It’s time for the midterms, the first national election in America’s era of democratic backsliding into authoritarianism, and I’m feeling pretty good, all things considered. After Trump’s 2024 win, and the rush of elites in politics, business, tech, media, law, and various institutions to accommodate the newly corrupt, lawbreaking government, political conditions today are about the best that pro-democracy Americans could hope for. Trump’s rule could have been popular and he could have managed to consolidate more power. Instead, despite Trump’s numerous abuses of authority and attempts to manipulate the election, the American people will get their say, and appear poised to rebuke him.
I won’t predict individual races or number of Congressional seats—beyond referencing polls, it’d be guesswork—though I do expect Democrats to win control of the House, and win or at least gain ground in the Senate.
I hope Republicans get crushed to the point people see it as a popular rejection of Trump and everything he’s done. I hope to see Democratic Senate wins in formerly uncompetitive states such as Texas, Iowa, Alaska, and Kansas, which would create a psychic shock on the MAGA right. But the most important thing is gaining institutional power, flipping at least one house of Congress from an institution that enables Trump’s abuses to one that seeks to check them. As long as that happens, pro-democracy forces should see it as a big win.
The one straightforward prediction I’ll make, following one I’ve been making for about a year: Trump and the Republicans won’t be able to steal the election.
They’ll try. Indeed, they’ve been trying, in all sorts of ways. Gerrymandering, voter roll purges, bad faith lawsuits, intimidation from a corrupted Department of Justice (DOJ), incessant lies, preemptive rejection of results if they don’t win, and more — so much government thumb on the scale in favor of the ruling party that these midterms will not be fully free and fair. Not compared to the last 50 years of American elections, nor the international standard today.
But that doesn’t mean the effort will work. The Trump administration has lost dozens of legal cases, thwarting efforts such as their attempt to force California to set aside 20,000 ballots for federal examination. Team Trump’s best idea at this point appears to be setting up a challenge to Alaska’s Senate election (if the Republican loses) on the grounds that two candidates are named Dan Sullivan. It has no basis and will almost certainly lose in court.
They don’t have some brilliant secret plan to steal the midterms. This stuff is it. As damaged as the institutions of American democracy are, elections are mostly working. Republicans would find it hard to flip a narrow loss, and it’ll be impossible to reverse anything larger.
The regime’s desire for authoritarian domination is bottomless, but their capacity to carry it out is not. They don’t have enough goons.
There aren’t nearly enough ICE, Border Patrol, and other Trump regime thugs to significantly disrupt voting or post-vote processing. DOJ is taking the unprecedented step of deploying “election monitors,” around 1,000 in total, spread across all 50 states. The apparent goal is to intimidate voters and election workers, but many of these federal agents will stand around doing nothing as they observe a normal process. And even if they attempt malfeasance, their national coverage will be sparse. There are 6,000 polling places in my state of Illinois alone.
One reason this won’t work is it’s driven by conspiracy theories. Armed soldiers or federal agents stationed at drop boxes or polling places deter non-citizens from fraudulently voting. Except virtually no non-citizens attempt to vote, and high turnout this year suggests few legitimate voters are intimidated.
The 2025 elections, various special elections, and early voting in these midterms have gone on without major incident. There’s been voter suppression efforts, such as a low number of polling places, which means some voters have to travel then wait in long lines. That’s wrong, but isn’t new, and can be overcome with turnout and patience.
“Not enough goons” also applies to lawyers. Trump has corrupted the Justice Department, which is very bad, but the firings and resignations that have purged people of integrity from DOJ have also reduced its capacity. There aren’t many lawyers willing to carry forward a lie-based effort to illegitimately overturn elections, especially not talented lawyers. They’ll file many lawsuits, they’ll make BS challenges to election results, they’ll manage to create some delays, but in the end they’ll probably lose.
We shouldn’t have to deal with this. It’s undemocratic, un-American, and wrong. But here we are, and fortunately we didn’t get smarter fascists. In this election and beyond, they’re beatable.
The downside of competitive authoritarianism compared to full democracy is all the authoritarianism. The potential saving grace is it’s still competitive.