During his four years in office, President Donald Trump faced impeachment, chaos in the Middle East, nation-wide protests and riots, a deadly pandemic and a failing economy. As the 2020 presidential election nears, the stakes couldn’t be higher regarding who will lead the country to resolve these issues.

Although most polls show Joe Biden leading Trump in key states, there is no way to predict who will win the presidency until all the votes are cast, including mail-in ballots that many states allow to be postmarked on or before Nov. 3. 

The unknown future begs the question. If Trump wins reelection, is the country prepared for what comes next? 

Fred Smoller, a Chapman University campaigns and elections professor, gave a simple answer: absolutely not.

“If Trump were reelected, it would be the end of American democracy as we know it today,” Smoller said. “I can't imagine that our democracy in any shape or form would survive.” 

Marisa Cianciarulo, a Chapman law professor, gave a reason for this potential failure in democracy: the ever-increasing polarization of American politics. The divide, Smoller said, hasn’t been this dramatic since the American Civil War in the 1860s.

“The type of hatred and divisiveness that we've seen over the last four years is unprecedented,” Cianciarulo said. “Another four years of that ... the validation of that by reelecting Trump is going to be extremely detrimental to what we now know is a very flawed system of government.”

To this point, the Pew Research Center claimed in 2018 that no U.S. president in the modern polling era has ever had a larger partisan gap in approval ratings than Trump, with 7% of Democrats and 84% of Republicans approving of his job performance. 

However, Trump entered office at a time when Republicans and Democrats stood more divided along ideological lines than at any point in the last prior two decades. In 2014, 92% of Republicans were to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats were to the left of the median Republican.

Although this division is not singularly Trump’s fault, the president’s critics claim his time in the White House has done nothing to lessen political polarization, potentially making the divide even worse.

“There has been no attempt to unify people during the Trump Administration,” Cianciarulo said. “The corruption, nepotism and the lack of expertise of people in very top positions is absolutely deplorable. It's something I never thought I would see in my lifetime in this country.”

Moving forward into a potential second term, Cianciarulo and Smoller both foresee a nation further divided among political lines and a president unsatisfied with only two terms. While Cianciarulo describes the threat of a “Trump dynasty” with the succession of Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. as the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Smoller considered the possibility that Trump might even pursue a third term if reelected this year, despite the Constitution limiting a president to hold office to two four-year terms.

 Democrats vocalize concern that Trump’s reelection could lead to the abolishment of the Affordable Care Act, the overturning of Roe v. Wade – particularly with the recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett – and a hard move to the right in all aspects of government. Smoller also compared Trump to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Ubermensch: the idealized, all-powerful, superior man whose purpose is to save humanity – a concept that some might claim closely resembles Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign.

Smoller further paralleled Trump to pre-war Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, saying he “doesn’t see much difference” between the two in terms of pandering and creating political divisions. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a New York City-based nonprofit founded by Frank’s father in 1959, stated this same comparison in 2017, tweeting out a series of similarities between Trump and pre-war Hitler: "The president creates his own media …  he endorses police brutality ... (and) he demonizes people who believe, look or love differently."

Americans and members of Congress will decide Nov. 3 if another four years with Trump as commander-in-chief is desirable. Although many will be unhappy with a Trump reelection, sociology and peace studies professor Lisa Leitz told The Panther that protests are likely to follow either election outcome.