A steep learning curve awaits voters who vested their hopes in Trump

With Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House, the nightmare threat posed by him and his fascistic movement will all too soon become America’s waking reality. How the nation descended into this political abyss will no doubt inspire angry debate, but here is one response to this electoral disaster: We aren’t going anywhere and will continue to stand for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the principles of democracy and decency that endure even under aspiring tyrants.

Trump certainly aspires to tyranny, as he has repeatedly warned us, during the 2024 campaign and many times before. We can hope that his vow to use military force against opponents and dissenters and his openly expressed urge to arrest and harm his political adversaries is merely bluster, as his supporters insist. Many voters said they didn’t believe he would carry out those menacing promises, although his most fervent supporters evidently anticipate a campaign of vengeance with glee. Should he attempt such measures, he can expect fierce resistance in the courts and on the streets – and perhaps from military officers who have been trained to uphold constitutional values.

It remains astonishing that tens of millions of our fellow citizens have chosen to be led by a convicted felon -- described bluntly as a fascist by former members of his own cabinet and the military leaders who served under him – who calls his own country a hellhole and incessantly conjures racism, misogyny, division, and hatred to advance himself. What do those voters really want and expect from Trump?

Whatever they may want, what they are likely to get from him is probably not going to make them happy. Should he implement his reckless tariff scheme, much of which he can direct without Congressional approval, the nation’s economy will crater -- and the inflation that so irked consumers is certain to soar. If he tears down the Affordable Care Act, without the alternative plan he has failed to propose for almost ten years, the nation’s health care system will lurch into chaos -- and many of his followers and their families will be left to suffer. And if he orders the mass detention and deportation of migrants, then many actual citizens of Latino origin – a plurality of whom helped him win this election – are likely to be endangered. Appointing conspiracy kook Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health czar or awarding control of the federal budget to Elon Musk are scenarios designed to conclude in disaster. Kennedy's idea of making America "healthy again" would risk the return of lethal childhood diseases we had conquered, including polio and measles; Musk' notion of cutting a third of federal spending would sink the economy and impoverish the middle class. But maybe their fans must find all this out the hard way.

It is going to be a steep learning curve for anyone who expects Trump to make their lives better.

And those grim possibilities are merely the most obviously ruinous potential consequences of this election. We must expect the worst, from federal surveillance of women’s pregnancies to government attacks on the First Amendment. A profound sense of buyer’s remorse may be in store for Trump voters.

In the meantime, however, we must take whatever encouragement is to be found in these mostly dismal results – abortion protections won at the ballot box in several states, for instance – and must demand, both of ourselves and our elected officials, the courage to stand up against this would-be dictator’s excesses. This election has left us with no other choice.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.