Preparing for an election like no other

Next year's election is looking better and better.  It seems increasingly likely that Trump and the Republicans will face the kind of blowout defeat that the worst President in history, and the party that has cravenly enabled him, so richly deserve.  But that doesn't mean we can relax.  And we need to be thinking about what could happen after the election.

Polling continues to bring encouraging news.  The most recent survey shows our top five candidates beating Trump by margins ranging from 9 to 16 points:

Biden +16 (54%-38%)
Sanders +14 (53%-39%)
Warren +12 (52%-40%)
Harris +11 (51%-40%)
Buttigieg +9 (49%-40%)

A number of Republican House seats are looking vulnerable, especially with retirements.  In the Senate, to get to 50-50 (which means Democratic control if the Vice President is a Democrat), we need to take three seats, or four if Doug Jones loses in Alabama.  We have good opportunities in Colorado, Maine, Arizona, and possibly Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Montana, Iowa, and even Kansas and Texas (if O'Rourke or Castro gets in).  In a blue-wave year, retaking the Senate is a real possibility.

But -- the historical pattern is that large leads in Presidential races tend to tighten as the election approaches.  Vote-suppression laws, Russian meddling, and the Electoral College will all be factors next year, just as they were in 2016.  If the polling continues to look like this next year, some people will think victory is in the bag and it's safe to waste their vote on a third candidate (there should be fewer such cases than in 2016, but there will be some).  The hotheads may yet stampede Congress into an impeachment that would improve Trump's re-election chances and endanger a lot of House seats in purple districts.  We need a big enough turnout to offset all those possible negatives -- and still deliver a landslide.

Because we'll need a landslide.  A mere blue ripple won't be enough to win Senate races in places like Georgia and Kentucky -- and we'll need a margin of error in the Senate, because some of the necessary steps toward restoring full democracy, such as abolishing the filibuster and enlarging the Supreme Court to re-establish its integrity, will be perceived as "radical" and one or two of the more conservative Democrats may vote against them.

But the biggest reason we need a landslide concerns the aftermath.  If Trump is defeated, how do you think the Trumpanzees and the broader wingnutosphere are going to react?

Remember, they live in an alternate-reality bubble steeped in nonsense ranging from Trump's Twitter delusions to Pizzagate and QAnon.  They believe they're the majority, or at least the majority of "real Americans" -- that is, Americans excluding minorities, atheists, and the millions of imaginary non-citizen voters and dead voters who they still think made up Hillary's popular-vote margin.  I remember Trumpanzees in 2016 telling liberals things like "Trump isn't our last chance, he's your last chance" -- meaning he was their last effort to regain dominance by legal means, and if it didn't work (that is, if Trump didn't win), they would resort to violence.  Since then, the fever swamp has, if anything, gotten crazier.

If Trump loses, I do expect scattered violence here and there from enraged, heavily-armed wingnuts.  I also expect increased talk of secession, efforts to meddle with the Electoral College, and every other crackpot reaction you can think of (and some more you can't think of).  The only way to minimize this is for the margin of victory -- popular vote as well as Electoral -- to be as large as possible, to minimize the credibility of such fantasies.  The only way back to reality for the Trumpanzees is to grasp that they aren't a majority, but just one element in a pluralistic society.  The harder their noses get rubbed in that fact next November, the more of them will start to achieve that realization, and the less damage they'll do.

So yes, your vote matters, even if you live in a state like California or Alabama whose alignment in the Electoral College is not in doubt.  The popular-vote margin must be large enough to place our candidate's win beyond reasonable question.  This will reduce the amount of trouble, and possibly violent deaths, the Trumpanzees will inflict.

Finally:

Progressives need to reconcile themselves, as far in advance as possible, to the fact that the nominee will probably be Biden (or another moderate, if he falters).  After months, he still has a massive lead in the polling, which is the only hard data we have on the state of the race.  And no, it isn't just name recognition -- it's his association with Obama and the fact that he focuses his rhetorical fire on Trump rather than on other Democrats -- and he has about as many enthusiastic supporters as the other top candidates do.  Remember, there are more moderates than progressives in the party (blacks and older voters tend to be moderates), even if they aren't as heavily represented in the blogosphere and social media.  Claims that a moderate would be doomed to lose against Trump are absurd in the face of months of polls that show Biden beating Trump by a bigger margin than any other Democrat.  Progressives need to be prepared to work for, and vote for, Biden or someone like him -- because the alternative will be Trump.

Moderates need to be recognize that Biden, or another moderate nominee, is not inevitable.  It's still 14 months to the election and a lot can happen in that time.  Biden's gaffes and other signs of age are becoming an increasing concern.  Warren and Sanders are both personally very popular; if one were to leave the race and progressives consolidated behind the other, that surviving candidate would have a serious shot at the nomination.  Some moderates think a progressive nominee would be too radical to win and would be denounced as a "socialist" by Republicans -- but the data we have show Sanders or Warren beating Trump by double-digit margins, and the Republicans will yell "socialist" and all kinds of other wild nonsense no matter who our candidate is.  Moderates need to be prepared to work for, and vote for, Warren or Sanders or someone like them -- because the alternative will be Trump.

We can't risk that.  Trump is now threatening to cut Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit explosion caused by his tax cut for billionaires.  Four more years of Trump means four more years of environmental destruction, wingnut judicial appointments, mutually destructive trade wars, horrific abuses in the border migrant camps, discouragement of science, fomenting of bigotry, a cruel and impulsive ignoramus in control of 7,000 nuclear weapons, the world's largest economy AWOL from the global-warming fight, estrangement from fellow democracies and cozying up to gangster regimes, sabotage of democratic institutions in our own country, and all kinds of other terrifying crackpottery we can't even think of yet.  The worst Democrat, whichever one you think that is, would be a hundred times better than Trump.

If Biden is the nominee, I’ll vote for Biden.
If Sanders is the nominee, I’ll vote for Sanders.
If Warren is the nominee, I’ll vote for Warren.
If Harris is the nominee, I’ll vote for Harris.
If Buttigieg is the nominee, I’ll vote for Buttigieg.

And so on.  Delaney or Williamson would take some real nose-holding, but I’d still do it.  And the same should go for all our Senate and House candidates.  The Republican party as it is today is the biggest threat to the country since the Civil War.  Nothing short of overwhelming victory over it will be good enough.