With weeks to go, momentum is behind President Trump. But there are many shoes to drop and no end to the prodigious work that needs to be done. The media’s script is well in place. Their narrative will be that Vice President Harris is surging and they will have the manufactured polls to show it. That faux momentum is a necessary fig leaf for their effort to cheat in the battleground states and for media, the courts, and RINOs to have plausibility in joining the lie.

The 2024 election needs to be thought of not as a single election but a series of campaigns or stages from the campaign through Election Day to Inauguration to put President Trump in the position to govern after January 20, 2025. Each stage needs to be won. Trump supporters have to understand each, steel themselves for them, and participate in each stage to ensure President Trump becomes the 47th president.

The First Stage: The Presidency and Congress. President Trump’s supporters must deliver a victory on November 5th that is "too big to rig” and thus secures his victory. That will be challenge enough due to the new forms of cheating the Democrats will devise and the top cover the media and courts will provide the Democrats. Realizing the agenda requires that Trump wins the presidency. That necessary but not sufficient. The agenda also requires Congress is also in Republican hands. Each of those is a huge ask, and requires all hands, but each is achievable.

Winning the presidency is key but so is keeping control of the House. The House is essential. The Republicans now control it with a 220 to 212 majority, with 3 vacancies due to Republican Mike Gallagher’s resignation, effective on April 25, 2024, and the deaths this year of Democratic Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee on July 19 and Bill Pascrell on August 21.

There may not be a Trump presidency if the Democrats win the House on November 5th. The 119th United States Congress will be sworn in on January 3, 2025, and will in joint session with the Senate on January 6, 2025, count and certify the Electoral College votes. Democratic Representative Jaime Raskin has said he will employ every measure to keep Trump from the White House, and the House is his point of leverage. We should take him at his word that he and the Democratic Caucus will employ every means at his disposal to thwart a Trump victory. There could be significant complications if the Electoral College is disputed, as is likely in Pennsylvania, or is tied, and there is 100 percent certainty that the Democrats pressure State Electors.

The Senate is key as well to pass legislation but also for confirmation of Trump’s appointees and for control of Committees and their staffing. 2024 looks very good for Republican control. But the key question becomes will the Republican majority be large enough to overcome the Democrats and the RINOs in the Senate. That will require a majority of 53 or more. In addition, State and local elections are also critical for achieving the agenda in as many states and municipalities as possible to further the MAGA movement at those levels and advance MAGA policies at those levels of government.

The Second Stage: The Struggles After Election Day. After November 5th, apart from Congress, there will be the immediate struggle over the election as votes arrive after Election Day in key states like Pennsylvania. Legal challenges will be inevitable. Moreover, the Biden-Harris administration will play a nefarious role. There will be "November” or "December” or "January Surprises” executed by the Biden administration. These are certain to include pardons or paroles for the tens of millions of people who have entered the U.S. illegally to prevent President Trump from deporting them. Given the performance of the Biden-Harris administration, there likely will be efforts to entrap President Trump, other efforts to intimidate Electors and lawyers working for President Trump and other Republicans, and riots and other forms of social unrest that will be tolerated by the Biden-Harris administration.

Victory is required in each of those stages to make possible the third stage: when Trump moves onto next phase of his success—advancing the MAGA agenda in government and institutionalizing the MAGA movement within the Republican Party and country. Each of those stages requires that the President Trump, the MAGA movement, and supporters remain unified and focused on the needs of each stage, despite the certain counterattacks that the Left will launch to defeat President Trump and the movement at each stage.

Like Grant’s victory in 1868 or FDR’s in 1932, President Trump’s victory will provide a foundation for the MAGA movement to be dominant for the next generation. The Democrats know this and that is why they know what is at stake. President Trump’s victory and inauguration is precisely what is necessary not only to repair the damage caused by the Left to its culture, society, and politics, but to allow the American people and their government to realize a renaissance of the American constitutional republic and the American citizen.

Bradley A. Thayer is a Contributing Columnist for Warroom and is the coauthor, with James E. Fanell, of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure, and, with Lianchao Han, of Understanding the China Threat. Find him on Gettr and Truth as @bradleythayer and as @bradthayer on X.