Every public official who took an oath to defend the constitution should be considering today what actions are within his or her power to salvage the election of 2020 and, with it, American democracy. 

The President admitted on Thursday that he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots.  A major Trump donor (installed at the head of the USPS to replace an independent career employee) has orchestrated removal of critical high volume mail sorting machines.  The Post Office warned states considering mitigating COVID impacts through the use of mail-in ballots that they would face delays in delivery of ballots, making it impossible to know how many people actually voted or whether or when all the votes had been counted.   All this comes on top of a successful campaign by the President and Fox to turn the mechanics of voting into a partisan issue, with 76% of Republicans now accepting the Trumpist line on mail-in ballots and fraud.  None of this is hidden.  Larry Kudlow told CNBC that  “voting rights” are a “really liberal, left wish” and “not our game.”   Of course we knew this based on years of voter suppression efforts by the right.  Still, it is shocking to hear it said out loud.

If we have a COVID election without mail-in ballots, it will cause the election to fail.  If we have an election where mail-in ballots are used but not timely delivered by the post office, it will cause the election to fail.  If we are unable to conduct an election in which almost all the country has confidence, it will be the end of a 231 year record of democratic transfer of power (something we have long taken for granted, but which the rest of humanity knows is a precious gift, both hard to achieve and hard to maintain).

I call on all the living ex-Presidents, of both parties, to issue a joint statement calling for an end to efforts to undermine and delegitimize the election. 

I call on the House of Representatives and a broadly based group of leaders from every segment of civil society to call on the world’s premier independent international election monitors, the European Commission’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, to commence immediately to monitor the 2020 U.S. federal election and issue periodic reports.  

Trump’s ego demands that any election he does not win be delegitimized.  It will be satisfied by nothing less than the fulfillment of his prophecy of après moi, le déluge.  There is no damage to the country and its people that is too high a price to keep up appearances and feed his twin narratives of victimization and greatness.

With Trump, it is hard to untangle the consequences of his incompetence and his malevolence.   But at this point it doesn’t matter.  He has already vandalized the federal government and undermined most of the political norms that supported the success and durability of our political culture.   It seems he will not be satisfied unless the destruction of established institutions is complete.