When Trump loses in the midterms, prepare for the worst

We are now just 10 days away from the midterm elections, and so far, so good. That is not a comment on the state of the race. If we are to look at the race, then the proverbial dashboard is flashing red everywhere you look for Donald Trump. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, states that were once solidly Republican are now looking like they are on a knife edge; states that were in the toss-up column are now tilting towards the Democrats. Trump’s personal approval ratings have never been lower — just 31 per cent approve of the job that he’s doing, according to the most recent polls.

The big and disgraceful Russian diesel gambit has not brought down the price at the pumps for farmers and truckers, while the price of oil is climbing steeply again as rumours mount about a fresh assault on Iran once the midterms are out of the way. That, in turn, has led to a big slump in stock markets. Meanwhile, tariffs continue to affect the rate of inflation, which remains stubbornly high. And all of this has hit ordinary Americans, struggling to pay their monthly fuel and grocery bills.

That is the dismal backdrop for Donald Trump and the Republican candidates standing for election. Why I say “so far, so good” is that the various attempts to upend the elections by the White House have either failed or failed to materialise (yet). The thing about the US is that the Constitution decrees (Article 1, Section 4, if we’re being nerdy) that individual states have primary authority for running and administering elections. It’s none of the White House’s business.

That is why, in one state, you might find old-fashioned paper ballots like we have in the UK, whereas there might be voting machines in another — and still another type of machine elsewhere. When voting by mail-in ballot commences, or early in-person voting starts, is again up to the individual state.

And Donald Trump’s attempts to “federalise” US elections have been rebuffed. He wanted the Department of Homeland Security to be able to scrutinise voter rolls in any and every state. And — of course — to be able to decide who was on the roll legitimately and who wasn’t. The president also wanted the US Postal Service to check who was voting by mail and weed out ballots they didn’t like. It goes without saying that the head of the USPS is a Trump appointee. That was a constitutional overreach that even this conservative Supreme Court would not accept. They struck down the president’s attempts to reshape the way elections were run in the United States.

Not that Trump’s acolytes have given up. Trump has held meetings at the White House with a woman called Tina Peters.

She was indicted on 10 counts of manipulating the result of the 2020 election in Colorado and was imprisoned. She went to the White House with her attorney, who happens to be a childhood friend of the president. Peter Ticktin has called on the president to introduce martial law “in the event of another rigged election”. The word “another” is doing a lot of lifting and misdirection in that sentence, as there is still zero evidence that there was any rigging of the 2020 election.

There are other influential voices in Maga-land urging the president to do the same. But the clock is ticking, and although there are siren voices warning that the president still might do something wild, in reality his options are narrowing. So can everyone breathe a sigh of relief and just sit back and relax? You must be joking. Before the election, there’s not much constitutionally the president can do. I hear you: how reassuring is that when this is a president whose respect for democratic norms is not exactly exemplary?

The one thing he could do is deploy federal agents and ICE officers to key polling districts. When I say key, what I mean is districts where there might be large numbers of Hispanic voters — a group that is swinging massively back to the Democrats. If you know that by going to vote you’re going to be hassled by some threatening ICE officer demanding to see your papers, do you just stay away? Suppressing turnout where the Democrats are expected to poll well is clearly something that might happen.

I think it is after the election that the greatest danger lies. If you look at what Donald Trump has been saying over the past few months, it is clear he has been undermining confidence in the voting machines themselves — suggesting that they might somehow, magically even, turn a vote for a Republican into a vote for a Democrat. You might remember that this absurd allegation ended up costing Fox News $787 million when it was sued by one of the voting machine companies. He’s also been banging on about postal votes and how fraud will be rife. So be prepared for battles over the certification of results in closely fought contests, with demands to seize the voting machines and for audits of the ballots cast. This will throw sand in the gears. Ultimately, it could be an attempt to steal the election.