Will the 2026 elections take place?

There is an idea in the political ether: Trump will cancel the 2026 elections.

Ideas don't have height or weight, but they are real. They shape what is possible.

Republicans are already accustomed to the idea that elections don't count. 

Even before the results of the 2020 election were in, Trump told Americans not to believe their eyes, nor the election tabulation results, the media, election officials, nor the courts. His idea took time to settle in, but now to be a Republican on good terms with Trump, one cannot disagree openly with him when he says he won in a landslide. 

Democrats are also getting used to the idea that elections may not determine who has legitimate power. For Democrats, it's a fear, not a wish. But the idea circulates that elections are a maybe-thing, not a certainty. 

Yesterday I received this comment from a Portland resident, John Flenniken. He isn't conspiratorial. His media diet is the normal mainstream news.

There will be no mid-term election! Martial Law will dictate that the polls will be closed until order is restored. The demonstrations that follow will not be friendly. Further evidence of disorder and the necessity to continue. Trump will declare, "Only I can restore order!" We will sink further into an authoritarian dictatorship. Noted dissidents will suddenly "disappear", social media will monitor dissent, Congress will be dissolved or take an extended break out of a false narrative that it is too dangerous to remain in D.C. as a target for attack.

The prediction is a work of fiction, but it is a cautionary tale that is possible if not probable.

Cautionary tales play two roles. One is the warning, to make the bad outcome less likely. The second works in the opposite direction. It takes something that was once "unthinkable" and makes it "thinkable." 

Trump's gambit to overthrow the 2020 election failed in large part because it was such a new idea for the people whose consent was necessary. Certifying an election isn't a ministerial act?  What??!! A slate of electors can just assert that they won? What??!!  A congressman can just assert, on his own authority and against the attestation of the state, that Pennsylvania's electors don't count?  What??!!

In key situations there was a big hurdle of surprise and inertia to overcome for Trump to stop the vote count certification.

When comedian Bill Maher said throughout the summer and fall of 2020 that Trump would not leave office peacefully, people thought it was crazy. In the month before the election an Atlantic article put up a serious warning, but the idea seemed extreme. No president had done such an outrageous thing. In the days before the election Steve Bannon tipped Trump's hand by bragging that it was the plan to claim victory even if Trump lost. But the idea of it had not diffused through the public mind. The "say what??!!" response persisted. 

It is different now. We now understand that if Trump can do something, and it is to his advantage, he will do it. The issue isn't whether it is traditional or lawful as the law has been understood. It is whether anyone can stop him. The tariff issue, soon to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, is a line in the sand. The Constitution is clear that Congress, not the Executive, establishes tariffs and other taxes, but Trump asserts that there is an emergency, and since he is acting as commander in chief he can do whatever he wants. Trump is also playing the emergency card in sending troops to Democratic cities, in blasting boats out of the water in the Caribbean, and in ICE arrests. Americans have experienced it and the Earth keeps spinning and life goes on. We go to work. We live our lives. We are getting used to the emergency card.

The guardrails of the law and past practice don't matter much to this president. That is his brand -- the can-do president unfettered by the restraints of the rule-bound past. The real check on Trump would be public opinion. If polls show that Trump will lose a House majority in the 2026 election, I fully expect he will do something bold to prevent losing a Republican House majority. It is what Trump does, again and again. The question is whether people will be shocked. "Say, what??!!"

But I suspect Americans will not be shocked; Republicans will welcome the outcome. Democrats will be dismayed and sputter with frustration -- but not shock. It would be the same-old, same-old Trump, claiming there is an emergency and getting away with it. It will be a well-trod path by then: Democrats can't stop him, and the Supreme Court won't. Trump can claim what he wants and do what he wants.

Democratic government and the rule of law will end when its end is normalized. That process is underway.

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