The president’s attack on democracy

The leading political story in America right now is the open attack on democracy that has been publicly announced, and is currently being implemented, by the president of the United States. It would be irresponsible of any journalist not to alert their audience to this extraordinary threat to free and fair elections.

“Proud Boys, stand down and stand by,” Trump said from the debate stage in Cleveland, in response to a question of whether he would finally and definitively disavow it and other racist hate groups that explicitly endorse the use of violence.

Stand by?

In case the message wasn’t clear, the president immediately added: “Somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing problem.” Extremists began celebrating online immediately; the Proud Boys unveiled a new logo that incorporated Trump’s “stand by” order.

It was the latest and most alarming statement in Trump’s months-long campaign to derail and discredit the November elections.

“There is no way you can go through a mailin vote without massive cheating,” Trump told a reporter from Axios in August. In July, the president tweeted: “2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

Trump’s fantasy of delaying the upcoming election is understandable. His record — this year alone — includes Depression-era levels of mass unemployment, more than 200,000 deaths from COVID19 and impeachment by the House of Representatives. He has trailed Biden in nearly every national poll for months and is currently falling behind in the top swing states that helped power Trump to victory in 2016.

With the specter of defeat looming, Trump has made clear that he intends to derail the election. When asked by a reporter if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost, Trump said: “The ballots are a disaster. “Get rid of the ballots and we’ll have a very peaceful... there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

The president’s outlandish words are backed by actions that make his threats more than harmless hyperbole.

In August, Trump told a Fox Business News host that one reason coronavirus relief funding has stalled out is that the White House did not want money to go to the Postal Service.

“They want $3.5 billion for the mail-in votes. Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion for the post office. Now they need that money in order to have post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “But if you don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting. Because they’re not equipped to have it.”

One of the most serious of Trump’s attacks on the voting system is one long championed by Republican voter-suppression strategists: sending legions of “poll watchers” to frighten, discourage and intimidate people in areas where young people, immigrants, people of color and other Democratic-leaning voters show up.

Back in 1981, the Republican National Committee ended up in federal court after getting caught spending $75,000 on a front group, called the National Ballot Security Task Force, made up of off-duty cops and sheriff’s deputies. The officers — some of whom were armed and/or in uniform — flooded Black and Latino areas of New Jersey and hung signs saying “WARNING: This area is being patrolled by the National Ballot Security Task Force. It is a crime to falsify a ballot or to violate election laws.”

Word spread about the cops, and people with child-support orders or unpaid traffic tickets avoided the polls. The Republican candidate for governor won, and the Democratic National Committee promptly filed a lawsuit, leading to a federal court order banning such intimidation practices nationwide.

But in 2018, the consent decree was allowed to lapse, making this the first presidential election under which the shadowy old “ballot security” tactics aren’t explicitly illegal.

As recently noted in The Atlantic magazine, a Trump deputy campaign manager named Justin Clark was recorded last year leading a strategy discussion for Wisconsin Republican lawyers. The most promising development, Clark reportedly told the group, is that “first and foremost is the consent decree’s gone,” which he called a “huge, huge, huge, huge deal.”

To summarize: The president openly admits using the tools of government to hobble the Postal Service and disrupt mail-in balloting. His campaign appears to be building a voter-intimidation operation, and the president has personally told a violent goon squad to “stand by.”

If you aren’t worried about the fate of democracy this fall, you should be.