"Even if meant to distract, these are powerful words to come from a president," Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer told The New York Times. "He's clearly accelerating his effort to set up a challenge to an outcome that is unfavorable to him."
That means the fight back needs to accelerate as well. The absolute first line of defense is for Joe Biden to win big. Huge. Way, way past the margin of cheating. The second line of defense is a robust legal effort, of the kind the Biden campaign has already set up, to protect the election results not just from normal voter suppression but from all of the Trump campaign's more, uh, creative(ly illegal) attempts to steal the election. State election officials who don't want to enable the theft of an election need to be ready to protect their ballots and their counting process.
Added to that, the media needs to get very serious about what's going on. As Trump has ratcheted up the election-stealing talk, there's been a rash of tweeted complaints from national political reporters about how Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris aren't doing enough interviews with them, and how Biden is sometimes late for events. Reporters need to grapple with this reality: no more petty both-sidesing complaints about access and timing. Instead, a serious and literal focus on what Trump is signaling -- and sometimes flat-out telling us -- about his plans.
As for the rest of us, alongside working to deliver that huge, beyond-the-margin-of-cheating election victory, we need to be ready to be in the streets. There needs to be a massive response ready in the fight for democracy.
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