On the daily WHMP radio show that I co-host, the first part of the show on the first Thursday of the month is reserved for our congressman, Jim McGovern. I’d been happily anticipating this week’s scheduled post-Election Day conversation with him.

For good reasons. My crystal ball indicated that by this past Thursday, Kamala Harris either would have won the presidency or at least would be closing in on that goal; Democrats would have picked up a couple of Senate seats, including, one in Texas with Colin Allred defeating the generally despised Ted Cruz. And Democrats would be well on their way to taking back the House of Representatives.

The big picture: People who believe in democracy would be able to take a deep breath, to relax, and here in western Massachusetts to enjoy the glorious summer-like weather in November — and put aside that it’s probably attributable to catastrophic climate change. Some sense of normalcy and decency would be returning to the country.

Sure, nothing is guaranteed. But the country had lived through the madness of Donald Trump once before. There is no way that the nation would again elect a misogynist, hateful racist who had as the centerpiece of his campaign rounding up millions of immigrants, herding them into concentration camps and deporting them. No way. It just couldn’t happen. As a people ,we are better than that.

What could go wrong?

Well, almost everything. Democrats could lose the presidency. And the Senate. And the House.

And they did. Progressive senators like Sherrod Brown of Ohio and John Tester of Montana lost their seats. The Senate under MAGA control means that Trump’s nominees for federal judgeships will sail through.

Equally frightening, although not yet official due to races that remain to be called, it appears that the Trump party will take control of the House as well. With the highly politicized Supreme Court already in his pocket, Trump will have total control of all the government. He’ll have unchecked power.

And so, for my conversation with McGovern I changed what could go wrong to what did.

Responding to Harris’ having lost both the Electoral College and the popular vote, McGovern characterized the election results as “heartbreaking.” He said that the country was “more right-wing than I hoped.” But that, of course, is only part of the story.

McGovern faulted Democrats for not speaking more directly to working people. He also noted his dismay at the number of people who told him that they could never vote for a woman for president. And, of course, racism played its part.

On the question of governance and the hope that democracy and all decency might not be lost, McGovern noted that a few House Republicans ran as moderates. Those few, he hopes, will appreciate that they could act “as guardrails for democracy.” The operative word was “could.”

After that, I asked McGovern, “What’s the resistance? How do we do it?”

McGovern urged us to not succumb to hopelessness, to use our voices, to fight back. This was similar to the message from Kamala Harris, who in her concession speech similarly admonished, “This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.”

Trump’s fascism will take some time to implement. Yes, he can pretty quickly hand over Ukraine to his fellow authoritarian, Vladimir Putin. Yes, he can initiate prosecutions to throw his political opponents in jail. Yes, he can dismantle the Department of Education. Yes, the list of horribles goes on and on and on. But imposing authoritarianism on a country with a democratic tradition usually takes some time.

Logistically it’s simply not possible, for example, to begin to deport millions of people on the first day of his presidency.

As president, Trump can wreak havoc. And he will. Many people will suffer terribly when he moves to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Workers will suffer when he turns the NLRB over to corporate moguls.

The environment and all of us will suffer when his science-denying sycophants are put in charge of the EPA. Political violence is apt to rise when he pardons the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and rioters (whom he calls patriots). And so on.

The next two years under Trump will see many people badly hurt. Some will die — remember COVID? People of color and people without economic means and members of marginalized communities will suffer the most.

There are many ways to resist Trump — state initiatives that safeguard rights and policies, lawsuits, mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, organizing, education, a rebirth of civic engagement, a rededication to communicating with people. And wearisome as this probably sounds today, also electoral politics.

The midterms offer some solace and hope. If Democrats could reclaim the Senate, the Trumpian takeover of the federal judiciary will not have been completed. If Democrats could regain control of the House, Trump’s corruption and autocracy could be mitigated. Our resistance between now and 2026, combined with a rejection of Trumpism in the midterms, could mean a significant part of democracy could still be saved.

Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026.

Bill Newman, a Northampton resident, writes a monthly column.