As the Boomtown Rats sang, I don’t like Mondays, and this coming Monday January 20^th promises to be my all-time least favorite.

There is a palpable sense that we are entering a dark new chapter in American history, and there is good reason to feel that way, because our incoming overlords have gleefully promised it. The New Deal era is dead. It had a good run—49 years—but the 44 subsequent years of the Reagan Revolution (a counter-revolution, really) unwound much of it, thanks to a relentless campaign by tenacious and deep-pocketed plutocrats, in alliance with cultural reactionaries (religious fanatics, racists, misogynists, John Birchers, et al), shielded by their increasing control of the courts (thanks, Leonard Leo!), and abetted above all by a massive right wing propaganda machine that now dominates mainstream American media.

So the dawn of Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s second term marks the Age of Roosevelt’s final curtain call. Oddly, in retrospect, his win in 2016 feels like only a preview, and the four years of Joe Biden a mere respite, like Adolf’s exile from ’23 to ’33, before a foolish citizenry and a hapless political system allowed him to retake power. Not to reach for too baroque a comparison, but it’s apt.

So yeah, Monday doesn’t look too inviting.

It is fitting, of course, that Inauguration Day will coincide with a blast of Arctic air that will plunge Washington DC into the single digits, forcing the—ahem—festivities indoors, and as ABC reports, leaving “the vast majority” of ticket-holding Trump fans shut out. Talk about a pair of on-the-nose metaphors. That it coincides with MLK Day is a different kind of bitter coincidence.

It’s also telling that Mike Johnson has ordered the US flag—currently at half-staff for a month of mourning for President Jimmy Carter—raised again for the day, to soothe the petty petty incoming president’s eggshell-fragile ego. Presumably he did so under pressure, if not as the result of a direct order, though with tyrants there is often no need for such an order, or even a Henry II-like whisper about meddlesome priests. The myrmidons instinctively know what the Dear Leader wants and what will please him, giving him the bonus of plausible deniability for upcoming crimes far worse than dissing Jimmy Carter.  

Once the second Trump administration gets underway, I am not sure that I will be able to muster the same righteous fury over every daily outrage like I did during the first go-round of this nightmare. I suspect many of you feel the same. In some ways that may be a good thing, at least for our mental health. Back then it was all fresh and new and every day we looked at each other and asked, “Can you believe this shit???” Now we are inured to it, and no longer surprised. That is also bad, of course, and not to say that we should accept it. A sense of defeat and resignation is exactly what the autocrats want from us.

So, lo, I bring you a little bit of good news, which is that the clock is already rapidly ticking on the new regime. Just 21 months remain before the midterms—21 and a half, to be exact—on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

Don’t roll your eyes. Yes, we just saw the American people willingly return to office the worst president in US history, so putting our faith in the wisdom of the voting public doesn’t look too appealing right now. And yes, even if we were to do so, there is a real danger that the GOP will use these next 21 months to further rig the electoral system to ensure that it stays in power permanently, whether the people want it or not. But so long as any semblance of free and fair elections remain in place, we have the chance to oust the party of open autocracy from at least one institution—the House—in less than two years, which would be a huge brake on the Trump agenda.

We all know that midterms traditionally favor the party that is out of power (see 2018). It could be especially so this time around, with the potential for buyers’ remorse among casual and low-information Trump supporters running high. The GOP’s House majority is only five seats—thin as thin can be, and there is enormous conflict within it, particularly from its far right “Freedom Caucus.” Even with shameless Republican gerrymandering, Trump’s inevitable overreach and screwups in make it a real possibility that Democrats could retake the chamber. (The Senate looks a bit harder, as Democrats would need to net four seats to regain control, and faced with a difficult map.)

I realize it sounds somewhat naïve to talk in these old school horserace terms when the Trump administration may have completely eviscerated American democracy by then. (We’ll see; that sort of transformation might prove harder than it looks.) But if we’ve lost faith in electoral politics altogether, then we are in a completely different conversation. The sharper question is whether the Democratic Party and other pro-democracy opposition movements in the US have the wherewithal to do what needs to be done to win.

But any way you look at it, November 2026 is barreling towards us with the inexorable momentum of a runaway locomotive. The only question is: who’s it gonna run over?

TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT

Trump is at the high water mark of his political career, with the possible exception of a few months from now if he succeeds in consolidating power even more and crushing all opposition as part of establishing his neo-fascist regime. But soon it will all inevitably begin to crumble.

