Depending on the day (and the courtroom), the likelihood is either a tick over or under 50% that Donald Trump will win this coming election and return to the Oval Office next January.

There will be plenty of time between here and November to dissect the dispiriting campaigns of both Trump and President Joe Biden. That is not my purpose today. Instead, this piece presumes Trump’s electoral success and focuses on what a second term portends for our great nation.

Nothing about Trump or his grip on our politics is within many time zones of normalcy or predictability. This applies to his first campaign and upset victory; his first presidency; his post-presidency; his year of indictments and trials; and his campaign for personal and political restoration.

From Reagan and the Bush father-son duo on the right to Clinton and Obama further left, presidents have taken office with endless speculation as to how and where they will lead, but with little by way of credible concern as to their adherence to the core tenets of America’s democratic republic.

For an enraged, aggrieved Trump, seemingly vindicated by a second win, that question is at the very core of the debate.

Would he govern within Constitutional bounds? Or is he indeed an autocrat or, in more conventional terms, a dictator in waiting?

For Democrats and those too few anti-Trumpers of other affiliation, the question answers itself. Or more to the point, they are convinced that Trump has already affirmed the fear, time and again, in both word and deed.

However, ask it of a Republican, even those far outside the unquestioning Trump base, and almost invariably hear that the concern is overwrought and overdone.

I know this for real, having asked it of at least a dozen leading Colorado Republicans, none of whom are likely to be found sporting a red MAGA hat. To a person, they express deep skepticism of Trump’s grip on their party but regard the dictatorial concern as so much paranoid Democratic hype.

To a person, these conversations have been with people I like and respect. Though I wish I could be half as sanguine that their standard-bearer, even if they have not signed up for the fan club, is essentially harmless and would operate within the guardrails on his office.

The dread that a second Trump administration would take America several steps down the authoritarian highway is a product of his words, his record and plans, and the damaged psyche on vivid display.

In his own words, speaking of North Korea’s boy strongman Kim Jong Un, Trump remarked, “He’s the head of a country and he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

Of Chinese President Xi’s dissolution of term limits: “He’s now president for life.” “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”

Similar words of praise and envy have come from Trump’s lips with regard to many of the world’s most brutal despots. When Trump toady Sean Hannity gave the ex-president a chance to clarify his increasingly overbearing and authoritarian rhetoric, Trump replied with a twinkle that he would be a dictator only on “day one.”

There are words and then there are deeds. Some Trump minions are hard at work developing a second-term playbook that reeks of unconstitutional excess. Included under active consideration are plans to replace tens of thousands of federal employees with Trump loyalists selected for their political subservience.

Other plans in formation reportedly include the diversion of military funds to build and staff mass deportation camps not authorized by Congress along with the use of the Insurrection Act dating back to the Civil War to deploy the military to repress public protest and domestic dissent.

Given that past is often prologue, there is that minor matter of January 6 and the attempt to subvert a lawfully decided election and the peaceful transfer of power.

If Trump is to move back into the White House next January, he would logically consider himself absolved and ratified by the electorate. He has starkly signaled that revenge would top the agenda. Listen to his full-throated rally line, “I am your retribution.”

A politically validated Trump would return with full knowledge of government’s mechanisms and pressure points. He would no longer be an inexperienced, out of his element rookie. The grown-ups from the first term who sometimes served as moderating, calming influences would be nowhere to be found.

This would be an administration by and for the hard core and the true believers. In indulging Trump’s whims and enmities, it would be all gas pedal and no brakes.

Instead of James Mattis at the Pentagon, imagine Mike Flynn. At the Justice Department, instead of an establishment figure like Bill Barr, conjure up FOX News hothead Judge Jeanine Piro. As Chief of Staff, forget about the likes of John Kelly and picture Peter Navarro once released from federal prison for contempt of Congress.

If Trump indeed has dictatorial instincts and ambitions, as most indications point to, it is far from assured that he would be successful. Over the course of his first term, America’s institutions, while strained, largely held.

The world has witnessed plenty of wannabe dictators over time and many have met failed, ignoble ends. Further, there are many gradations. The fear is not that America turns overnight into Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China, but something more akin to Viktor Orban’s Hungary, even if immensely larger and more consequential.

Trump’s fascination with Orban, to go with that of too many conservatives, nationalistic intellectuals, is as telling as it is disturbing. Hungary now serves as the modern-day lodestar in the fevered dreams of those who would erode America’s democratic soul in favor of state power without going to full-blown totalitarianism.

Back to where we started, what the future holds is unknown. That’s why it is the future. But when someone, in this case a former president with a marked affinity for some of the world’s worst actors, telegraphs his intentions and tells you who he is, it is incumbent on us to believe him.

And to prepare accordingly.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann