A dystopian simulation game played by hundreds of the nation's political leaders revealed a disturbing truth about Donald Trump's potential return to the White House: there is no "effective Plan B."
Among the players was political affairs analyst and businessman David Rothkopf, who reported for the New Republic Tuesday on that nearly 200 experts in policy, law and national security proved unable to protect American democracy against a Trump takeover in multiple nonpartisan simulations.
"We had better do everything in our power to get out the vote for Kamala Harris and the Democrats in November," Rothkopf wrote, "because there is currently no effective Plan B on the horizon if Trump returns to the White House."
Washington D.C. think tank the Brennan Center in May and June hosted the Democracy Futures Project which pulled together senior officials from Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton administrations, among others, Rothkopf reports.
The five games each began with Trump team players pursuing the real-life Trump's professed platform priorities that the pro-Democracy opposition would try to combat, he explains.
"The experience wasn’t reassuring," Rothkopf writes. "In none of the simulations was the pro-democracy opposition able to successfully reverse the overall thrust of the Trump team’s efforts, and on the whole, democratic norms and institutions rapidly disintegrated."
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The trap the pro-Democracy players repeatedly fell into was the wide-reaching net of loyalists Trump united across the three branches of government, Rothkopf explained.
"One of the more disturbing conclusions of these political gaming exercises was that it is very hard to stop a ruthless president committed to stripping away people’s basic freedoms," writes Rothkopf, "especially if he or she is abetted by a compliant Supreme Court or a supine Congress."
Another pitfall, to use a phrase oft repeated by the New York Times: Dems in disarray.
"Democrats, independents, and Republicans who respect the Constitution are neither organized to combat a ruthless Trumpian power play nor inclined by temperament to fight fire with fire," Rothkopf writes. "In the simulations, Team Trump routinely went scorched-earth, while the pro-democracy opposition issued press releases, organized peace concerts, and fretted about the need for consensus and inclusivity."
Rothkopf hedges his "end is nigh if Trump wins" screed with a caution that political games cannot predict an uncertain future, but quickly notes that Republicans have toppled pillars of American democracy before.
"Consider the way the GOP Senate jammed through Republican nominees for the Supreme Court under Trump," he writes. "Consider the way institutionalists in the Justice Department hesitated and delayed before prosecuting crimes committed by Trump or his high-level associates."
Rothkopf applauds President Joe Biden's decision to step away from the 2024 presidential election and Harris' energetic entry into the race — but urged Democrats not to be complacent.
"While we start planning for this dark future, at the same time we need to focus intensively on winning this election," Rothkopf concludes.
"Given the politically biased and corrupt Supreme Court, the commitment of MAGA Republicans on the Hill to political hackery, and the grim determination of Trump and his sycophantic allies to act on his repeated autocratic threats, our best chance—and possibly our last chance—to preserve our democracy will be in November."
