Preparing for MAGA’s Worst on Election Day
· Jacobin
Imagine this: Election Day comes and goes. Democrats turn out big and flip a few seats, some by close margins. Forces opposing the increasingly authoritarian drift of the United States breathe a sigh of relief.Before the results are even called, however, Donald Trump declares in a wave of Truth Social posts that Democrats have cheated, the results are fraudulent, and those responsible will be prosecuted and persecuted. By the next day, the claims have spread to congressional Republicans, who vow to seek justice — and, in some cases, vengeance — for the supposed voter fraud.Protesters take to the streets in several cities, demanding that all votes be counted. They call on their representatives to stand behind voters’ democratic wishes. The protests spread, and on November 6, Trump claims that protesters in several cities have gotten out of hand and broken windows. He then declares that Iran has engaged in cyber election interference, thereby invalidating the results of the vote. Trump announces he will send in the National Guard and invoke the Insurrection Act to defend the country against these incursions.Is this scenario likely? It’s hard to say. The midterms are shaping up to be a rout of the Republicans, with Trump and his party facing nearly unprecedented unfavorability and losses so great that even his normal bluster and lies about stolen elections won’t be able to hold his diminishing base. In Brazil this week, Flávio Bolsonaro floated a Trumpian trial balloon by claiming the presidential election was stolen by the Workers’ Party’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but the nearly 4.5-million-vote margin that Lula won by made such mendacity absurd, and Bolsonaro has since fled the country for Miami.But given the antidemocratic drift of the United States over the past decade and since Trump’s second election in particular, this scenario is far from impossible. Indeed, parts of it, like Trump’s denial of the election results, seem all but assured. And as the president feels his mandate in the country (and perhaps his own mental health) slipping away, who knows what a newly desperate Trump will do.He would not be alone in taking such steps. Scholars who study authoritarianism call them an “authoritarian playbook”: a set of similar steps leaders like Flávio Bolsonaro’s former president father Jair, former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey have taken to consolidate power. It includes going after critics through investigations and harassment, installing loyalists, expanding federal powers, crushing dissent, and deploying military forces on their own citizens.The Trump administration has been moving through the playbook at record speed, from firing federal workers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shootings to the attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar. Unions, community and faith organizations, immigrant rights groups, and lawyers have resisted and slowed the attacks, but that hasn’t stopped Trump. His administration has already taken steps to undermine the 2026 midterm elections, attempting to restrict mail ballots, purge voter rolls, and mess with ballots in Alaska. They plan to send ICE to the polls. And Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) has announced plans to try to block the seating of democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, the likely next House member from New York’s Thirteenth District, while MAGA is building the legal case to do exactly that.The task for socialists is not to vote and defend elections in order to return to the status quo, but to defend basic democratic norms while putting forth a vision of a different future. Lots of people care about elections and will be looking for answers if things go wrong. Socialists cannot sit on the sidelines. We need to challenge racist gerrymandering and minoritarian institutions like the Supreme Court and Senate to weaken the stranglehold of the authoritarian right on the federal government in order to have the opportunity to advance reforms that can establish new social and economic rights. Attacks on elections are tied to attacks on our rights to organize and protest, our rights to independent media, and our rights to engage in the democratic institutions we fought hard to create.And for a growing share of the socialist movement, contesting for governing power via elections is a key part of the strategy. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are set to send seven, and potentially as many as ten, members to Congress; their strategy depends on fair elections that get those members seated so they can build a bloc that pushes for transformative demands.We can’t develop a full plan ahead of time, but we can develop our planning skills under crisis. National organizations and some unions have already been training people on potential election scenarios through versions of “tabletop exercises” where organizers role-play different scenarios and develop strategy and tactics together. The more we practice, the easier it might be to respond when a crisis hits.One possible scenario to come out of next week’s election is a state of confusion, where vote counting is challenged or stopped in a state or two, and courts are going back and forth about what to do. This would be similar to what happened in 2000, when the initial