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Trailing badly in the polls, overtaken by the worst health crisis in 100 years and deprived of the cruising economy he had hoped to ride to a second term, President Donald Trump is actively trying to discredit an election that could see him turned out of office -- or is at least preparing the groundwork for a bitter legal battle that could drag on for weeks in the event of a close result.

"If it's not going to be an honest and fair election, people really need to think long and hard about it," Trump said Thursday in some of the most foreboding and loaded comments ever uttered by a leader of the world's most powerful democracy.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden summed up all of these Trump attacks when he said, reacting to earlier comments in which the President had trashed postal balloting: "Pure Trump. He doesn't want an election."

It makes discomforting, but perfect, sense that a President who was impeached for abusing his power by trying to coerce a foreign nation, Ukraine, into interfering in the election to damage his opponent would do anything within -- and beyond -- his legitimate powers to save his skin in an election. Confident of impunity, Trump is now behaving in exactly the power-grabbing manner that was predicted when he was acquitted in his Senate trial.

Even before he was President, Trump and his campaign expected to benefit in 2016 from a Russian election interference scheme -- which he publicly encouraged by asking Moscow's hackers to find Hillary Clinton's missing emails, according to former special counsel Robert Mueller.

American democracy at stake

Trump's full-bore effort to convince Americans that an election he may lose is corrupt is far more sinister than simply preparing a potentially face-saving exit from the White House.

The President's voters and his conservative media enablers have shown that when it is coming from him, they are not too concerned about assaults on America's constitutional norms and the institutions that hold presidents to account. That means Trump's anti-democratic tendencies will not necessarily rebound against him with constituencies that voted for a strongman four years ago.

But Trump's wild lies about election fraud are another example of how he prioritizes his personal advantage ahead of national interests and the health of the political system. Guaranteeing elections -- the bedrock of a free society -- and the institutions that support them is a fundamental duty of any president, bound up in the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. The same goes for ensuring a peaceful transition of power -- even if he loses, however personally sickening to Trump that may be.

Freedom erodes quickly when leaders with unaccountable power begin to discredit the mechanics of free and fair elections. While his US political rivals are far from having to worry about knocks on the door in the middle of the night, Trump is adopting the rhetoric of the autocrats he idolizes. Already, the period before and after the November 3 election is looking like one of the most perilous in recent US history.

If he loses the election but claims it was rigged, Trump will delegitimize the result among millions of voters who backed him but might accept a loss if he graciously conceded, as is expected of every beaten presidential candidate who puts nation above self.

The appearance of a tainted election would certainly shatter hopes that a Biden administration might harbor of uniting a deeply divided nation and of summoning national resolve to finally prevail over a pandemic that Trump mismanaged and ignored.

It would also sow distrust of elections on the right, potentially for decades, further fueling conspiratorial fringe groups like QAnon. A sense that Trump was trying to destroy a legitimate Democratic presidency would also exacerbate liberal fury, pouring gasoline on the current national political inferno.

A disputed election in 2020 would be far more corrosive to democracy even than the bitterly fought aftermath of the George W. Bush vs. Al Gore duel that was eventually decided by the Supreme Court in 2000. On that occasion, despite the resentment and huge stakes, it could be fairly argued that both candidates were democrats committed to the preservation of the US political system. That is a hard case to make 20 years later.

The President's constant trashing of the US electoral system also has another menacing side effect: It throws open the door to the Russian election interference that Trump has refused to admit happened on his behalf in 2016 and that US intelligence agencies assess is happening again, with other US foes like China and Iran also mulling their own preferences for the next president. The influence and disinformation aspects of Moscow's meddling operation in 2016 aimed to exploit and widen angry divides that already existed in American politics. The more the President creates discord and distrust in the electoral system, the easier that job becomes.

Senior intelligence and law enforcement officials are not worried that the President's incessant warnings that foreign powers could flood the country with fake ballots are realistic. But they do fear that his rhetoric could provide fertile ground for their propagandists and misinformation farms, CNN reported last month.

