This week, Americans will pretend they still have a say in who governs them, and the man who actually does govern them will grudgingly play along. Or maybe not, who knows.

To let market pundits tell it, the most likely outcome following the US midterms is a divided Congress. Traditional polling suggests that in addition to a likely House flip, Democrats are slight favorites to take the Senate too. For their part, betting markets see pretty good odds of a blue wave.

Time was, I’d subject you to an exhaustive catalogue of the sordid attacks Republicans have resorted to in recent weeks in a desperate bid to distract voters from the glaring reality of Donald Trump’s second term, during which he’s manifested all the traits of a kleptocratic authoritarian, many attributes of an illiberal autocrat and, concerningly, some characteristics of a totalitarian despot.

But why bother? You’ve all seen the ads and heard the rhetoric. I’ll give you one indicative example. JD Vance this month suggested that James Talarico (who’s running against Ken Paxton, Texas’s impeached, but ultimately acquitted, attorney general for John Cornyn’s Senate seat) has a “web browser history” full of transgender porn. That’s where we are in American political discourse. (And readers wonder why I refuse to participate in the domestic political debate as frequently as I once did.)

The table and chart below give you a sense of betting markets’ lean. As noted above, the money’s on a Democrat sweep.

I wouldn’t take that as definitive. Although betting markets have shown themselves to be more accurate than traditional polling at key political inflection points over the last decade, they’re hardly infallible. Just ask Flávio Bolsonaro.

But the GOP’s concerned. “I’m worried. What we’re seeing across the country is massive Democrat turnout,” Ted Cruz said on his podcast late last week. “Democrats are showing up, they’re energized, they hate, hate, hate Donald Trump [and] if the election were over today, Republicans would lose massively.”

One of our community’s longest-running readers who goes by “Pyrognosis” often chides me for not voting. He always says the same thing: If I’m not gonna vote, I could at least donate to an NGO “instead of buying a new Tom Ford jacket.”

By the look of things, Democrats don’t even need my vote this week. I guess I may as well buy a moleskin version of the Tom Ford Icon. Except that I don’t actually like Tom Ford. It’s “not my jam” either. And hell, for $1,990 I can get the new Givenchy white denim and still have $290 left over to donate to an NGO. Maybe I’ll do that.

Anyway — and spoiler alert — it ain’t gonna matter, folks. Even in a worst-case outcome for Republicans, the Senate math to convict Trump in an impeachment trial will never work. All that’ll come of a blue wave is a series of special investigations which’ll establish what everyone already knows: Trump, and everyone to do with Trump, is profiting enormously from the presidency.

He won’t be stymied in his agenda by Democratic control of Congress because he doesn’t ask for congressional approval in the first place. He governs largely by decree, and then waits around for SCOTUS to decide whether a given diktat can pass constitutional muster.

The saving grace with Trump — and I realize most of you will chafe at this, or otherwise accuse me of apologizing for the irredeemable — is that at the end of the day, and try as he most assuredly has to channel the most depraved version of his inner strongman, Trump’s no tyrant in the traditional sense of the term. He doesn’t have it in him to, for example, personally execute someone, on the spot, with a pistol, for interrupting him during a cabinet meeting.

To be sure, Trump’s subordinates are scared of him, as are most members of the GOP. But not in the same way Sergei Naryshkin’s afraid of Vladimir Putin. If you’re not familiar with the reference, I’ve included the video clip below. It’s famous. In 2022, just before the Ukraine invasion, Naryshkin — the head of the SVR — was asked by Putin to clarify his position on Donetsk and Luhansk. Suffice to say his answer was insufficiently decisive.

See that? That’s what real fear looks like. I’d say you can find something close to it in exchanges between Trump and the collection of lackeys who comprise his second-term inner-circle, but you can’t. Naryshkin’s voice is audibly trembling in the exchange with Putin. He’s scared for his life, and in a very urgent way, as though he’s concerned about what might befall him at the conclusion of the security council meeting.

To be completely forthcoming, there’s more to that clip than meets the eye: It was a staged spectacle, and Naryshkin’s fear was partly attributable to being asked a question for which there was no right answer on national television. But you get the point. Pete Hegseth, for example, isn’t scared of Trump personally. He’s not concerned that his family might be bound and executed by a beret-wearing, Beretta-toting Trump in the middle of the night should one of Iran’s ballistic missiles end up lodged in the deck of a US naval destroyer.

I’m sure you’ve all seen Barack Obama’s “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake factory” rally speech by now. (If not, do yourself a favor.) You can say a lot about Obama and courage, but he ain’t that goddamn brave. If Trump were the man his most delirious critics claim he his, Obama wouldn’t be running around doing what amounts to a standup comedy routine where Trump’s the butt of every joke.

Also, let’s face it. Or, put differently, I’ll say what no other overeducated neoliberal will: We’ve had far, far worse presidents than Trump. We’ve had slaveowners, genocidists, racists, warmongers, crooks and liars aplenty.

True, we’ve never had a strongman before. And certainly Trump’s the first American president to express outward disdain for the very precepts upon which the republic was founded. But come on, everybody: Those precepts were set out by men who owned slaves and considered women de facto property. As to the “consider the times” excuse, it’s not exactly as if that was millennia ago.

And hell, do we really want to do a side-by-side sin comparison between Trump and, say, George W. Bush? Or any president who was involved in keeping American engaged in Vietnam? And what about the decision to vaporize 200,000 Japanese on the tacit excuse that, “Well, the alternative is killing all Japanese”? I could go on, but I reckon I’ve pissed off enough readers by now.

So, fingers crossed for a blue sweep! And no, I won’t be voting. Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve got better things to do than risk my life to register a paper protest against a guy who, so far, and so far as I know, hasn’t done anything wrong to me.

Now go ahead, everybody: Throw your tomatoes. I brought my Louis umbrella.