As a mom, I always have a backup plan. An additional snack in my purse. A spare kid’s bike helmet in my car. An extra hair elastic around my wrist. If Moms ran the world, I believe things would be going much better.

I have never been a huge fan of the nation’s Founding Fathers, given the fact that they didn’t see me as human being, because I am Black and female. And they wouldn’t have let me vote anyway because I don’t own any land. But I have a new appreciation of them today, as I found some good news related to the US constitution. Apparently, the nation’s founders created a backup plan for Donald Tr*mp.

I never had panic attacks until after the 2016 election. I have periodic panics since then, and my biggest fear is of Donald Tr*mp’s creeping fascism. Above all, I’m afraid of him stealing the election and installing himself as a dictator.

Now, we know that The Donald is no constitutional scholar. But Laurence Tribe is an actual constitutional scholar at Harvard Law School. Joy Ann Reid had him on her MSNBC show, and he identifies that the constitution has a failsafe—“built into the constitution itself…at high noon on January 20^th, 2021, if there has not been a new president elected. At that point Nancy Pelosi—speaker of the house—becomes President of the United States….All of the [Tr*mp] enablers—at that point–would risk committing federal felonies if they were to exercise power which they no longer have, because Tr*mp would no longer be president. That’s the failsafe.” In the interview, he names several other good news failsafes to protect the election.

Reid goes on to say in a tweet: “As @EricHolder also affirmed this morning, at 12:01 p.m. on January 20 if he loses the election and if he refuses to leave the White House, Donald Trump will be merely an intruder in that house and will be removed physically, like any other intruder would. He will have no power.”

I’ll add this other bit of good news. Those of us who have studied dictatorships in other countries know this: you need the military on your side to stage an effective coup. Unlike other wannabe dictators, Tr*mp does not have a good relationship with the US military. He is a repeat-offending draft dodger and and various high-ranking generals have spoken out against him. However, I believe that his most recent betrayal of the military will prove fatal. It has been shown that Tr*mp knew that Russia put bounties on the heads of US military personnel in Afghanistan. And it is clear that he did nothing to protect them. This is not how you win friends and influence people. This is not how to stage a coup in a constitutional republic. This is not how you get the US military to be loyal to you personally after your official term ends.

Our democracy is in crisis and our election is definitely in danger. But I’m glad that the Founding Fathers had “a plan for that.” And on that Elizabeth-Warren-sounding note, maybe we’ll end up with a woman president afterall. Though I would have much preferred Warren to Pelosi (I supported both her and Sanders). Regardless, we need to fight like hell to protect our democracy and vote blue in November.