"They can't physically do anything about (mail-in ballots) but (they can) create social media narratives to create levels of doubt and play into the debate," a law enforcement official said. "We are alert for the fact they may take doubts about mail-in ballots and exploit that online," the official said.

Trump is frustrated conspiracies about 2016 are not prompting action

Trump's aides and defenders have often suggested that critics who worry whether he will peacefully leave power or who fear he is trying to interfere in the election are paranoid and have a political agenda.

But the President -- in one of the periodic lightning bolts of damning truth (like when he told NBC he had fired former FBI Director James Comey because of the Russia investigation) -- exposed the extent of his own malfeasance in an interview with Fox Business News on Thursday.

"They want $25 billion, billion, for the post office. Now they need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said on Fox Business, repeating his false claims that mail-in voting would be "fraudulent."

"But if they don't get those two items, that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because you -- they're not equipped to have it," Trump added.

There was another sign on Thursday that the President was getting antsy about the failure so far of the Justice Department to move against former Obama administration officials linked to the Russia investigation.

Prodded by friendly questions from Fox's Maria Bartiromo, Trump lashed out at Wray -- whom he appointed -- and even seemed to cast doubt on the ultimate loyalty of Barr, who has repeatedly intervened in cases and controversies to Trump's political benefit. The President appeared to be agitating for both men to effectively intervene in the election by producing evidence hurtful to his opponent.

"So Christopher Wray was put there. We have an election coming up. I wish he was more forthcoming. He certainly hasn't been," the President said.

"There are documents that they want to get, and we have said we want to get. We're going to find out if he's going to give those documents. But certainly he's been very, very protective."

Trump said Wray should provide more documents to prosecutor John Durham, who was tapped by Barr to lead the review into the origins of the Russia investigation in yet another exercise apparently designed to gut highly critical findings by Mueller about the President's conduct.

More suspicion of the White House's behind-the-scenes activity surfaced last week, when it emerged that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with rapper Kanye West, who has announced a run for president that has no chance of winning electoral votes but that some critics have surmised could attract sufficient votes among young Black voters in states decided by razor-thin margins to drive down Biden's share of the vote.

That's an answer that is unlikely to put concerns about the White House's pre-election activity to rest.

Adam Levine, Manu Raju and Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.

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Trump's election meddling is threatening US democracy - CNN

How activists and citizen journalists can revive the American promise.

| 5:04 PM

It is no secret that American democracy is teetering on the edge of destruction. A white nationalist authoritarian movement currently headed by Donald Trump wants to destroy majoritarian popular consent before a minority of racist whites, prudish evangelicals and overcompensating, insecure men lose their grip on both the culture and the government. Meanwhile, hyperpartisan division is making the notoriously clunky, procedurally challenging and risk-averse American system of government impossible to navigate for anyone trying to change the status quo.

But there is a silver lining to our precarious danger: we are also witnessing an increase in citizen activism, both political and social, unseen in generations. When a police officer murdered George Floyd on that fateful day in May, it reignited a public protest movement still coursing through the nation. Thousands of normally apolitical Americans have joined local clubs, citizen groups and even filed to run for public office.

There is an awareness among many Americans that if the institutions cannot save us, we must play a direct part in saving ourselves. Recording and communications technologies are helping greatly in the effort. The ability to capture police brutality and open racism on video has changed the conversation and awakened the majority of Americans to how often the officially sanitized police record of events differs from the awful reality. Ordinary citizens now have the power to hold both individual and state-sanctioned oppressors accountable in public spaces.

This phenomenon applies to Donald Trump and the federal government as much as to local police officers and bigots. Consider for a moment the recent hullabaloo over Trumps attempts to sabotage the Postal Service. While Democratic leadership in Congress can and should use every tool at their disposal over the issue, there is realistically only so much they can do. The Administration can ignore every subpoena as long as Senate Republicans allow them to get away with it, and precipitating a Constitutional crisis by sending the Capitol police to arrest the Postmaster General could easily add to the destabilizing chaos in which Trump thrives.

