There is a peculiar affliction spreading throughout Liberal America as Tuesday approaches. Call it Anticipatory Catastrophe Syndrome. It’s the conviction that even if voters deliver the massive electoral rebuke all the polls and pundits are predicting, Donald Trump will somehow find a way to transform defeat into victory, democracy into dictatorship and Election Night into a hostage crisis.
To which I would respond: must we always rehearse the worst possible ending before the opening credits have even had a chance to scroll past?
Of course, vigilance is always warranted. So is healthy skepticism. And anyone who thinks the president will somehow respond graciously (cue laugh track) to political defeat has apparently been living without electricity since 2015.
But there’s a big difference between taking a threat seriously and permitting it to monopolize your imagination.
This election is not a referendum on whether Americans are permitted to hope. It’s an opportunity to exercise the power that voting is designed to confer. Whatever the outcome, tens of millions of Americans are participating, independent institutions retain important legal authority, and the future is not reducible to one crazy dude’s autocratic whims.
So rather than embrace a hundred reasons to be unnecessarily consumed by anxiety over Trump’s imperious dominance of the process, I propose that we look forward to these midterms with positive anticipation, determination, a sense of history and – in the interest of chilling the hell out – a healthy appreciation for the absurd.
Dread, after all, has seized more than its fair share of airtime.
The strongest evidence for this approach is unusually timely. Gallup’s survey released on Thursday documents historically high midterm engagement, while a Brookings analysis this week explains the safeguards that make large-scale voter tampering difficult. Neither establishes what the outcome will be, but together they support a compelling argument against fatalism.
So stop with your doomscrolling, compulsive cable-news consumption and the unshakable conviction that whatever happens on November 3, something more horrible is lurking around the corner. The odds are in favor of the good guys ultimately coming out on top this time.
Yes, I know, we could win everything and it won’t matter because Trump will barricade himself inside the Oval Office with all of the seized voting machines and declare himself Emperor of Humanity. What then? And what if the moon were to fall into the Pacific Ocean? And then they stopped making ice cream?
This isn’t to suggest that any of our worst fears are at all frivolous, but neither should they be all-consuming. Surrendering one’s entire emotional life to the worst-case scenario is a simple recipe for misery.
How about trying to focus on the joy of the potential moment for once in your miserable life?
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I can cite multiple justifications for this optimism.
Start with the fact that the outcry to vote the bums out and install new blood has rarely been louder. In one poll, a scant 15 percent of registered voters believe most members of Congress deserve reelection. Fifteen percent! The House and Senate have apparently achieved the customer-satisfaction ratings of an airline that loses your luggage and charges you to retrieve it.
Also, a Truth Social post is not a court ruling and does not become federal law. This remains true even when it’s WRITTEN IN ALL-CAPS.
The White House does not personally count the nation’s ballots no matter what Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito may believe. And the president cannot fire the electorate. He can complain about it, insult it, sue over its decisions and demand it be investigated. But at the end of the day, he can’t invalidate us.
The Government Accountability Office exists. So do inspectors general. Oversight isn’t merely a word Democrats use in fundraising emails.
Trump may seem somehow invincible and all-powerful to many at present. But remember that Richard Nixon won an historic reelection landslide in 1972. Two years later, he resigned. And a few months after that, the 1974 midterms demonstrated that voters can deliver a sweeping political response to scandal that can’t be easily undone.
Indeed, history is on our side. Rebukes to sitting presidents are practically automatic.
The 1994 midterms transformed Congress during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
The 2006 midterms transformed Congress during George W. Bush’s presidency.
The 2010 midterms transformed the House during Barack Obama’s presidency.
The 2018 midterms transformed the House during Trump’s first administration.
A lawsuit is not a victory.
A demand for a recount is not evidence of fraud.
A recount is not a coup.
A slow count is not a stolen election.
A close election is not a corrupt one.
An allegation is not proof, even when repeated 600 times by someone standing in front of a dozen American flags.
A television pundit’s assertion that “all hell could break loose” is not a weather forecast.
The phrase “people are saying” carries zero legal authority.
The phrase “Because I said so!” carries even less.
Election records can be examined and challenged through lawful processes.
Paper ballots, auditable records and chain-of-custody procedures provide important safeguards in most jurisdictions and can help identify any discrepancies.
Lawyers who specialize in voting rights are not sitting around waiting for someone to invent the concept of litigation. They’re well-prepared for certification disputes.
Our side is expected to have at least as many poll observers as they do election monitors and ICE officers looking to intimidate and disrupt.
Independent journalists are not barred from investigating official conduct and results.
Voting-rights organizations are closely monitoring potential election interference.
Worrying about election interference is not the same as documenting election interference.
Uncertainty about an outcome is not proof of catastrophe.
A threat is not the same as a completed act.
Hearing people declaring this to be “the most important election of our lifetime” does not mean it’s doomed to be the one that documents the death knell for democracy.
All of the early voting markers so far point to a motivated electorate casting ballots in record numbers, adding fuel to the Democratic landslide predictions.
Put all of this together and we have abundant reasons to be genuinely confident this time. So at least until further notice, ladies and gents, put a cork in the sky-is-falling apprehension and breathe easy. Your blood pressure will thank you.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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