Trump Can’t Delay the Election

Before we get all wound up about this incendiary tweet, let’s spend a minute talking about what we know to be true.

The president cannot delay the election. Article II of the Constitution empowers Congress to choose the timing of the general election, and a federal law mandates that it must be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

The explosive statement came during a really, really bad news day for Mr. Trump. (Check out this astounding graph.) Stock indexes — a key measure by which Mr. Trump assesses his presidency — slid after the release of the economic numbers. Meanwhile, his three immediate predecessors were honoring Representative John Lewis, delivering soaring eulogies at a nationally televised event Mr. Trump did not attend. Trying to change the news cycle when it doesn’t suit him is a hallmark of the president’s politicking.

As a campaign message, this tweet makes no sense. Mr. Trump has spent weeks arguing, essentially, that everything is going to be fine — workers should return to their jobs, states should reopen their economies, and children should attend school. Now he’s saying the pandemic has caused so much chaos that the election must be postponed.

I don’t want to minimize the real risks of Mr. Trump’s remark. Already, this election has been messy, with many voters worried about voting in person and uncertain about how to cast ballots by mail. There’s plenty of evidence that state and local election officials are unprepared for a potential deluge of early and absentee voting this fall.

Mr. Trump has tried to exacerbate the confusion, sowing doubt that the election will be conducted fairly and working to undermine voting by mail, which many Republicans believe will hurt their electoral chances. (There is no evidence to back up the argument from the right that all-mail elections favor Democrats.)

Mr. Trump is dragging behind in polling, so raising doubts about voting may be a way for him to lay the groundwork to question the legitimacy of the election should he lose. At a White House briefing later in the day, Mr. Trump defended his suggestion that the election be delayed, falsely warning that “hundreds of millions of mail-in ballots” would be cast and saying he didn’t want to wait for the results of the election.