What if Trump Wins: What the Authors Got Right, What They Got Wrong, and What They Missed Altogether

 

Category	Activity
Protect people being targeted	Mutual aid society Fundraising for nonprofits Underground railroad
Defend existing institutions	Outreach to veterans/families/military Citizen scientist to assist EPA Find grants to strengthen elections
Envision what comes after Trump	Cultural/psychological grounding Constitutional convention
Resistance	Paperclip movement among civil servants Strikes Tax resistance

It has been over a year since I looked at What if Trump Wins' predictions about how he might act to compares with what he actually did.  It has been interesting, at least in part for some of the obvious things the authors left out.

Certainly, they got many things right, predicting Trump would:

• Pardon the January 6 rioters (true)
• Withdraw from the Paris climate agreements and delete all mention of climate change from government websites (true)
• Close the border (true) 
• Make deep cuts to healthcare and other social spending (true)
• Make widespread layoffs of federal employees (true)
• Attack emissions standard (true)
• Gerrymander (true)
• We also have to look at what it implicitly predicts Trump will not do.  As previously mentioned, it assumes that civil society will continue to flourish (true) and liberal media will still feel free to criticize Trump (true).

Other guesses were mostly right but missed some details, such as predictions Trump would:

• Engage in mass deportations with little or no due process -- true, but seriously understates just how bad it would be, as it failed to foresee mass incarceration or the true scale of the reign of terror in some area.
• Appoint far right judges -- certainly the plan, but just getting started
• Reclassify 50,000 to 100,000 federal employees as Schedule F, i.e., lacking civil service protections -- completely arbitrary firings have been much worse than they foresaw, and many federal employees have just quit rather than do what Trump wants, but true Schedule F has just gotten started and covers only about 8,000 employees.  So, this is both worse and not as bad as anticipated.
• Violence against peaceful protesters -- only when ICE is involved
• Calls to prosecute opponents -- some attempts, but mostly duds, except where ICE is involved

And some things have not materialized:

• Abortion restrictions.  Trump knows better than to touch this hot potato.
• Attempts to outlaw electric vehicles.  Elon Musk is probably a factor there.  On the other hand, Trump really does seem determined to outlaw solar and wind power.
• Widespread rightwing terrorism.  There appears to be some hiding in the shadows, in the form of threats to judges and politicians.  Still, judges and politicians have shown a lot more courage than one might expect.  And there has been no visible rightwing terrorism targeting the general public.  The authors predicted rightwing militias terrorizing immigrant communities and burning down minority-owned businesses, and a surge in workplace violence with a (related) decline in prosecution.  Again, this hasn't happened.  Although ICE has been worse than the authors predicted, rightwing violence has not surged.  I would expect it to surge if Democrats ever come to power again.

But equally interesting are the things that the authors either don't mention, or mention only in passing.

The economy is mentioned only in passing, and only in the "resistance" sections.  tariffs to do not get mentioned at all. When addressing Trump's reaction to the resistance, it says that Trump's approval ratings are sagging, and the economy is "shaky" due to his erratic policies.  That sounds about right.  The economy has really not been all that bad, but Trump's erratic policies have caused damage, and this has been a major factor in hurting his approval rating.*  So, I would say this is right, but gets a lot less emphasis than it should.  The success of Trump's entire presidency will rise or fall on this factor.

There is only one mention of foreign policy, in the entire book.  That is in the military section, which has Trump propose to withdraw from NATO and the military convince him to do a "partial withdrawal" that keeps the US in NATO.  He hasn't gone quite that far, at least yet, but the overall picture with regard to Europe sounds about right.  And some things the authors predict with regard to the military are clearly worse than anything that has happened, at least yet.  The authors predict that the rank-and-file will be more pro-Trump than the leadership, which looks about right.  But their feared surge in rightwing terrorism by military personnel hasn't happened (so far).  They also have Trump get so frustrated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he appoints a first lieutenant to the job!  Nothing that insane has happened.  While General Dan Caine appears to be somewhat unconventional in being a retired three star general instead of an active four star, he also appears to be one of the few grownups in the room.  What the authors totally fail to foresee is Trump's enthusiasm for military intervention.  On the one hand, Trump did run on a promise to stay out of wars.  On the other hand, how surprising can it be that he likes beating up on weaker countries?

And, astonishingly, there is essentially no mention of electoral politics below the presidential level.  Midterms rate a single mention in the protecting elections section.  "You look ahead to the midterms future elections and you see much to worry about."  The authors go on to propose finding grants to strengthen election infrastructure and say that election workers can now explain how elections work ahead of time.  Their sole mention of a non-presidential election is to propose that, thanks to grants, when ballots are destroyed in a climate-change-related fire, the grants make it possible to quickly send out new ones.  But no mention whatever is made of the outcome of any non-presidential election!  That seems like an important omission!

I will game out their proposed potential scenarios in an upcoming post.

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*It was also presumably an important factor in his decision to end the Iran war and, if successful, will probably show some recovery to both the economy and Trump's popularity.