So my Substack is called I Hope I’m Wrong. I named it that because I often make predictions that I hope won’t come true. Unfortunately, I’ve got a pretty good track record.
In any case, we should talk about the midterms. We all have high hopes, some of us even think this might solve everything, and we can look back like it was all a bad dream and return to some sort of normal. Well, I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. For one, there’s no return to normal because our normal wasn’t normal to begin with. As I might have mentioned before, we finally achieved what any of us modern sapiens would consider to be a democracy sometime after the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and then fell out of that Democracy and became an Oligarchy sometime shortly after the 2012 Citizens United decision. So about a 40-year run, give or take. And now we’re in a burgeoning fascist authoritarian regime that’s desperately trying to lock in its power. I know, a lot of people read that and say to themselves, that’s crazy. You might have even done that. And sure, it is kind of crazy, after all, it’s in direct defiance of the stories we like to tell ourselves. Or what we also call propaganda. You know, the kind of stuff that only happens in other countries.
So we definitely don’t want to go back to the post-2012 era, and while the 40 years before that were the best we ever had, we were also a fledgling democracy constantly on the ropes. But that was an upgrade from the apartheid system we lived in before the Voting Rights Act, or any of the phases of authoritarian patriarchal control that this country has mostly lived under. What we need is to get to something better, something more resilient to the powers that are endlessly trying to destroy our chances for a truly representative government. To quote Michael Moore, the America I want to save is the America we never had, and the first step to achieving that is getting past these midterms. Because if we miss this opportunity, I’m not sure when we’ll have anything like a free and fair election again. And as I’m about to lay out, this election already won’t be free or fair.
Do you know who understands this better than anyone? The MAGA regime. The MAGA regime is gearing up to capture the midterms by any means necessary. I know a lot of people think that, well, no matter what, this will all be over in 2028 when Trump has to leave office. But it’s not about Trump. Trump is just the vehicle, and his cult-like hold on 37% of this country has been hijacked by the same anti-democratic forces that we have endlessly done battle with throughout our 250 years of this democratic experiment. Since our founding, the fight has always been about who gets to be the People in We The People. Is it only white men who own land? Are women allowed? Blacks? Immigrants? The people who were here when the Europeans stumbled on over? We just happen to be the ones who have lived under the freest expression of the idea that all men (people, in our minds) are created equal. And the latest group of control freaks, that being all of the folks who have coalesced around the MAGA regime, really don’t like that. They don’t believe that all people are created equal, just ask them, and they’re frighteningly close to rolling back many of our hard-fought freedoms in a way that most of us will find unimaginable. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that only happens in other countries. Or so we like to think. Or it’s what we were taught to think? Or something like that.
I’m not saying this to dissuade anyone from voting, in fact, we’re gonna have to vote like we’ve never voted before. Seriously, we’ll have to have numbers that far exceed any kind of turnout we’ve ever had in this country, especially during a midterm election. And even then, even if we handily win by the numbers, we’ll have to deal with the MAGA regime not ceding power peacefully. I think everyone’s gotta wrap their heads around that one. They are not going to cede power. Trump didn’t leave peacefully last time, and with only a ragtime team of weirdos, including a sweaty Rudy Giuliani, he managed to convince a bunch of people to storm the Capitol. But this time, he’s got an entire MAGA regime spread out across the country, which includes the justice department, the military leadership, a highly funded paramilitary force, countless state and local officials, and hundreds of judges and a Supreme Court ready to do battle with him. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but not a single judge or official in the MAGA party has been willing to say publicly, or even under oath, that Trump lost the 2020 election. Think about that. But there’s also no guarantee that it’ll have to come down to a fight, especially given how compromised our elections are going to be. They could just as easily win the midterms no matter how unpopular they are. In many ways, a direct and swift win for MAGA candidates, keeping both the House and the Senate, will be the least violent outcome for our country—at least in the short term. But it would be catastrophic for future generations.
So let’s have an adult conversation about the 2026 midterm elections and what we should expect.
First of all, the disinformation will be off the charts. And that’s saying a lot considering what we already deal with. Here are a couple of factors we need to be ready for. The Silicon Valley investor class is now fully engaged in ending our democracy, and they control the algorithms that dictate our discussions and they keep the disinformation spigot flowing like a firehose. They view losing what the MAGA regime affords them as an existential threat. Just listen to Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, Zuckerberg, Altman, and all the rest; they’re all talking openly about their need to be free from any restrictions that a democracy might impose on them, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep the MAGA regime in power. The other important factor in our disinformation ecosystem is that we’ve lost all of the major news media that much of America still plugs into. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS are all either controlled by corporations that prefer the MAGA regime or are being bullied into submission. The same goes for the handful of entities that own all of the local news stations across the country. Sinclair and Nexstar, who own the vast majority of local stations, have pro-Trump leadership. And by pro-Trump, I mean willing to use their platform to spread disinformation and to normalize the lawlessness of the MAGA regime. So the combination of these factors is going to completely disorientate much of the population.
