Donald Trump is moving very quickly with his “shock and awe” plans to rule as an autocrat who views multiracial pluralistic democracy and its system of checks and balance as an impediment to his power. Central to Trump’s threat and promise of being a dictator on “day one” of his regime, is putting in place a Cabinet and other senior advisors who will follow his commands without any objections — even if those commands are contrary to American law, the Constitution and the country’s established democratic political culture and norms.

At the New York Times, Peter Baker describes Trump’s personalist rule and shock doctrine strategy as follows:

Somehow disruption doesn’t begin to cover it. Upheaval might be closer. Revolution maybe. In less than two weeks since being elected again, Donald J. Trump has embarked on a new campaign to shatter the institutions of Washington as no incoming president has in his lifetime.

He has rolled a giant grenade into the middle of the nation’s capital and watched with mischievous glee to see who runs away and who throws themselves on it. Suffice it to say, so far there have been more of the former than the latter. Mr. Trump has said that “real power” is the ability to engender fear, and he seems to have achieved that.

Mr. Trump’s early transition moves amount to a generational stress test for the system. If Republicans bow to his demand to recess the Senate so that he can install appointees without confirmation, it would rewrite the balance of power established by the founders more than two centuries ago. And if he gets his way on selections for some of the most important posts in government, he would put in place loyalists intent on blowing up the very departments they would lead.

If more Americans had listened to the pro-democracy alarm sounders like M. Steven Fish and voted accordingly, the United States and the world would not now be beset by the calamity that will be Trump’s second administration and his MAGA successors.

M. Steven Fish is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He has appeared on BBC, CNN and other major networks, and has published in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Foreign Policy. His new book is “Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge.”

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In this conversation, Fish explains his frustration about the 2024 Election and how, contrary to what some politics watchers and experts have concluded, Harris and the Democrats did in fact have an excellent chance of winning but unfortunately made a series of poor choices that doomed her campaign. This includes a failure to embrace a high-dominance leadership style, consistent and bold messaging and a compelling and direct story that addressed voters’ concerns about the economy, illegal immigration, crime and other immediate quality-of-life issues.

This is the first part of a two-part conversation.

How are you feeling right now? How are you making sense of Trump’s victory in the election?

The first few days after the election were pretty rough, but now I’m feeling energized for the coming war and I’m examining the evidence to help me understand how we can win the next round. The Democrats’ losses across almost every demographic confirmed what we have been talking about over the past few months. The problem wasn’t their policies or the economy. They lost because of their clueless campaign, pure and simple. With that in mind, I’m starting to organize a network of political operatives, influencers, journalists, donors, scholars, activists and aspirants for office who are eager to replace the Democrats’ abysmal messaging with a strategy that wins.

You and I have discussed the need for Harris and the Democrats to adopt a high-dominance leadership style if they want to defeat Trump and stop his MAGA movement and save democracy. If the Democrats followed the advice in your book, your New York Times op-ed and in our conversations here at Salon and elsewhere, where would we be right now as a country and world?

I believe Harris would have won, with all the attendant advantages for democracy, peace and prosperity here and around the world. The irony and the tragedy are that during the interval between Harris’ debut as the nominee-apparent in late July and the debate in mid-September, the Democrats finally got their act together. They focused largely on their own great plans and limited their attention to Trump to ridiculing him. During the DNC, the Democrats cast Trump as weak and pathetic rather than treating him like an 800-pound gorilla who should terrify us. Harris largely did the same during the debate. The proof of concept was there: When the Democrats switched to a higher-dominance mode, they controlled the narrative, their prospects brightened and Trump stalled.

But the Democrats then reverted to their low-dominance norm. They fell back on their timeworn, futile tactic of........

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