According to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, Vice President Kamala Harris should refuse to accept or certify the election results, demand an alternate slate of electors and incite a violent insurrection on the Capitol. That’s the logic Trump used after the 2020 presidential election and what thousands of his supporters did after President Joe Biden defeated Trump by a 7-million vote margin. That’s how Trump and Vance spoke about the 2024 election, refusing to say they’d accept the results if they lost, before being declared the winner early Wednesday morning.

Those who love this country want Harris to do what every modern era administration did before Trump spit on the Constitution four years ago — concede, congratulate, certify. Then Harris and her supporters should fight Trump and Vance — and fight hard, relentlessly — but through democratic means. Those who voted for Harris and against Trump should fight the incoming administration’s policies and administrative and executive decisions and try to defeat the Republican Party at the ballot box in 2026 and 2028.

I’m one of those people.

As much as I don’t want Trump to be president again, I want Harris to participate in the peaceful transfer of power to him. I don’t want her to follow in Trump’s footsteps.

In 2020, Trump didn’t even take part in the traditional photo-op at the White House to welcome Biden the way Democratic and Republican presidents routinely did for decades, a small gesture that sends a message to the world that our democracy remains healthy and strong.

I don’t say this to sound magnanimous. I’m not. I’m convinced our country made a colossal mistake sending a man like Trump back to the White House. I don’t want him to implement his proposed economic policies, which will likely hurt the middle class and those at the bottom rung of the income ladder. I don’t want him to give even more tax cuts heavily slanted towards the rich.

I don’t want to have to hear and see him again act like a fool on the national and international stage. Or turn the military on Americans exercising their constitutional right to protest. Or spread more baseless, racist conspiracy theories about Black legal immigrants, this time from behind the seal of the presidency. Or go through with threats against journalists and media outlets who dare stand up to him. Or be a dictator on day one. Or put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of U.S. health policy. Kennedy wants to remove fluoride from our drinking water and undermine vaccines, two of the most important developments in U.S. history, and a decision that can put the lives of an untold number of Americans at risk.

I don’t want Trump to successfully make it harder to hold police officers who brutalize people to be held to account and bring back the unconstitutional, racist stop-and-frisk things Trump has vowed to do.

I don’t want him to rip immigrant families apart during a mass deportation that might rival the inhumanity of the Trail of Tears and maybe permanently weaken our economy and country.

I don’t want him to further erode the abortion rights of women. He’s said contradictory things about reproductive access, but it is clear his white Evangelical base wants him to do more, even though a growing number of pregnant women have died or been harmed since the uprooting of Roe v. Wade, which was made possible by Supreme Court justices Trump appointed during his first term.

I want to make no bones about it.

I am disappointed that tens of millions of voters decided to put him back in power. I wanted the chaotic-hate-filled Trump era to come an inglorious end. Still, I won’t do what Trump supporters did and attack the Capitol Building to get my way.

I will oppose and confront Trump and Vance as many times as necessary to preserve a democracy that not enough Americans understand is more fragile than guaranteed.

Issac Bailey is a McClatchy Opinion writer in North and South Carolina.