You know how the cliche goes … that there’s a first time for everything.

We are coming up on the 13th presidential election that I will have had the privilege to cast my vote. For the first time in my voting life, and this is no hyperbole, I am genuinely afraid what a potential electoral outcome might produce.

Yes, fear has set in. I am among those Democratic-leaning voters who is petrified at the prospect of Donald John Trump getting another four years in the White House, another four years to further the cause of authoritarian rule, another term in office to dismantle what we have come know as our representative democracy.

I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but this election is truly — categorically and without a shred of doubt — the most consequential election in my lifetime.

I have cast votes in 12 previous elections. The most of recent election, of course, gave us Donald Trump. I supported Hillary Clinton. I will declare my support for her forever and with pride in doing so. However, as loathsome as Trump was in 2016 and as much damage many of us foresaw then, damn few American quite expected the wreckage that this guy would bring to the revered and exalted office of the presidency.

It’s not that we weren’t forewarned. We were. Trump took office reportedly never expecting to win the election, which likely explains the utter and absolute lack of preparation for the awesome job of governing a great nation.

Former President Obama laid it out there Wednesday night. Trump has not risen to the challenge because he “can’t,” Obama said.

It is no overstatement that my hope for a Biden victory on Nov. 3 comes with the hope that the former vice president — with more than four decades of governing experience under his belt — can restore our national honor, our soul, the sense that we are a nation full of compassionate, empathetic citizens.

Absent that and if Trump snatches a second stunning victory from the jaws of defeat, well … I don’t know what will become of us. Or our beloved nation.

I never before been this frightened.