While candidates jostle for advantage in the Democratic presidential primary, and the news media play the odds, President Donald Trump already knows the identity of his opponent. Indeed, his campaign, with the full support of the Republican Party, is already waging a vigorous crusade to destroy his opposition. No, it’s not Joe Biden, who inspired Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine. Trump’s gunning for bigger game: democracy itself.

The Democratic Party is not prepared for this war. The news media is still struggling, and often failing, to adapt to demagogy. And the electorate, at least the non-MAGA majority invested in preserving rule of law, has limited tools for fighting back. As election law expert Richard Hasen notes in “Election Meltdown,” his alarming new book about the threats to U.S. elections, mitigating risk is “especially challenging when one of the greatest risks to the integrity of the process comes from the sitting president of the United States.”

The assault will have multiple fronts. Trump’s disinformation campaign is, obviously, under way, to the extent that there is any meaningful distinction between the words “Trump” and “disinformation.” The news media, like many Americans, have become acculturated to Trump’s lies and to the lies of his accomplices and defenders. The Washington Post keeps a running tab, now well above 16,000, of the president’s public falsehoods. Does anyone notice anymore?

Democracy takes place largely in public communication; it can’t function without reasonably honest discourse. Trump’s daily dose of propaganda and smears badly corrodes an already weakened democratic faith, rendering it less resistant to his subsequent assaults.

As November approaches, Trump plans to complement corrosive rhetoric with concrete action. In the words of one Trump campaign official, the GOP will be playing “offense” on Election Day. This will entail something more than Trump’s efforts in 2016. Then, Trump closed out his campaign with sinister threats about voter fraud. In an October, 2016 rally in Pennsylvania, he told his MAGA followers: “So important that you watch other communities, because we don’t want this election stolen from us.” In Akron, Ohio, he told a MAGA crowd that they needed to “watch” the vote.

“And when I say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about,” Trump continued. “Right? You know what I’m talking about.” His white followers knew.