Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at the University of Oxford, predicted in a new essay for the Guardian that Americans have only 400 days to save their democracy.

“Hysterical hyperbole? I would love to think so,” admitted Garton Ash. “But during seven weeks in the US this summer, I was shaken every day by the speed and executive brutality of President Trump’s assault on what had seemed settled norms of U.S. democracy and by the desperate weakness of resistance to that assault.”

All “democrats, irrespective of party or ideology, must hope the Democrats regain control of the House” in the 2026 midterms “not because of the Democrats’ policies, which are a muddle, or their current leadership, which is a mess” but because the currently GOP-controlled Congress has to “start doing its job again” and keep the White House in check, he said.

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Any economic harm caused by Trump’s controversial policies may be offset, he continued, by the possibility that the president may “do a pre-election cash handout to voters, perhaps presented as compensation for the ‘temporary difficulties’ of the transition to a MAGA economy.”

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Democrats have to relentlessly “bring those economic costs irresistibly home to voters,” not just “by talking about the defence of democracy, important though that is, let alone by engaging in culture wars,” he urged.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

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