How does Trumpism end? The only possibilities I see are:
1. Voting
2. Civil war.
3. It doesn’t.
This is about door number one.
Because Trump is gathering authoritarian control as quickly as he can, I would ask what we can hope to achieve by voting in the 2026 election cycle to stop him. My high-level answer is that to defeat Trumpism, we need a large majority to coalesce around a new movement, probably within but possibly outside of the Democratic Party, which would in turn elect large majorities in the Senate and House. Yes, this is pie-in-the-sky abstract, but I find it helpful to imagine a pathway forward. The only way I can even imagine a way out of this disaster is by persuading large numbers of voters to join a new majority, turning red and blue into something else altogether.
Doing what Democrats have been doing for the last ten years has not worked. A fighting-mad Democratic Party has not persuaded enough people to put Trumpism behind them. He won in 2016, lost narrowly in 2020, and then in 2024—remarkably, stunningly, unfathomably—he won again. America looked at him and Kamala Harris and somehow decided that it trusted him more (or distrusted him less) than her. The track record for fighting existential threats with the army of voters who respond to that message is Trump 2, Democrats 1. The notion that we should change little or nothing about the ideology and just fight harder seems illogical in light of that 10-year track record and trend lines that are getting worse for Democrats. Too many people do not care about authoritarianism if they believe the authoritarian is on their side. As it turns out, counterintuitively, democracy is an issue of greatest concern to elites.
Whoever leads will need to energize not only committed Democrats, a minority of the population at this point, but also people whose voters are basically up for grabs—low propensity voters, swing voters, young people—and convert a big number of conservatives and Trump voters too. My working hypothesis is that we need a strong majority or supermajority, not a barely-squeaking-by-and-highly-polarized majority, to end Trumpism. Winning the House of Representatives is better than not winning it, of course, but little will change in terms of Trump’s authoritarian momentum if Democrats take control of the House by a few seats and leave the Senate in Republican hands.
The Senate is essential. Judges. Appointments. Trump cannot appoint judges with lifetime tenure without the Senate’s consent. A stronger Senate could refuse to confirm his egregious choices for departments and agencies and then move on to the fight over whether he can run those agencies with unconfirmed acting personnel. At best, a Senate with courage would vote to convict him upon impeachment.
Bringing about a national majority that can win the Senate in 2026 should be the goal. Republicans currently control the Senate 53 to 47, so Democrats and independents need to take a combined four additional seats—and more is better. Even anti-Trump Republicans will do, if there are any. The consensus prime contenders are North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine, and then I’m going to throw in Iowa, Texas, and South Dakota as my second tier. Taking all these seats while holding all the others will require a big swing, meaning voter persuasion throughout what has recently been red territory.
What would building a decisive majority of voters require? That’s a big question and I’m no campaign consultant or political scientist, but as a litigator, I do know a little bit about persuasion. Persuasion is offering a framework or vision that is attractive to the decider and makes him or her feel good about having voluntarily chosen it. Bold action (or plan or vision for it) is what persuades voters because people want change. And the bold action should help people, not a politician or party, or else it cannot win over large majorities.
Bold action will undoubtedly start fights. Plans will be mocked. Trump said crazy things about building walls and making Mexico pay for it; imposing huge tariffs; deporting millions of immigrants; and so forth. People laughed and jeered. These ideas were crazy then and they still are. But they represented bold action and more people than we care to admit liked his vision. Someone will emerge, at least I hope, that has a plan that brings people together around a different vision and cause them to reject Trump’s dictator-led police state.
Because I’m in California, here is some California-centric brainstorming, most of which is responsive to this week’s headlines:
1. Establish a California Center for Disease Control to address pandemic prevention and vaccine development. Make job offers to scientists and administrators recently or currently working at the federal CDC.
2. Offer protection to Trump’s political opposition when he incites violence against them or refuses to protect public servants.
3. Eliminate environmental review for all housing projects.
4. Call for a national constitutional convention to repeal the Second Amendment and to allow States to decide how to regulate firearms.
5. Ban phones in schools.
6. Fund wind-power developments, scientific researchers, and artists that are unfairly and often illegally losing their approved grants under the Trump administration.
7. You get the idea.
There are obvious obstacles, tradeoffs, and fights that any of these simple proposals would encounter. But everyone wants to fight, right? To fight right, those targeted by Trump should fight to slow authoritarianism’s advance, politicians should be bold to create a better alternative, and ordinary people should persuade others that the alternative is one they should voluntarily choose and feel good about. To come full circle, those who want to stop Trumpism may ask whether their words and actions will help people to be able to vote for a broad-based majority in 2026. Envision and pursue a voting-based outcome now, because the other two possibilities are unimaginable.