This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive more briefings and a guide to the section daily in your inbox.

He has done it in scattered bursts rather than all at once, but Donald Trump has now laid out a comprehensive attack on this country’s democratic traditions.

The first piece of the attack is to argue that his opponent should not even be able to run against him. “She shouldn’t be allowed to run. It’s crooked — she’s — she’s guilty of a very, very serious crime,” he said at this week’s debate. He was referring, he explained somewhat vaguely, to “what she did with emails and so many other things.”

The second line of attack revolves around the idea that this election — the one between him and his illegitimate opponent — is “rigged” and rife with cheating. By now, you’ve probably seen one of the many sober debunkings of these fictitious claims of widespread voter fraud. But Trump has dominated the news over the past day-and-a-half by saying he may not accept the election’s result as legitimate, unless he wins.