President Donald J. Trump’s calls to Make America Great Again have sparked considerableresearch into the political consequences of nostalgia, e.g., its influence on votingbehavior, support for democracy, racial resentment, and modern sexism. Yet, if subsetsof voters are oriented toward imagining a simpler, more prosperous past, comparativelylittle attention has been paid to how citizens envision the political futureand whether nostalgia shapes that orientation. In this paper, we use a module fromthe Cooperative Election Study (CES) to explore how individuals were thinking aboutthe future during the contentious 2024 presidential campaign and how nostalgia forthe past conditions these beliefs. We find that i) individuals express anxiety ratherthan optimism about the future, ii) political nostalgia is associated with less optimismand greater anger about the future, and iii) nostalgia and future-oriented anxiety arejointly associated with expectations that adverse democratic outcomes (backsliding,collapse, and civil war) are increasingly likely. Together, nostalgia and future-orientedanxiety prove to be a combustible mix, undermining confidence in democracy.