Opinion | What if This Is Our Last Real Election?

Some of the Americans protesting the war in Gaza have turned on President Biden. They assert that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is killing huge numbers of civilians, which is true, and that Biden can stop it, which is more doubtful. But how do they deal with the reality that in a second term Donald Trump would be far more pro-Netanyahu and anti-Palestinian than our current president?

The answer I’ve been hearing is that the goal is to send a message: If Gaza costs Biden the election, Democrats will understand that in the next election they will need to rethink their seemingly reflexive support for Israel’s government and commit as a party to the protection of Palestinian rights.

There are many questions one could ask about this argument, but from a certain perspective, the most important one for American voters may well be: What next election?

There’s a very real possibility that if Trump wins in November it’ll be the last real national election America holds for a very long time. And while there’s room for disagreement here, if you consider that statement to be outrageous hyperbole, you haven’t been paying attention.

Yes, we can and should examine the candidates’ policy platforms and their potential effects, just as if this were a normal presidential election. But this isn’t a normal election; democracy itself is on the ballot. And it would be incredibly unwise not to take that into account.

Start here: Trump refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, making evidence-free claims of fraud in his effort to overturn it. In the past couple of years, various polls have shown that somewhere around two-thirds of the Republican Party has co-signed his election denialism. And several leading party members have refused to say that they’ll accept the election results this year. Why imagine that they’ll become any more respectful toward future elections?

You might say that American institutions would constrain the ability of Trump and whoever follows him to impose permanent one-party rule, which they did — barely — after the 2020 election. But institutions ultimately consist of people, and at this point many Republicans, up to and including Supreme Court justices, are showing about as much strength in supporting democracy and the rule of law as a wet paper towel.

So a Trump victory might well bring down the curtain on politics as we know it — he has already floated the idea of a third term, something that’s barred, of course, by the 22nd Amendment. But in any case, among his followers, at least, he has mainstreamed the idea that any presidential election won by Democrats is illegitimate.

I began this column with the leftists who appear willing to help facilitate a Trump victory despite being aware that he would be far worse, even on the issues they claim to care about, than Biden. But don’t forget about those we might call throwback Republicans, those who haven’t completely bought into the MAGA agenda but dislike Biden and believe that Trump would do a better job. They presumably believe that a second Trump term would be like his first term, when he talked populism but mostly followed a standard G.O.P. agenda of tax cuts and attempts to slash the social safety net.

Yet why imagine that a second term would be similar? Trump advisers are talking about radical policies, including mass deportations and stripping the Federal Reserve of independence, that would be highly disruptive even in purely economic terms.

But, you may say, the backlash against such policies would be huge, and Republicans would surely tone them down in fear that radicalism would hurt them badly in the next election.

To which I say: If Trump isn’t penalized in this election for his antics after the last election, why would he worry about a backlash in a future election? Assuming there is one in any real sense.

And then there are the Trump-supporting or Trump-leaning plutocrats, who may be fooling themselves completely.

Some of them may understand that they’re supporting a radical, anti-democratic movement, and are all in favor. Elon Musk, most famously, increasingly appears to have gone full Great Replacement MAGA, but he’s far from alone. So in that sense, they may be less deceived than many.

But their naïveté runs deeper, because they imagine that their wealth and prominence will allow them to flourish, even in a post-democracy America — that they’ll be immune to the purges and persecutions that are such an obvious possibility in the near future. They should at least ponder the experience of the oligarchs who helped Vladimir Putin gain power and then found themselves at his mercy.

To be clear: I’m not saying that people should muzzle themselves and refrain from criticizing Biden on the merits; he’s a grown-up and can handle it. Part of his job as a democratically elected leader is taking it. But ignoring the possibility that this could be our last real election for a while is shortsighted and self-indulgent.