Amid intermittent “Let’s go, Brandon” chants erupting at a Donald Trump rally in Conroe, Texas, in January, state agricultural commissioner Sid Miller summed up his party’s mood in the lead-up to the midterms: “It’s no longer about Republicans and Democrats. It’s no longer about conservatives and socialists. You know what it boils down to, folks? It’s a race between patriots and traitors. It’s that simple.”

Fueled by historically low levels of trust in institutions and off-the-charts polarization — not to mention persistent and growing inequality — Republicans have embraced the specter of civil conflict and turned national elections into referenda on American democracy.

Even if the most extreme liberal warnings about a Trumpian dictatorship are overblown, the fact remains that the Republican Party has been radicalized in recent years to an alarming extent. Indeed, 147 members of Congress voted not to certify the election of Joe Biden. And there’s more of them on the way — 60% of Americans this fall will have an election in which one of the candidates on their ballot is an explicit election denier. To make matters worse, more than 80% of Republicans now believe that “our country needs a powerful leader in order to destroy the radical and immoral currents prevailing in society today.” No one can say exactly what will happen after 2024 if any number of the relatively small factors that saved Biden in 2020 go the other way. Yet even in the best-case scenario, Republicans will continue to institute increasingly draconian policies in the many states they govern, and workers and the poor will continue to suffer from their rule.