I normally confine myself here to discussing electoral strategies for Democrats. But unfortunately, this year they will need a strategy for ensuring that an election victory is recognized, as I explained at New York:

Knowing what we know now about Donald Trump’s willingness to interfere with adverse election results on January 6, 2021, the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections feels ominous in a familiar way. If anything, the 47th president is more adamant than the 45th about the impossibility of legitimately losing an election and has the benefit of past experience in dialing up havoc to ensure the “correct” outcome.

Trump has done about all he can to move the goal-posts on the midterms, most notably by encouraging a wildly unprecedented and mostly successful wave of hyperpartisan gerrymandering of U.S. House districts. It’s possible something will yet come out of his monomaniacal push for the enactment of the SAVE America Act, which would throw preparations for the midterms into total chaos and dramatically reduce turnout among pro-Democratic voting groups. But for now, the odds remain high that his party is about to lose control of the U.S. House and with it the trifecta control of the federal government that makes it possible to enact pure party-line legislation like last year’s landmark One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

All his flailing around in support of conspiracy theories about massive noncitizen voting has predisposed his MAGA base to defend or even demand a GOP refusal to accept defeat in November. As David French noted last week in a New York Times column, there is little doubt about Team Trump’s willingness to conduct another, more successful version of January 6. So the question is, French says, what is the “actual mechanism for reversing the election?” What is the current counterpart to John Eastman’s strategy for getting Mike Pence to reject Joe Biden’s certification as president during the congressional counting of electoral votes?

To be clear, the situation isn’t at all identical, as legal beagle Jeffrey Toobin points out in a subsequent Times column. Under the Eastman scheme, the constitutionally established presiding officer of the joint congressional session charged with confirming the electoral vote count, the vice-president, could arbitrarily rule out state-certified electors, and/or require state recertification. Pence famously refused to play his assigned part in the election-reversal script, and then the newly constituted Congress (with Democratic majorities in both chambers) failed to override state certifications as well.

When it comes to determining control of the U.S. House in 2027, the previous House and its leadership are not a factor; the old House literally ceases to exist on January 3. The key figure in the interim is House Clerk Kevin McCumber, who prepares a roster of duly elected House members based on state certifications, swears them in, and then fades back into the woodwork when the new House elects a Speaker. McCumber, a totally nonpartisan professional (much like the Senate parliamentarian), is extremely unlikely to pay any attention to claims (even if they emanate from the White House) that state-certified elections should be disregarded. But as Toobin notes, McCumber could be fired and replaced by Mike Johnson before the old Congress expires:

“One disaster scenario … would be this: After results show the Democrats winning a majority in the House, the president declares that the election is full of fraud and the winners don’t need to be certified. Mr. Trump could then demand that Speaker Mike Johnson fire Mr. McCumber, which Mr. Johnson has the legal right to do.

“Under the procedures of the House, the speaker can install a more compliant successor — that is, a G.O.P. toady. In this scenario, Speaker Johnson’s designee, at Mr. Trump’s instigation, would produce a roll of new House members that included Republicans in races that Democrats believed they had won.”

For this coup to succeed, however, the full House would have to confirm the new clerk that Johnson was seeking to install, which would require extraordinary GOP party discipline. The same is true, by the way, in the Senate, which does not go out of business before the new Congress convenes on January 3 and where the chamber itself is the master of its own membership. If, say, Democrats won a narrow majority per state certifications and a majority of the senators already in office voted not to seat the key Democratic winner, Republicans could maintain control, at least temporarily.

These scenarios arguably explain why Trump is putting so much emphasis on making support for the SAVE America Act and its underlying conspiracy theories a litmus test for Republicans. He’ll need monolithic party backing to prevent a state-certified Democratic takeover of either congressional chamber.

Without much question, Trump is also laying the groundwork for challenging certification of Democratic winners on the front end of the process. But in the recent past, the federal courts have been very aggressive about forcing certifications absent concrete evidence of fraud, Toobin notes:

“Since 2020, more than 30 local officials in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have refused to certify election results, many in hopes of forestalling Democratic victories.

“If there are similar delays and refusals after Nov. 3 — and there probably will be — [Democrats have] a simple answer: sue. In past years, Democrats have had success in winning court rulings that force local officials to certify results, and they’ll probably win these kinds of cases again — albeit with the usual delays and uncertainty that always accompany litigation.”

So this year, as in 2020, unless Republicans beat the odds and retain control of both the House and Senate, we can expect guerrilla warfare in the courts, on the airways and the internet, and perhaps even in the streets before a climactic final battle in January. Because of all the hurdles Team Trump would need to overcome to flip the results, the 2026 edition of election denial will probably amount to just another opportunity to store up manufactured grievances for the next election cycle. The extraordinary energy the president is putting into efforts to discredit an election that hasn’t even happened yet, however, should serve as a warning of a possible crisis well on its way.