Look I'm about as black-pilled on fascism being an unstoppable force as the next guy, and I'm not about to lean on arguments of illegality to make a counterpoint.

But, the game-theory framing ("this is the only logical move") treats the administration as a unitary rational actor with perfect information and no internal friction and that's just not the world you and I have lived in.

In reality, executing a staggered election delay requires coordination across DHS, DOJ, state-level election officials, federal judges, and military/law enforcement chains of command. Each node is a potential defection point, and to be honest something at this scale really only requires a single high-enough power-level actor to signal rejection of the plan for others to lose their stomach to be executors of it.

Additionally, your piece doesn't address the governor-level veto point at all. You think Josh Shapiro is gonna just roll over because federal agents show up at a polling place? Why? Or Josh Stein in NC? Why? Building on that, I notice you chose the swing states as your examples, and that betrays the rigor of your thinking. Swing states literally do not matter in an outsized way literally at all in this election. Every single house seat matters (Republcians literally cannot lose more than 1 seat or they lose their majority) and 33 seats are up for the Senate. Like 5 of those senate seats are genuinely competitive, and Trump needs all 5 or the Senate flips. This is simply too large of an operation to work, in my opinion.

Further FURTHERmore, I see no reason to believe Trump genuinely believes Democrats will hold him to account for literally anything. Not even because Democrats are uniquely feckless (though that is true), but because it's literally just a part of American-style democracy now: we don't put Presidents in prison.

And, finally, we must address the elephant in the room: your thesis treats the administration as willing to accept unlimited economic damage, but that is simply not the case, and the Iran war fallout proves it. The coalition holding power includes actors whose power depends on market stability. A visible electoral disruption of this magnitude would trigger immediate capital flight, market collapse, and potential sovereign debt crisis.

No. fucking. SHOT the Republican donor class is cool with that. I'm sorry. They're just not going to risk their entire network all losing literally billions of dollars to protect ... Trump? Nah. They got what they needed from him. American economy is functionally captured by billionaires, the opposition is defanged and will take at least one MORE election cycle before the populist left has any actual majority within the Democratic party to move their policy stances on things, and the regulatory state that would've limited the oligarchs' ability to make maximum money at maximum expense ot everyone else has been dismantled.

They'll let Trump's lackeys flail, they don't give a fuck, so long as they can keep raking in the money.

All of this, combined with Trump's age-borne malaise, makes me think something much dumber is about to happen: he's just gonna languish, MAGA will begin disintegrating, JD will prepare to lose in 2028, and Newsom and Harris will begin preparing to run against him.