As many have noted, Trump loves to run for office, and is undeniably good at it, the way demagogues and cheaters tend to be. But he is shitty at governing—the way incompetent greedheads and mental defectives tend to be—and soon he and his party, with control of all three branches of government, are going to own the ensuing shitshow. If you look at the trajectories of almost all US presidencies, the hope and optimism (and frequently, empty promises) with which they all begin almost inevitably end in anger and recrimination and thermostatic hostility from the electorate, deserved or not. Ask Joe Biden. It will be no different with Trump, and given his chaotic non-leadership style and general incompetence, likely much much worse.

In The New Republic, Jason Linkins seizes on this dynamic when he suggests that we “shove the Presidency down Trump’s throat.”

Trump is a bog-standard rich white guy whom the justice system is largely incapable of bringing to heel. He has powerful friends (oligarchs, Supreme Court justices), deep pockets, and a well-tempered ability to joust in the media.

But Trump has historically faltered when he’s been forced to contend with the actual pressure of the presidency and its myriad responsibilities (see also: the Covid-19 pandemic) because his ideas are bad and he doesn’t have a deep and abiding interest in public service to really make a sustained effort to confront, let alone solve, the biggest problems we face.

There is no way that a Trump presidency does not end in absolute chaos and vast damage and destruction on multiple fronts, from the return of polio to a federal abortion ban to various foreign policy disasters. How much people will give a shit is a separate matter. But since we Americans seem to care almost exclusively about our wallets, let’s focus on that.

With the notion that he is a champion of working people, Trump voters were sold the biggest bill of goods in modern American history—and, sadly, I include in that number some very dear friends and even loved ones. I will have very limited sympathy for them when it all goes Pete Tong. But as the opposition, it should be our goal to expose that con and wake these folks up. Yeah, he’ll inherit a historically robust economy—and oh, the injustice of that—but he will soon screw it up by skewing the system even more to benefit the rich, and the working and middle classes and the poor will pay the price.

In a recent Twitter video, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) laid it out very plainly. I’m going to quote it in full, because it is so clear and so direct:

So why is Trump talking about invading (or) buying Greenland, the Panama Canal? It’s because he’s trying to distract you.

The basic, bottom-line agenda for Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress is simple. They want to pass a massive tax cut for billionaires and corporations—all of Trump’s friends at Mar-a-Lago. And they want to pay for it by cutting benefits for seniors on Medicare, and poor children and families on Medicaid. That’s the bill they want to push through in the first 60 days of the new Congress.

Donald Trump doesn’t want you to know that. Republicans don’t want you to pay attention to the theft that is going to occur early in this year: another massive tax break to pad the pockets of the wealthiest people in the country, financed by devastating cuts to seniors and to poor children. And so this week it’s Greenland and the Panama Canal; who knows what it will be next week? But it is all an effort to distract you from the basic foundational agenda of Donald Trump: stealing from the middle class and the poor to pad the pockets of the wealthy and his corporate friends.

That is absolutely the Rosetta Stone of Trumpism. All the racism, misogyny, transphobia, Christian nationalism and the rest is very real, and very scary. But ultimately, for Trump and Musk and the mandarins of the GOP and the donor class that supports them, it is all in the service of this single, very simple, avaricious goal. Because that has been the animating principle behind right wing opposition to the New Deal, and the impetus for Reaganomics, and every other aspect of the Republican agenda, since 1932.

Don’t believe it? Witness the parade of billionaires filling Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s Cabinet and rushing to curry favor and be by his side, including the richest man in the world, Elon Musk himself, who will literally have an office in the White House. Or do you think that allegation of reverse Robin Hoodery is a level of mustache-twirling villainy too outrageous even for Trump? Lest we forget, in 2019 Trump and his children Eric and Ivanka and their family foundation were fined $2 million by a New York state judge and had the family foundation dissolved for illegally diverting charitable contributions— including to a children’s cancer charity—for personal and political purposes, a process commonly known as “stealing”

This past week, Convicted Felon Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, had the huevos to sit in front of the Senate Banking Committee and speak in apocalyptic terms about how a failure to renew and extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts for the rich—you know, the one that added $1.7 trillion to the federal debt—would destroy the middle class, even though it overwhelmingly benefited the rich at the expense of the middle class. Because, trickle down I guess?