The greatest power to stop Trump comes from all of us as direct activists and citizen journalists. Much of what the rightwing authoritarian movement wants to inflict on the country, depends only on quiet acquiescence from the rest of us.

For instance, it was normal people taking pictures of postal boxes being removed from city streets that caused the USPS to backtrack and halt the practice until after election day. And postal workers themselves can put up fierce resistance to any attempts to sabotage ballot delivery. On top of the National Letter Carriers Association directly endorsing Trumps opponent Joe Biden, there are already reports that postal workers plan to deliver ballots on time come rain, sleet, snowor Trump and DeJoy:

Whatever DeJoys actual motive may or may not be, true letter carriers were disturbed by the sight of mail going undelivered. Its frustrating for us, Julion said. Because we know this is not what we do. In an organization of people sworn to get the mail delivered no matter what, DeJoy became known as Delay.

What will likely have a bigger impact on the election is the avowed determination of the 300,000 letter carriers themselves to deliver the ballots this year no matter what DeJoy and his boss Trump do.

Even more so than priority mail, Julion said.Im confident, you get those ballots in our hands, were going to deliver them. If nothing else gets delivered, those ballots will.

He added, Theres a message we want to deliver, too.

The message is that nobody is going to steal this election if they can help it, that falsehoods and sabotage are not going to stop letter carriers from doing their sworn duty and thereby enabling people to exercise their right to vote even in a pandemic.

This is what we do, Julion repeated, adding, We can handle it.

This is what will be required until at least January 20, 2021: an army of regular citizens stepping up to document wrongdoing and use whatever power they have in their work and social life to halt the destruction of democracy and move forward the cause of justice. If Trump and the Republican National Committee send a combination of private and DHS goons to intimidate voters in minority communities, it will be up to citizens to take video and use social media to organize communities to force them to back down. If they try to send squads to prevent the counting of mail-in ballots in a second Brooks Brothers Riot, it will be up to all of us to protect the vote counters by documenting it and standing in their way with overwhelming numbers. It will be crucial for young and healthy Americans not directly assisting anti-totalitarian campaigns to volunteer as poll workers to ensure that in-person voting will not be affected despite the pandemic. And so on.

The next few months will be a crucible not only for American democracy, but the health and safety of the international community and planet. Democratic leaders can do more, but theres still only so much that they can do until Trump is gone because of the flaws inherent in the system. But if we all do our parts and put all hands on deck, we can get through this together.

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Saving Democracy Is Up To All of Us - Washington Monthly

As we try to face the future, we are usually fighting the last war, not the one thats coming next. One of the most striking points the political philosopher David Runciman made in his seminal book How Democracy Ends was that democracies dont fail backwards: they fail forward. Thats why those who see in the current difficulties of liberal democracies the stirrings of past monsters Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, to name just three are always looking in the wrong place. And if thats true, the key question for us at this moment in history is: how might our current system fail? What will bring it down?

The answer, it turns out, has been hiding in plain sight for years. It has three components. The first is the massive concentration of corporate power and private wealth thats been under way since the 1970s, together with a corresponding increase in inequality, social exclusion and polarisation in most western societies; the second is the astonishing penetration of dark money into democratic politics; and the third is the revolutionary transformation of the information ecosystem in which democratic politics is conducted a transformation that has rendered the laws that supposedly regulated elections entirely irrelevant to modern conditions.

These threats to democracy have long been visible to anyone disposed to look for them. For example, Lawrence Lessigs Republic, Lost and Jane Mayers Dark Money explained how a clique of billionaires has shaped and perverted American politics. And in the UK, Martin Moores landmark study Democracy Hacked showed how, in the space of just one election cycle, authoritarian governments, wealthy elites and fringe hackers figured out how to game elections, bypass democratic processes and turn social networks into battlefields.

All of this is by way of sketching the background to Peter Geoghegans fine book. Its a compulsively readable, carefully researched account of how a malignant combination of rightwing ideology, secretive money (much of it from the US) and weaponisation of social media have shaped contemporary British (and to a limited extent, European) politics. And it has been able to do this in what has turned out to be a regulatory vacuum with laws, penalties and overseeing authorities that are no longer fit for purpose.

