This May and June, leaders from Washington’s policy, political, legal, and national security communities got together to imagine what for many of us remains almost unthinkable: how the United States might change in the wake of a Donald Trump victory in November. The centerpiece of the effort, known as the Democracy Futures Project, was a series of five nonpartisan simulation exercises that envisioned different ways Trump and his administration might dismantle key elements of our democracy.

If there was one core conclusion from the simulations, which brought together nearly 200 experts, it was this: We had better do everything in our power to get out the vote for Kamala Harris and the Democrats in November, because there is currently no effective Plan B on the horizon if Trump returns to the White House.

The Democracy Futures Project exercises were hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice and co-led by Rosa Brooks, journalist Barton Gellman, historian Nils Gilman, and attorney Miriam Rosenbaum. I was an active participant throughout the project. The views expressed in this article are solely my own and do not represent those of the Brennan Center or the project’s individual organizers. The exercises also included former senior officials from the Trump, Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations; former senators, congresspeople, retired generals, and senior state and local officials from both parties; along with journalists and civil society leaders.

Each role-play exercise consisted of several rounds, in which the players representing the Trump team would begin by announcing their goals and the steps they intended to take to implement those goals—from rounding up millions of undocumented citizens to imprisoning their political enemies, from ordering active-duty military troops into American cities to replacing all civil servants who refused to follow their orders. Following those initial moves, players representing the pro-democracy “opposition” would respond, trying to stop or influence Trump’s efforts by combating them in the courts or the media, or through state or local legislation. Players were asked to respond as they believed those in their roles would behave in real life.

The experience wasn’t reassuring. In none of the simulations was the pro-democracy opposition able to successfully reverse the overall thrust of the Trump team’s efforts, and on the whole, democratic norms and institutions rapidly disintegrated. Defenders of democracy had some isolated successes in the courts, Congress, or at the state level, and in some cases Team Trump had to settle for less ambitious versions of their initial plans. Market reactions and decisions by foreign actors........

© New Republic