As I sit down to start this column, the general elections are less than a week away. I see them as the most consequential in U.S. history. Columnist Eugene Robinson wrote earlier this week that these elections are a matter of life and death. If democracy is life and tyranny is death, I fully concur.

One of the most repeated aphorisms about history is that it repeats itself. Historians like me reject that idea but recognize the power of historical thinking and knowledge in anticipating future outcomes.

Polling data is so overwhelmingly and consistently in favor of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that one does not have to be a trained social scientist to predict he will win on Tuesday. Democrats will carry the northern battleground trifecta — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and will likely win most other battleground states.

There are a few caveats, however. As I wrote in an earlier column, if demographics and democracy are allowed to run their course, we should see those results. Variables still up in the air include turnout, the extent of voter suppression and intimidation, and assorted wrenches that may be thrown into the process by humans or nature.

Turnout statistics, including registration numbers, early voting and vote-by-mail reports, point to higher-than-usual voter participation and record-breaking vote totals. At this writing (Friday evening), the U.S. Elections Project registers 86.5 million early votes, 55.8 million of them by mail. According to the same source, there are 35 million outstanding mail-in ballots.

Some things may go wrong (or right, depending who you ask), such as even slower-than-expected mail delivery, or massive intimidation of voters through robocalls, emails or heavily armed partisans in and around polling places. Earlier this week, a court in Michigan, the state in which an armed mob stormed the statehouse in May and where a militia band allegedly plotted to kidnap and execute Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, blocked a ban on weapons in voting places.

We cannot discount the unimaginable: widespread sabotage, foreign and domestic, of electric grids; roadways and city streets; and internet communications through the spread of computer viruses — digital COVID-20, so to speak. (A few hours after I wrote this sentence, terrifying news of Russian hacking of U.S. hospital computer systems hit the news. Couldn't our cyberforces retaliate with a 24-hour blackout of Moscow and St. Petersburgh?)

Over the remaining days, we can expect an increase in electoral-campaign carpet-bombing, last-minute revelations about the sins and crimes of candidates. They do not have to be true to cause harm.

Democrats and their sympathizers have engaged in a strategic "bombing" campaign. Anti-Trump tell-all and tell-some books have been rolling out at the rate of two per week. In the first two weeks of September alone, these titles hit book stands: "Donald Trump v. The United States," "Liar's Circus," "Melania and Me," "The Useful Idiot," "Compromised," "Disloyal," "Proof of Corruption" and Bob Woodward's "Rage." Similarly lethal have been The New York Times' recurrent exposes of Trump's taxes, debts and shady international business deals.

Republican return fire has been mostly ineffective. Low-caliber ordnance like the domestic spying investigation against former president Obama failed to detonate. And Hunter Biden's seemingly fake emails were more of a stink bomb than anything else; not even Fox News fell for that. Moreover, Republicans have no equivalent to then-FBI Director James Comey's 2016 high-tonnage revelation of a renewed FBI investigation of Trump's opponent.

Oct. 31 is Halloween. In the past, Halloween nights have been propitious occasions for riots. This time, we can expect — I hope I am wrong — far more tricks than treats and more costumes bought at riot-gear stores than at Party City.

Whether democracy will run its course on election night and the next few days is not clear. Having decisive results on election night or even during the wee hours of Nov. 4 is increasingly unlikely.

Trump has stated that he does not want votes to be counted past election night. That, of course, is beyond his power, as such matters are decided at the state level. His obsessive desire to pack the Supreme Court with conservative allies may pay out, however, in the possible scenario of close races in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

We have a system of checks and balances, every middle-school child knows. But who checks the Supreme Court if Congress fails to check the executive? The people!

Readers can reach Luis Martinez-Fernandez at [email protected]. To find out more about Luis Martinez-Fernandez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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