Recently, Donald Trump told us how he really feels about the midterms: “When you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms.” His conclusion was stark: “We shouldn’t even have an election,” demonstrating the urgency of safeguarding democracy.

In 2016, Donald Trump sought to suppress voting rights. He and his supporters employed the usual tactics to intimidate and mislead voters. By 2020, Trump was no longer satisfied with voter suppression alone. He added a new tactic to his playbook of dirty tricks: election subversion.

For weeks, Trump and his allies launched a concerted effort in court to overturn the results of a free and fair election. I helped lead the Biden team to more than 60 court victories as we defeated virtually all of Trump’s subversion schemes.

Then, on Jan. 6, Trump instigated a violent insurrection at the Capitol in a last-ditch effort to prevent Congress from meeting to certify the Electoral College results. The tragic outcome left people dead and public confidence in our democracy in tatters, further showing the importance of safeguarding democracy.

In 2022, out of power but still wielding enormous influence over the GOP, Trump embraced election denialism and supported candidates who most loudly aligned themselves with this new anti-democratic ideology. The results were devastating for Republican midterm hopes, as many of these candidates lost their races.

Still, they absorbed the lessons of Trumpism. Many contested the outcomes of clear defeats, only to suffer further humiliating losses in court. In some states, GOP election officials even refused to certify election results, only to be sued. In the end, democracy prevailed — but Trump was not finished.

By 2024, Joe Biden was in office, so it was in Trump’s best interest for elections to proceed. His strategy was simple: to expand the number of key election officials loyal to him rather than the will of voters.

Trump’s plan in 2024, had he lost, was to subvert the results from within by pressuring these officials to refuse to certify Biden as the winner. In the end, Trump won the 2024 election, so we never saw these seeds of subversion grow into trees bearing the poisonous fruit of illegitimate outcomes.

Read the full article about safeguarding U.S. democracy by Marc Elias at Democracy Docket.