presidential vote count in Florida showed George W. Bush beating Al Gore by only 1,784 votes. Gore called for a recount in some counties, including Miami-Dade. Republican operatives moved quickly to send in staffers to protest outside the recount, eventually rushing the doors and attacking people, resulting in the recount being called off. After more back-and-forth, the case went to the Supreme Court, which called for an end to the recount.Rather than protesting, Democratic Party leaders, including Gore (who would have won in a full recount), accepted the loss. This time around, we need to be ready to respond to ballot and legal confusion without waiting for courts to decide.If we have another Florida-type scenario, such as Republican operatives refusing to count all the ballots in Texas, then socialists and all our allies need to be ready to fight back. People around the country, whether in blue, red, or purple states, can fill the streets and pressure their representatives, especially Democrats, to demand that every vote is counted. Legal observers and traditional election groups are working to protect voter registration, ensure access to polls, and prepare legal challenges. No Kings will be ready to call for mass peaceful marches. May Day Strong is preparing for economic disruption if needed, examining how people can undermine the corporate pillars that are supporting Trump’s authoritarianism.There are billionaires and corporations directly profiting from surveillance, ICE contracts, war, and deregulation: they have a material interest in Trump’s success. Some billionaires, such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, go beyond that and have an ideological commitment to authoritarianism of various forms. Using the full toolbox of boycotts, sit-ins, slowdowns, walkouts, and strikes, how can we best target the billionaires and corporations who are enabling and profiting from authoritarianism, like Amazon and Jeff Bezos, and how can we encourage others, like Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase and Delta Air Lines, to defect from the authoritarian coalition by making it too costly to stay?A Broad FrontWorking in a broad front, a wide range of political actors who may oppose Trump’s antidemocratic measures but disagree with us on most everything else, to defeat authoritarianism can be simple on the one hand, because there is one unifying task: build the biggest “we” possible to defeat MAGA. But broad front politics get complicated fast. It means working with mainstream Democrats who often seem more intent on destroying DSA than MAGA. It might mean working with anti-Trump Republicans, who see socialists as the second-biggest threat after authoritarians. And it requires being in alignment with a whole host of organizations that can be annoying or disruptive or way too verbose.Working in a broad front requires patience, education, and skill. But it also opens up the space to work with millions of people who are newly engaged by the real threat MAGA poses to their lives or jobs.As Ash-Lee Henderson reminds us, 89 million people didn’t vote in 2024. People are angry about the cost of living, and many want and need big changes, from Medicare for All to reliable transit to an end to war. The Democratic Party has made little to no effort to acknowledge these 89 million and their frustrations, leaving the job to socialists or right-wing extremists.To stay anchored in a broad front, socialists need nested strategies: a short-term strategy to block the authoritarian right and a longer-term strategy to build the Left. We can do that by emphasizing the capacities we need to build no matter the task: democratic participation, mass training and education on the issues that matter, door-knocking and talking with coworkers, organizing unions and mapping workplaces. We’ll need these skills to defend the midterm results; if we can do them well, we’ll connect with thousands of new people joining the fight — and be in stronger shape to shift from defense to offense.Since the start of the second Trump administration, many unions, DSA chapters, and community organizations have had to develop the ability for rapid response against the federal government’s attacks on our neighbors. We have called protests against federal workforce union busting, developed mutual aid networks to support immigrants, and trained ourselves in direct action.By getting more organized at a block-by-block level, we can prepare for the possibility of Republicans seriously contesting the results of our elections and make sure we are ready to organize more workers who know that we need a real voice not just in our workplaces but in our political system too. Building these muscles puts us in better shape for actions in 2028, including influencing the presidential primaries and election, and a potential May 1, 2028, national strike.Our tasks: Vote. Get trained on noncooperation and strike readiness. Sign a pledge to defend the elections through targeted actions on corporations and elected officials. If things get messy, be ready to help coworkers and neighbors make sense of the moment and invite them into the organizations that are fighting for a better world.This article originally appeared in Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. Subscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.
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