As each Election Day passes and each one was clearly “…the most important in our lifetime…,” we are wise to move on to the next election with minds centered on that critical but thoroughly exhausting notion. As the billionaire autocrats show no signs of letting up, it behooves us to press on with our unrelenting opposition as well. We should stay informed and alert, and get distracted only at democracy’s peril. Trump 2028 is a distraction and an ugly troll. 

Largely, a critical outcome for our American democracy will be determined in the 2026 midterms. Trump and his ruinous executive cacophony are highly unpopular. That is why the Republican party-cult is scrambling to undermine elections and the rule of law. To have a chance to win elections, the Republican minority party with highly unpopular positions and actions must move to eliminate vast numbers of potential opposition voters. Of course, Republicans and Trump have relentlessly schemed and continue to hold that lucky “get out of jail free card,” proffered by an unconscionable Supreme Court that has offered decisions amounting to unlimited executive power and its blessing of “lawful” on both anti-democratic and immoral rigging of election districts. As a rule, SCOTUS gives the OK to Trump and his criminal gang to ignore democracy, evade the rule of law, and cheat the American people in most everything the Republicans seek to do.  Meanwhile, Trump personally and illegally sets tariffs, and a complicit Republican Congress willingly defers to him—at the expense of you and me and the inflated prices we see. And let us not forget his willy-nilly, unsubstantiated murder of “bad guys” in international waters.

You think Trump was lying in his campaign promises to lower prices on Day One, end the Ukraine-Russia war on Day One, and pretty much everything he promised to do on Day One, as well as on every other day? Lies once ruined political careers. Apparently Trump has demonstrated that even enormous grift and titanic lies can be surprisingly attractive to a segment of the electorate. Can that kind of amoral behavior be allowed to continue? 

Likely, that is what the elections of 2026 will reveal. Fool me once, OK; fool me twice; fool me yet again; really?

John Pace
Honesdale, PA