It won't be cancelling national elections. It will be "suspending" a few local ones, enough to tilt the balance, and then using any excuse - e.g. "antifa", but any protest is enough - to escalate, to justify, progressively, a military clampdown.

>I wouldn't be so sure about a lack of military pushback

Again, Ashley Babbitt received full military honors for trying to overrun security at the Capitol to attack congressmen and women to overturn the election. That's what happened. Nobody has said anywhere in the military "it's wrong".

The "status quo" is that the president, immune from any prosecution, is saying openly he is ready to use soldiers to shoot at American citizens when he gives the order, and anyone who disobeys will be fired.