President says Republicans should 'nationalize' elections during a podcast appearance.

The remark arrived in the form most contemporary remarks now arrive in: a podcast appearance, not a press conference, with the President of the United States telling a former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that “the Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least, many, fifteen places.’” He then said, twice, that the Republicans “ought to nationalize the voting.”

The constitutional posture is straightforward. Article I, Section 4, the Elections Clause, vests the power to set the times, places, and manner of elections in the state legislatures. Congress may alter such regulations by statute. The President has no such authority and never has. The proposition that a sitting President could direct, by his own action, the manner in which states administer their elections is not contested by serious legal scholars. It is not a question with two sides.

The White House response, when issued, did not defend the underlying assertion. The statement pivoted to legislative proposals: the SAVE Act, photo identification, restrictions on mail voting. The Senate’s own Republican leader, asked directly, said he did not favor federalizing elections.

That is, in this town, in this year, what passes for a check.

It is worth noting the venue. The remarks were not delivered from a lectern, with prepared text and a fact-checking apparatus standing behind them. They were delivered into a microphone at a friendly outlet, in a conversation, in the unhurried register of a man who is no longer being interrupted by anyone whose job depends on accuracy. The casualness is the point. Statements that, twenty years ago, would have been the lead at every paper for a week now arrive in the same place and with the same weight as any other piece of weekend audio.

The constitutional issue is not new. The casualness is. A President of the United States, on a Monday, said he and his party should take over the conduct of elections in fifteen states. By Wednesday it had been replaced, on the cycle, by a different remark.

This is how the small fish gets eaten by the small fish.

Calmly documenting the decline.