What to do if Trump won’t leave when he loses the election

Let’s talk about the moment we all fear. The voting is done, the ballots are all counted, and Joe Biden has won the election. But President Trump tweets “FAKE NEWS!” and refuses to leave.

What do we do then? For the Biden campaign, the answer will probably involve a lot of legal and political wrangling. But for the rest of us, the answer is simple: Protest. Protest like hell.

Too many Americans despair at the idea of this scenario. Too many think of this as the moment all hope is lost. But it is just the opposite — the moment Trump goes for broke and declares he’s going to illegally stay in office is when he is at his weakest. That is when his Republican enablers will look around, gauge which way the political winds are blowing, and judge whether they’re going to get away with this. If much of the country is in open revolt, many of them might conclude that they won’t.

Meanwhile, the Biden campaign will be checking the same winds and judging whether they have the support to keep fighting. If they hear entire cities chanting Biden’s name, they’ll be emboldened. If they hear silence, they may figure the game is over. So the moment Trump denies the results is no time to give up the fight — it’s the moment to fight harder than ever.

Some cynics say protests don’t work. But we know from very recent experience that they do. When the video of George Floyd’s death first emerged, the cop who had killed him still had his job. Then, as massive demonstrations convulsed the country, he was fired, then arrested, then charged with third-degree murder, then second-degree murder. This all happened in eight days.

But even under this kind of pressure, will the Republicans ever abandon Trump? My answer is: Yes, because they’ve done it many times. When Trump’s sadistic family separation policy came to light, his usual supporters in Congress ran screaming. When Trump responded to the George Floyd protests with violence and photo-ops, high-ranking Republicans came out of the woodwork to denounce him. Even now, as the president’s poll numbers continue to tank, numerous GOP senators and congressmen are distancing themselves from him. When Trump looks weak, his allies flee.

The same goes for the Supreme Court. Trump told us in his manic debate performance that he’s “counting on them to look at the ballots,” obviously hoping for a court-ordered victory a la Bush v. Gore. But that’s not as sure a thing as he thinks. Justices Roberts, Gorsuch, and even Kavanaugh have proven willing to defy Trump a number of times — on LGBTQ rights, DACA, abortion, and even Trump’s own taxes and financial records. And if they’re at all on the fence about handing Trump his win against the will of the electorate, a national wave of protests could help tip the scales.

All of this is not to say we have nothing to worry about. The amount of voter suppression, violence, and hardball tactics we’re likely to see in November will probably require a tsunami of votes to overcome. But with Biden consistently beating Trump in the polls by double digits, a tsunami of votes may be exactly what’s about to happen.

So why are so many people giving up hope? Fifty-six percent of Americans think Trump will win, even though most support Biden. My guess is this is due to a kind of collective learned helplessness — the disorder by which a person gives up on escaping a traumatic situation, even when it’s possible. We’ve been promised so many times that something would get rid of Trump — the 2016 election, the Mueller investigation, the impeachment — and none of them worked. So even when beating Trump is not only possible but likely, many of us don’t believe in our own power to do it.

We need to unlearn that helplessness. Trump is not invincible. He is isolated, sickly, and unpopular. Removing him will take some time — but when he denies the election results, that’s when we’ll know he’s on the ropes. Don’t think of November 3 as Election Night; think of it as Night One.