His account is structured both chronologically and thematically. He starts with the Brexit referendum and the various kinds of unsavoury practices that took place during that doomed plebiscite from the various illegalities of Vote Leave, through Arron Bankss lavish expenditure to the astonishing tale of the dark money funnelled through the Ulster DUP and a loophole in Northern Irelands electoral law. One of the most depressing parts of this narrative is the bland indifference of most mainstream UK media to these scandalous events. If it had not been for the openDemocracy website (for which Geoghegan works), much of this would never have seen the light of day.

Geoghegans account of the genesis and growth of the European Research Group is absolutely riveting

The middle section of the book explores how dark money has amplified the growing influence of the American right on British politics. This is a story of ideology and finance of how the long-term Hayekian, neoliberal project has played out on these shores. Its a great case study in how ruling elites can be infected with policy ideas and programmes via those second-hand traders in ideas of whom Hayek spoke so eloquently: academics, thinktanks and media commentators. In that context, Geoghegans account of the genesis and growth of the European Research Group the party within a party that did for Theresa May is absolutely riveting. And again it leaves one wondering why there was so little media exploration of the origins and financing of that particular little cabal.

The final part of the book deals with the transformation of our information ecosystem: the ways in which the automated targeted-advertising machines of social media platforms have been weaponised by rightwing actors to deliver precisely calibrated messages to voters, in ways that are completely opaque to the general public, as well as to regulators.

Remainers will probably read Geoghegans account of this manoeuvring by Brexiters as further evidence that the Brexit vote was invalid. This seems to me implausible or at any rate undecidable. Geoghegan agrees. Pro-Leave campaigns broke the law, he writes, but we cannot say with any certainty that the result would have been different if they had not. Instead, the referendum and its aftermath have revealed something far more fundamental and systemic. Namely, a broken political system that is ripe for exploitation again. And again. And again.

And therein lies the significance of this remarkable book. The integrity and trustworthiness of elections is a fundamental requirement for a functioning democracy. The combination of unaccountable, unreported dark money and its use to create targeted (and contradictory) political messages for individuals and groups means that we have no way of knowing how free and fair our elections have become. Many of the abuses exposed by Geoghegan and other researchers are fixable with new laws and better-resourced regulators. The existential threat to liberal democracy comes from the fact that those who have successfully exploited some inadequacies of the current regulatory system who include Boris Johnson and his current wingman, Cummings have absolutely no incentive to fix the system from which they have benefited. And they wont. Which could be how our particular version of democracy ends.

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Democracy for Sale by Peter Geoghegan review the end of politics as we know it? - The Guardian

Aug 15th 2020

The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today. By David Stasavage. Princeton University Press; 424 pages; $35 and 30.

TWO COMMON beliefs about democracy are that it began in ancient Athens and, on spreading from there, remained peculiarly Western. David Stasavage, a professor of politics at New York University, finds both views mistaken. Without them, he thinks it will be easier to get hopes and fears for present-day democracy into better perspective and balance.

Understood as government by consultation and consent, democracy, he shows, can be found in many early civilisations, not just classical Greeceincluding ancient Mesopotamia, Buddhist India, the tribal lands of the American Great Lakes, pre-conquest Mesoamerica and pre-colonial Africa. With that spread in mind, he writes that under given conditions, democratic governancecomes naturally to humans. The puzzle is that autocratic governance was just as natural. It, too, was found in many places. In pre-modern China and the Islamic world, for example, autocracytogether with a centralised bureaucracywas for centuries the norm.

To find out why early democracy occurred where it did, the author draws on evidence from archaeology, soil science, demographics and climate studies. The key, in his account, was information.

Early democracy tended to flourish where rulers knew little of what people were growing and had few ways to find out. They might underguess taxable produce (forgoing revenue) or overguess (provoking non-compliance). It was better to ask people how much they grew and, in return, listen to their demands. That pattern was typical where populations were small and a central state weak or non-existent.

