For decades, we have heard about and often ignored “the Silent Majority.” Time and again, Republican leaders have predicted that this seemingly mythical phenomenon was going to come to the fore and save the country from destructive Democratic policies.

At least in terms of the popular vote, that mythical creature has mostly remained in stealth mode, as the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

Of course, our presidents are elected via the Electoral College, so the popular vote is not the final say. For the most part, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote by crushing it in major cities and along the East and West coasts. Map-wise, most of the United States is still red.

For this election, I believe a new phenomenon is going to drive the vote for the Republicans and most especially for former President Donald Trump: the “scared majority” vote, which will actually show up at the polls.

I grew up in abject poverty as a child, and most of my contacts to this day are those in the working class or lower. While the entrenched elites from politics, academia, the C-suites, Hollywood and the media who live in bubbles of luxury and protection won’t notice, those Americans have never been more scared in their lives. Not only about their future, but about their present.

Those I speak with on a regular basis tell me they have never been so frightened about circumstances out of their control. Circumstances they believe were deliberately and politically exacerbated by the Democrats and most especially by the Biden-Harris administration.

There is something going on. These times do not feel like the others for the working class. They feel much more foreboding.

There are now so many “canaries in the coal mine” on this issue that they need to take a number to chirp out the first warning.

The first is that the Democratic Party used to be the party of the poor and disenfranchised. Now it is the party of uber-wealthy tech and big-pharma barons and power-hungry special interests.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted last week: “Paycheck-to-paycheck voters were once the rank and file of the Democratic Party. Now they are abandoning it, and with good reason.” We also have this recent headline from Newsweek: “I Raised Millions for Democrats. At the DNC, I Realized They’re the Party of the Rich.”

“Here’s the sad truth,” the author correctly states in the piece. “The Democratic Party has lost its way entirely. They mostly speak to the college educated, the urban and affluent, in their language. Their tone is condescending and paternalistic. They peddle giveaways to the college-educated like student loan forgiveness plans that disproportionately help their base, snubbing the majority of the country without a four-year degree, and then offer no tangible plans for true reform.”

Well, guess what? The “majority of the country” is not stupid. In fact, to survive as a working-class and disenfranchised voter, you actually have to be quite smart. Tens of millions of these Americans not only do understand the political games being played but realize that it is they who are paying the highest price.

The next “canary in the coal mine” is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters non-endorsement endorsement of Donald Trump. For the first time in over 20 years, the Teamsters did not endorse the Democratic candidate. Instead, their leadership chose to endorse no one.

Why? Because that leadership was shocked to find that almost 60 percent of its rank-and-file membership — those would be fearful working-class Americans — have indicated they are going to vote for Trump over Harris. What is noteworthy here is that when Biden was still in the race, Trump was actually trailing him, 44 percent to 36 percent. As with the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the more Americans see of Harris, the less they like her or trust her.

That goes double when they realize that Harris refuses to do real interviews or hold an unscripted press conference. Those I speak with also raise the fear that she is hiding something while being controlled by others.

Next, we come to the “canary” reported by CBS News. Correspondent Adriana Diaz admitted that, while in swing-state Nevada, she could only find “one person” in each restaurant she visited who planned to vote for Harris, while the rest were “really excited” about Trump. This, she said, after “leaving no stone unturned” to find any Harris supporters.

These times are different. The fear is building. During that segment, voters expressed a fear of the failing economy, fear of crime, fear of out-of-control illegal immigration and fear of a world on fire. “Fear” is the dominant emotion.

Speaking of immigration, we have this bit of insulting double-speak from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell blaming the massive influx of illegal immigrants for the rising unemployment rate. Said Powell: “If you’re having millions of people come into the labor force, then — and you’re creating 100,000 jobs — you’re going to see unemployment go up.”

I’ve got news for Chairman Powell: The tens of millions of “scared” voters are more than smart enough to realize those “millions of people” coming into the labor force did not let themselves into our nation. These working-class American citizens know those illegal immigrants were released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

Fear is real. Fear does motivate. Working-class Americans do fear that elite-enabling liberal policies beyond their control are robbing them of their quality of life now and well into their futures.

But many of these Americans have also realized that there is one way to combat that fear and regain some of that control by voting.

I predict that there is a reckoning coming in November from those tens of millions of scared voters. And I suspect that reckoning is going to produce a landslide victory for Trump.

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.