Then we have all of the other obviously undemocratic problems with our elections that had caused us to lose our democracy in the first place. Gerrymandering makes it so there are only so many contestable seats, and just this week that has been supercharged by the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, the very thing that finally allowed us to achieve becoming a democracy in the first place. Within hours of the ruling, MAGA-led states have aggressively jumped at the chance to disenfranchise voters. And then, of course, we have the dark money flooding into our elections, which obliterates the concept of one person, one vote. The MAGA regime has a lot of wealthy donors across a whole range of industries who are ready to spend an ungodly amount of money. Like Silicon Valley, they’re viewing it as an investment for their future, not our collective future, just their future.
And let’s not forget the cult-like hold that Trump has over 37% of the voters. For some baffling reason that the rest of us have been puzzling over for 11 years, the bulk of them just don’t seem to budge. We’ll be studying that for decades, if we’re lucky.
So we have all of that working against us just to win the elections by the numbers. And most pundits will say all of the general stuff; that the polls are bad for MAGA, that the House is definitely in play, and that the Senate is even a remote chance. But keep in mind that the MAGA coalition, while definitely in the minority, is extremely driven to keep this thing going and they’re gonna pull out all of the stops.
And that brings me to the MAGA regime itself. As the Illinois Commission on Accountability pointed out (that’s the commission set up by Governor Pritzker to document the crimes of the MAGA regime during Operation Midway Blitz), there is a real danger that ICE and the Justice Department will be deployed to interfere with the elections. There’s no direct hard evidence, other than what MAGA officials say on TV, but it’s a distinct possibility. And then, of course, there’s the question of what will happen if they lose. It’s my opinion, as I said a few times already, that they will never under any circumstances cede power without a fight. And I don’t mean just court battles, I mean a real fight. Trump himself didn’t leave peacefully last time, in fact, to this day he’s never conceded that he lost the 2020 election. And now no one in his orbit will concede that he lost either.
So I’m just assuming that, if they lose, they won’t accept the election results, and the MAGA-controlled House and Senate won’t seat any of the democrats who won. And then we’re in a place where legal means won’t, or can’t, be a remedy, because the MAGA regime will not follow the law. They already don’t follow the law, and I wouldn’t expect losing the elections to be the moment when they decide to start. So then what? Well, they’re making plans, and on our pro-democracy side, we have people gearing up for the legal fights that will ensue. But are we ready for what happens when their judges and the Supreme Court make lawless rulings designed to muddy the waters? For when they call the elections fraudulent and refuse to seat democrats? When our media tries to normalize the lawlessness? When they send in ICE or the National Guard to steal ballots and to quell, quote unquote, unrest? All of that might sound crazy, but that’s the propaganda talking. They’ve already sent people to steal ballots from the 2020 election. The MAGA Justice Department is already intimidating election officials in various states. Just look at what many MAGA judges and the Supreme Court are already doing. ICE and DHS have already been deployed into Chicago, Minneapolis and LA in what appears to have been training for a much larger mission. Innocent civilians have already been terrorized and murdered. The regime is building what can legally be described as concentration camps across the country. And every day, they are screaming from the rooftops that if they lose the elections, then the country will be destroyed. What more evidence do people need to prove that they are planning for violence?
Personally, I think everyone needs to start imagining the unimaginable. That what could never happen here is happening here. Because getting past these midterms is just step one. But in many ways, it’s also our best bet. Our best bet has always been that they overreach too fast before they truly lock down power. And their losing decisively in the midterms will force their hand sooner than they may be ready for. As crazy as it will probably get, it also might be our best opportunity to get to a place where we can hold them accountable before they do real long-lasting damage, because it can, and will, get a lot worse the longer they stay in power. If they lose the midterms, they won’t allow a peaceful transition to a government that can hold them accountable. We’ll have to stand up to that moment, whatever it ends up being.
What is it going to look like? I think everything described above is a real possibility, but I don’t know exactly. But they have a paramilitary force now, and control of the military, and they have an army of whack-jobs ready to go. So maybe we should start having adult conversations about what happens when, and if— and I am really hoping it’s still an if, and I hope I’m wrong, but I think it’s a when—they bring us to that place where the rule of law will not be enough. They’re planning for it and they’re going to be ready. Will we be?