With big populations, consultation was impractical. Rulers instead sent officials to see how much was grown and, before long, how many young men could be drafted into armies. Bureaucracies emerged. With their aid, autocratic rule imposed itself on local custom. In pre-modern settings, this autocratic bureaucracy was more common where soil was good, yields high and know-how advanced, especially in writing and measuring. Such systems were able to tax heavily. Song China (10th-13th centuries) and the Abbasid Caliphate (8th-13th centuries) extracted at their height respectively 10% and 7% of gross yearly product. Medieval European rulers managed barely 1%.

Once established, central bureaucracies were hard to dismantle. They took well to modernity and new technologies. Early democracy, by contrast, was notablyalthough not fatallyvulnerable to the rise of modern states and rapid economic development. It accordingly vanished in many places, while surviving in others.

Modernity and central states, in other words, allowed for either autocracy or democracy. But was there a pattern? Mr Stasavage thinks so. He calls it sequencing. If the early democratic institutions of government by consent are established first, he writes, then it is possible to subsequently build a bureaucracy without veering inevitably into autocracy or despotism. It depends on what went before.

Awkwardly for this argument, the West is the one part of the world where early democracy of the small-scale, direct kind evolved most securely into modern, representative democracy. Does that not make democracy peculiarly Western after all? In modern democracys three wavesin the 19th century, post-1945 and post-1989Western democracy was first. Despite glaring collapses, it has fared best. Yet, in Mr Stasavages telling, there was nothing essentiala liberal outlook, say, or respect for property, or a gift for industrythat tied the West and modern democracy together, beyond the luck of the past.

Pre-modern Europe had (with exceptions) democratic customs and weak rulers without effective bureaucracies. Where it occurs, and is not wiped out by autocracy, consensual government, the author writes, leaves very deep traces. Democracy and autocracy each have strong roots. There are good reasons to expect each to endure.

That conclusion may seem small yield for such intellectual labour. But a bracing stringency is one of the virtues of The Decline and Rise of Democracy. It sweeps across the globe in command of recent scholarship. It takes an economic view of politics as putative bargaining between rulers and ruled, dispensing with what actual people thought and did and skirting fastidious analysis of key ideas. Its strongest lessons are negative: it shows how complex democracys patterns are and, on the evidence, how simpler accounts of its past and prospects stumble.

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Beginners luck"

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Why democracy thrives in some places and not in others - The Economist

Timor-Leste only achieved independence in 2002. It was Asias poorest country and desperately needed revenue. Revenue from massive gas resources in the Timor Sea was its big hope. But it needed to negotiate a treaty with Australia on their carve-up. Australia ruthlessly exploited that fact: delays from the Australian side in negotiating a treaty for the carve-up of those resources, and repeated threats of more delays, were a constant theme of the negotiations. In November 2002 the former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer told Timor-Lestes prime minister, Mari Alkatiri: We dont have to exploit the resources. They can stay there for 20, 40, 50 years. In late 2003 Timor-Leste requested monthly discussions. Australia claimed it could only afford two rounds a year. Poor Timor-Leste offered to fund rich Australias expenses. Australia didnt accept.

The two countries had solemnly agreed to negotiate in good faith. But Australias realpolitik approach was rather: Never give a sucker an even break. Downer told Alkatiri: We are very tough. We will not care if you give information to the media. Let me give you a tutorial in politics not a chance. The truly stark realpolitik bottom line: Downer was probably an invisible man at Timor-Lestes cabinet table. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service, under the guise of renovating Timor-Lestes cabinet room, planted bugs so the Australians could overhear the leaders deliberations. Downer was responsible for Asis. Downer and the Australian government have never confirmed or denied the bugging.

Fortunately, Australias reputation has not been more badly damaged for its grubby behaviour towards Timor-Leste, for two reasons.