In an interview with Greg Sargent in The New Republic, the journalist Casey Michel notes that what we are seeing is “a global cast of characters of generally authoritarian regimes….that are now salivating at the prospect” of the new Trump administration. (Sargent points out that both Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, and his AG, Pam Bondi, were both registered foreign lobbying agents, not to mention the numerous foreign deals of Jared Kushner and the whole Trump Organization.) Michel:

(W)e have seen these plutocratic elements and things like the Gilded Age with robber barons in American history, but we have never seen such a singular cohort of so many deep-pocketed individuals with direct access to the White House. And beyond that, we have certainly never seen a president like Donald Trump who completely blurs and dissolves the lines between private interests and public policy….

They will not be targeted with sanctions. They will not be prosecuted. They will not be investigated. And frankly, they can use their money as much as these American oligarchs are in terms of influencing and accessing the Trump White House. This is really what it portends: an opening to any deep pocketed individual, whether American or not, to the White House, to the highest rungs of American power.

I doubt this is what the average American wants. The question is, can we cut through the fog of demagoguery, disinformation, and distraction enough to show them that this is happening? I am here to suggest that we can, because Trump & Co. will be so shameless and clumsy in declining even to hide it. Indeed: they seem openly proud. If the people of the United States have sunk so low that we will in fact applaud that—as Trump seems to believe, either out of arrogance or cynicism—then we are well and truly screwed, and deserve what we get.

But I’m not yet ready to believe that.

How long will the American people put up with openly being made shmucks by the richest among us, who are laughing while they do it? As Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: “A billionaire is in the White House, claiming to have the interests of the working class at heart, with the world’s richest man and his plentiful conflicts of interest operating alongside him. Democrats may be a party in crisis, but they should know how to fight this.”

If we do not seize control of that narrative and force the truth into the light, even for people who are stubbornly resistant to seeing it, it could certainly get worse, with even once reliably blue states like New Jersey bracing for downballot Republican candidates (in the governor’s race, for instance) who hope to emulate Trump.

From the Republican point of view, 21 and a half months is not a very long time to accomplish all that they want. They will have to move fast, and they will definitely try to do so. It’s true that Hitler destroyed Weimar Germany’s troubled democracy in just 53 days, but he was a far more disciplined tyrant. Many of the things Adolf did in that process— imposing massive tariffs on foreign goods, purging the bureaucracy of non-loyalists, threatening to turn the army loose against German civilians, promising the police impunity for acts of violence in suppressing dissent, deputizing goon squads like the SA as agents of the government, imprisoning his political opponents, arresting and deporting “undesirables,” offering amnesty and even lionization for his imprisoned followers—sound mighty familiar. And he did it all by legal means within the bounds of the Weimar constitution, and with the cowardly accession of the majority of German politicians, at least until the extralegal ploy of the Reichstag fire and the sweeping, PATRIOT Act-foreshadowing dictatorial powers that followed.  

I’m not saying that’s going to happen here. But I’m also not saying it’s not impossible that it can’t happen here. (Got that?)

SEND IN THE CLOWNS

It’s an absolute certainty that the second Trump administration will be a clown car of dysfunction, and it will surely crash sooner or later; ain’t no doubt about that. Of course, a clown with a handgun can do a lot of damage in the mean time—not to mention a clown with the nuclear codes, and a compliant Supreme Court.

The Atlantic’s George Packer has argued that Trump’s coalition is “more fragile than it now seems,” which is undeniably true, even if it seems pretty fragile already.

(Trump) will surround himself with ideologues, opportunists, and crackpots, and because he has no interest in governing, they will try to fill the vacuum and turn on one another. The Trump administration, with a favorable Congress, will overreach on issues such as abortion and immigration, soon alienating important parts of its new coalition. It will enact economic policies that favor the party’s old allies among the rich at the expense of its new supporters among the less well-off.

It’s quite possible that, approaching 80, Trump will find himself once more among the least popular presidents in the country’s history. But in the meantime, he will have enormous latitude to abuse his power for enrichment and revenge, and to shred the remaining ties that bind Americans to one another, and the country to democracies around the world.

The coalition that got Trump re-elected was dedicated to one thing and one thing only: getting Trump re-elected. It is not designed to govern. It is a temporary alliance of special interests whose goals don’t necessarily align beyond believing that Convicted Felon Donald Trump was their best path back to power. But the members of that uneasy alliance don’t agree at all on what to do now that they’ve got It. There is no better example than the ongoing intramural fight between Musk and MAGA, over immigration specifically.

However, we can’t just count on Trump self-destructing. He has already self-destructed so many times and in so many different ways, and yet America has not punished him in any appreciable form, let alone deserted him. So we need to figure out how to make the public rediscover its gag reflex and craft a cohesive campaign against him and the kakistocracy he represents.

