Everything about the staging of Kamala Harris’s “closing argument” rally at the White House Ellipse on Wednesday night seemed designed to frame the upcoming election as a referendum on democracy. Surrounded by American flags and screaming banners FREEDOMThe Democratic candidate delivered his speech against the same backdrop that Donald Trump used to address the mob that continued to storm the Capitol on January 6.

“So look,” Harris said halfway through her speech. “In less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office…”

scattered cries You will! You will! echoed from the audience near the stage. Later, in my conversations with Harris supporters, I saw that their confidence was real. Everyone I spoke to believed they were on the verge of victory, that Harris would defeat the “wannabe dictator” once and for all, pull America from the brink and save the world’s oldest democracy from falling into fascism.

Then I would ask a question they found demoralizing: What if he doesn’t want to?

It’s a question that’s been on my mind for months. As a country, we are living through a strange and unstable political moment: Four days into one of the closest presidential races in history, supporters of both campaigns seem convinced they will win and the consequences if they don’t. It will be existential for America.

Trump and his allies have already signaled clearly what they will do if he loses: Declare victory anyway, declare the election rigged, and embark on yet another plot to overturn the outcome through litigation, unconstitutional pressure, and even violence. The pressure campaign is unlikely to work; As Paul Rosenzweig points out inside AtlanticNone of the officials overseeing vote tabulation in the battleground states is a partisan election denier. Yet this open attack on the validity of the election represents an ongoing threat.

If Harris loses, her coalition’s response will almost certainly be less dramatic and less damaging; Unlike Trump, he is determined to accept the outcome. But as the election draws near and panic over Trump’s authoritarian impulses reaches a fever pitch in some quarters, I’ve begun to worry that prophecies of democratic collapse following Trump’s re-election could become self-fulfilling. What happens to America if Harris voters fully internalize the idea that democracy is at the ballot box, and then “democracy” loses?

Trump’s surprise victory in 2016 was met with a small increase.D. democratic energy There were marches in the streets, record donations to the ACLU, and waves of grassroots organizing. Subscriptions of newspapers committed to holding the new administration to account increased rapidly; Books about fighting tyranny became bestsellers. The energy was not under the control of the liberal “resistance” movement. Conservative expatriates founded their own political groups and publications. As my colleague Franklin Foer recently wrote:Warnings of impending autocracy in America at the time “helped create a spirit of loud, uncompromising opposition to Trump.”

This energy contributed to record turnout in the 2020 election, in which Trump was defeated. For many outside the MAGA coalition, Joe Biden’s victory represented a triumphant peak in the Trump-era narrative. And if the one-term, twice-impeached president had returned to his Mar-a-Lago exile, the story might have ended with tidy civic morality: The would-be authoritarian was defeated at the ballot box, in the most American way possible. Democracy won again.

But of course the story didn’t end there. And four years later, Trump’s readiness to return to the Oval Office with the flip of a coin has created some discord in liberal America. In his third campaign, Trump has made his illiberal proposals more open than ever. He talked about weaponizing the Justice Department against his political enemies, appointing loyalists to replace thousands of civil servants and revoking the broadcast licenses of TV networks whose news coverage he didn’t like.

Democrats are trying to warn voters about the threat these actions pose to democracy; Other times, he ratchets up the rhetoric in an effort to alert Americans to the danger. But the messages appear to have had an unfortunate dual effect; It has largely failed to resonate with the undecided and politically disengaged, while deeply stressing voters who already tend to believe it. Last week, New York Times reported In a statement distributed by a prominent pro-Harris super PAC, Democrats warned that persuadable voters are not swayed by messages focusing on the former president’s authoritarianism. “Attacking Trump’s fascism is not that convincing,” the email said. Compared to 2020, fewer Americans tell pollsters they are highly motivated to vote or that this is the most important election of their lives.

But for a certain segment of Harris’ base, the fight against autocracy is top of mind. And if you spend too much time monitoring the discourse online, as I did, you might get the impression that for many, Election Day will be the defining moment in the fight for American democracy. Even some liberals make plans If Trump wins, he will leave the country. Biden’s son Hunter recently said: Policy He was concerned that Trump’s reelection would mean “losing our democracy to a fascist minority” and warned that Trump’s second term would “potentially be the end of America as we know it.”

I heard similar sentiments from my most concerned friends and family members who voted for Harris. And I wondered whether another Trump victory would encourage in them the same post-2016 spirit of activism or lead them into fatalism and disengagement.

On Wednesday night, Harris was careful not to get too caught up in the doom and gloom of a democracy in peril in her speech. However, he took aim at his opponent’s illiberal attitude. He said Trump was “seeking unchecked power” and warned that if elected he would enter the Oval Office with an “enemies list.” He touched on the country’s birth as a rebellion against a “petty tyrant” and described Americans struggling for centuries to defend and promote democracy around the world. “They didn’t fight, they didn’t sacrifice, and they didn’t give up their lives just to see us give up our basic freedoms, just to see us bow to the will of another petty tyrant,” Harris said as she cheered.

In my post-speech remarks, with Beyoncé’s “Freedom” still echoing from the speakers, many teary-eyed and adrenaline-filled supporters were understandably reluctant to talk about what they would do next week if their candidate lost. But they kindly welcomed me.

Alyssa VanLeeuwen, a Maryland mother who brought her eighth-grade daughter to the rally, made a guttural sound. ahhh When I put the question to him, he said, “Democracy is definitely in danger.” He said Trump’s victory would mean a bleak and uncertain future for his daughter. “I’m scared. I’m very scared if something like this happens.”

When I asked him if he thought fear would turn into frustration or activism, he paused to think. “I think,” he said, “everyone will go to war again to fight for their neighbors.”

I spoke with another Harris supporter and she asked me not to use her name (“My family might be targeted”). He also called Trump’s re-election prospects “terrible.” He said Trump would herald the “return of McCarthyism” by using federal power to root out and punish his political enemies, and went on to lay out in vivid detail various worst-case scenarios for a Trump second term. But when I asked him if he thought American democracy could be destroyed, he said no. “There are 300 million people in this country and I don’t think we’re going to allow this,” he told me.

This attitude was shared by almost everyone I spoke to at the Ellipse that night. Some told me of friends who might turn to fatalism if Trump wins again, glued to cable news and all hell breaking loose on their phones. But the people I met—those who traveled long distances and waited outside in the cold for hours to attend political rallies—were not thinking of Election Day as a singular outcome or moment of consequence. They seemed to know that no matter who won, America would still have democracy next week and the week after that. Its preservation depends in part on not tying its fate to the outcome of any one choice.

Before leaving the Ellipse, I met Salome Agbaroji, a 19-year-old Harvard student who had come from Cambridge to see Harris speak. As a poet, he spends a lot of time thinking about the language that shapes our politics, and he told me he was troubled by what he saw as overblown rhetoric in the media about the end of democracy. A professor had recently taught him the origin of the word Greek. democracy—demosmeans “people” and KratiaIt means “rule”. People’s power doesn’t disappear overnight just because the White House is occupied by an illiberal leader.

“I don’t think democracy lives in an institution,” Agbaroji told me. “Democracy lives in the people.” As long as people hold on to “this spirit” it will be difficult to kill.