First, long-suffering Timor Leste did not maximise opportunities to embarrass Australia. Perhaps Downers bullyboy warning to Alkatiri worked. Ever since the second world war, Australia has promoted its brand as being member No 1 of the rules-based international good citizenship club. In 2004 it was Timor-Leste which played the honourable role, not Australia.

The people who let Australia down so badly in 2004 have not been punished

Second, because the bugging was quietly outed, Australia was given the opportunity to renegotiate the treaty with Timor-Leste to a much fairer outcome, and one more in accord with international norms.

Now one of the Asis officers who did the bugging, Witness K, and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, are being prosecuted for alleged involvement in Australias despicable actions becoming public.

The prosecutions of Collaery and Witness K were revealed in federal parliament more than two years ago by the independent MP Andrew Wilkie. Wilkie said senior government officials were the real criminals the people who ordered the illegal bugging. Wilkie called upon the Australian federal police to launch an investigation into the bugging. Three senators Rex Patrick, Nick McKim and Tim Storer joined that call. Wilkie said: We wish the police to conduct an investigation to look at whos involved, who the senior officials are, who the government ministers were, noting all of this has been done in secret, adding: No one is above the law.

The bugging was probably criminal according to the laws of both Australia and Timor-Leste, and those who authorised it were likely to have committed the common law crime of conspiracy to defraud.

Two years after Wilkies parliamentary call, the AFP seems to have ignored the four members of parliament. Some people do seem to be above the law. Those people do not include Witness K and Collaery.

The major beneficiary of Australias negotiated initial win was Woodside Petroleum, though the company says it is yet to make any profit from the Timor Sea reserves. In 2014 Downer said on ABC Four Corners that Australia had acted in Woodsides interests in the negotiations. After leaving politics, Downer became a paid consultant to Woodside. The head of Downers department at the time of the bugging, the late Dr Ashton Calvert, became a director of Woodside within eight months after retiring from foreign affairs, and within a year of the bugging.

Witness K was incensed that Downer had profited by becoming a consultant to Woodside. The whistleblower complained to the inspector general of intelligence and security of a changed Asis culture. He was authorised to engage Collaery. The charges against Collaery stem from that engagement. Revelation of the bugging helped Timor-Leste overturn the deal initially negotiated, arguing that the bugging tainted good faith negotiations.

The people who let Australia down so badly in 2004 have not been punished. It is simply not credible that Asis undertook the bugging without the approval of Downer and the then prime minister, John Howard.

The bugging took place 16 years ago but it is not ancient history the criminal prosecutions to kill the alleged messengers are in full swing. Further, although 16 years is a long time in politics, former colleagues of the guilty parties and some of those parties themselves are still very much on the scene.

For example, according to his parliamentary biography, the present Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, was an adviser to Downer from 1999-2001, and was a senior adviser to Howard from 2003-04, the latter being the year of the bugging. Frydenbergs Wikipedia entry says that, in Howards office, he specialised in domestic security issues, border protection, justice and industrial relations.

By 2005 Frydenberg was a director at Deutsche Bank. He was interviewed on Channel Sevens Sunrise program from Timor-Leste in 2006. David Koch introduced Frydenberg to viewers simply as having been a former adviser to Howard and Downer with no reference to Deutsche Bank. Frydenberg spoke to viewers as if he represented the Australian government: Our teams going to be led by a deputy secretary from the Department of Foreign Affairs. The Timor-Leste side is going to be led by their resources minister. In effect, Frydenberg argued Australias case to the viewers, speaking knowledgeably about the resources at stake.

Collaery and Witness K are in the dock but institutions vital to Australias democracy are on trial: the judiciary, the director of public prosecutions and the AFP, as well as that once important guardian of the public interest the attorney general. Each must ensure that Australias legal and criminal justice systems operate apolitically and are not strong-armed to protect ministers and other government officials past and present Andrew Wilkies real criminals.

Ian Cunliffe is the former head of the legal section of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, chief executive of the Australian Constitutional Commission and chief executive/director of research of the Australian Law Reform Commission

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Witness K is in the dock but institutions vital to Australias democracy are on trial - The Guardian