Will a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections free American democracy from the rapacious grasp of an authoritarian president bent on destroying it?

Will Americans finally be free of the helpless, gnawing dread that fills our waking days?

Will decency, goodness, and light prevail over the wickedness, corruption, and darkness that has infested the country?

To find out, tune in for every new episode of TV’s most exasperating reality show, It Can’t Get Any Worse, Can It?

If only we were living in a Truman Show fake reality that we could just turn off or not take seriously. Today’s real America has all of the trappings of bad TV: a president who lies so outrageously that he has turned orange; TV talking heads masquerading as cabinet members; all female appointees played by the same woman with lustrous hair and pouty lips; the National Guard showing up in the streets like the Royal Soldiers of Oz.

We are living in an upside-down America. We have a president who loves evil dictators and disdains democratic leaders; a Republican Party whose second-favorite politician is Victor Orbán, the autocratic leader of Hungary; a country where diversity, equity and inclusion are dirty words; where classic books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye have been banned in school districts; where voter suppression is lauded as election reform; where the Supreme Court says it’s okay with them if the president breaks the law; and where the Constitution is being torn asunder rather than revered.

All of these terrible things are happening that we feel powerless to stop. We are gaining a little understanding of how it must feel to live under a dictatorship where the government does whatever the hell it wants, public opinion be damned.

People living under the weight of autocratic repression can begin to feel that their reality is inescapable and try hard to make the best of it. Is this fatalistic resignation already beginning to creep in with some Americans as we watch helplessly while the pillars of democratic governance are being smashed before our eyes?

When people in a democracy begin to feel powerless to affect change, they can lose hope, particularly when the cruel tyrant in the White House has another three-and-a-half years to amass power and hack away at constitutional constraints and the rule of law.

The 2026 midterm elections may seem a lifetime away, a light at the end of the tunnel too dim and distant to inspire hope.

But it’s what we have.

If we can elect a Democratic majority in the House (and the Senate if the stars align), we have struck a critical blow for democracy.

First, we will have provided a referendum on Trump’s first two years in the White House, sending the message that the majority of Americans oppose his anti-democratic, radical-right agenda.

Second, we would now have at least one legislative body committed to rebuilding our democracy by asserting critical checks and balances, playing a role in halting executive overreach. In addition, the impeachment of Trump would certainly be justified, a wealth of evidence to support it.

Third, the House could block all onerous legislation that Trump could have signed into law including measures to suppress voting rights, increase gun proliferation, increase global warming, weaken the judiciary branch, weaken or eliminate essential safety-net programs, and make the executive the towering, predominant branch of government.

The future of America truly hangs in the balance, and it could go one of two wildly disparate ways.

Will we go the way of Russia and Hungary by becoming a faux democracy with the legislative and judicial branches subservient to an authoritarian president and voter-suppression laws reducing the US to a virtual one-party system?

Or will we reclaim our democracy, restore the health of the three equal, independent branches of government, keep our two-party democratic system intact, and ensure that every US citizen is provided the greatest unfettered access to vote?

Stay tuned for every episode of It Can’t Get Any Worse, Can It?, shown 24/7 across the country. We have it in our power to help craft a terrific ending where American democracy is saved and strengthened, the actors are unceremoniously hustled off the set, and the show is mercifully cancelled. Forever.

  • Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor.