party, facing the prospect of a post-Trump era in which their fealty to the President will be a detriment, not an asset. It’s not impossible to imagine an impeachment that actually sticks, a move to oust him under the 25^th Amendment, or simply a deluge of so many investigations and damaging revelations that Trump simply resigns from office.

Declaring victory, of course, and continuing to rant from the sidelines about a “golden age” that has, inevitably, been wrecked by his successors. As the rest of the country goes about the business of repairing the enormous damage he has done.

That, anyway, is the happy ending I can’t quite predict, but can at least dream of.