The Washington Post reports that a majority of Americans strongly oppose Trump’s dictatorial plans. (If only they had known of those plans before the election and had some way to stop him!) Then again, the WaPo is where democracy died in darkness, where Bezos squashed an endorsement of Kamala, and where everyone from a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist to Jennifer Rubin has packed up and left in disgust. (Hugh Hewitt can finally have that corner office.) But at least it’s offering ”riveting storytelling for all of America.”

In that same WaPo poll, 40% of Americans express their confidence that Convicted Felon Donald Trump, who has said he would be a dictator—but just for a day—won’t really follow through. But just in case he does, Politico’s Asli Aydintasbas, formerly a journalist in Turkey under Erdoğan, offers this advice for combatting autocracy:

Trump’s return to power is unnerving but, as I have argued previously, America will not turn into a dictatorship overnight—or in four years. Even the most determined strongmen face internal hurdles, from the bureaucracy to the media and the courts. It took Erdoğan well over a decade to fully consolidate his power. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice Party needed years to erode democratic norms and fortify their grip on state institutions.

Aydintasbas concedes that the United States is not immune to these patterns, but argues that our decentralized system of governance works to our advantage. (Franklin Foer makes a similar point in a recent article for The Atlantic about a new kind of blue state federalism as a hedge against Trump.)“Federal judges serve lifetime appointments, states and governors have specific powers separate from those granted federally, there are local legislatures, and the media has the First Amendment as a shield, reinforced by over a century of legal precedents.”

Sure, there are dangers, including by a Supreme Court that might grant great deference to the president. But in the end, Donald Trump really only has two years to try to execute state capture. Legal battles, congressional pushback, market forces, midterm elections in 2026 and internal Republican dissent will slow him down and restrain him. The bottom line is that the US is too decentralized in its governance system for a complete takeover.

Aydintasbas goes on to argue that we must not disengage—tempting as it is—but rather, stay connected. “Dancing, travel, meditation, book clubs—it’s all fine. But eventually, in Poland, Hungary and Turkey, opponents of autocracy have returned to the fight, driven by a belief in the possibility of change. So will Americans.” He also argues that the pro-democracy effort is itself re-energizing. “That’s why millions of Turks turned out to the polls and gave the opposition a historic victory in local governments across Turkey earlier this year. That’s how the Poles organized a winning coalition to vote out the conservative Law and Justice Party last year. It can happen here, too.”

Lastly, he counsels that the recriminations and infighting currently roiling the Democratic Party in the wake of Trump’s win are necessary in order to move forward, so long as the right lessons are learned, and a galvanizing candidate can be found to lead.

I’m gonna take him at his word.

IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

Let me emphasize in the strongest possible terms: in just 21 months we can deal Trump a major setback in the midterms and prevent some of his worst excesses from going any further. But that will depend entirely on what we do in the interim, including regrouping as a formidable opposition movement, obstructing him and his party at every step (rather than normalizing them with some feckless form of bipartisanship, which is tantamount to surrender), and above all, seizing control of the narrative to put the truth front and center and make it undeniable to all but the most brain-dead and Kool-Aid drunk.

Four years from now—or less—after Trump has done his damage and bottomed out and is a demented old man presiding over an epic shitshow riven with intra-Republican infighting, we may look back on this period when he was riding high and view it with vast irony. That moment is coming, but it can’t come soon enough….and it will be meaningless if we do not organize ourselves to capitalize on it.

Let’s go back to Aydintasbas:

Nothing lasts forever and the US is not the only part of the world that faces threats to democracy—and Americans are no different than the French, the Turks or Hungarians when it comes to the appeal of the far right. But in a country with a strong, decentralized system of government and with a long-standing tradition of free speech, the rule of law should be far more resilient than anywhere in the world.

Trump’s return to power certainly poses challenges to US democracy. But he will make mistakes and overplay his hand—at home and abroad. America will survive the next four years if Democrats pick themselves up and start learning from the successes of opponents of autocracy across the globe.

Preach.

When I was a young, newly commissioned infantry lieutenant, an old soldier told me that the key to getting through some of the highly challenging situations that awaited was to take each of them in small, psychologically manageable chunks. It was some of the best advice I ever got, and I use it all the time, even now, in all kinds of hard times…..this one included. If we think about the totality of four years of Trump, it’s too daunting and dispiriting—we’ll never make it. “You get through it day by day,” this old trooper told me. “Sometimes you get through it hour by hour.”

I expect to use that advice a lot in the coming 21 and a half months. But in the end, they will go by in a flash. Let’s make the most of them.