Trump's refusal to commit to the election result is his ultimate assault on US democracy

Not only do the president’s words carry more weight than in 2016, but he has run roughshod over convention wherever it suits his needs

So here we go again. Just as he did in 2016, Donald Trump has intimated that he will not let the result lie if he loses November's presidential election to his Democratic Party rival.

"Well, we're going to have to see what happens," Trump said when asked whether he'd commit to a peaceful transition, one of the cornerstones of American democracy. Reaching for statements about mail-in ballots and casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election – Trump has also suggested that he is planning for the result of the election to be decided by the Supreme Court.  

For Trump, this is par for the course. He was always going to run this campaign in the exact image of his last. Not painting himself as a loser, but a "winner", is a key part of that. He cares little for the constitutional norms he has to run over in the process.

The 45th president sees nothing different in this approach, he knows only one way to campaign. However, we are sitting in a much different landscape than we were in 2016. Then, Trump really was the outsider – his utterances not taken as seriously as they should have been by many, under the assumption that Hillary Clinton would win. Now, he is the incumbent – having been at the levers of power for nearly four years.

Not only do his words carry more weight, but we are currently nearing the end of a term where Trump has run roughshod over convention wherever it suits his needs. His is the politics of the personal – most noticeably about himself. Fear has been a key issue, on both sides of the political spectrum.

Trump has played on the fears of his own supporters about what is happening to "their" country and what will happen to their freedoms. On the other side, you have fears from Democrats about where the country is going and how the election will be conducted; fear and anger from the Black community in particular about how they are treated and fear from immigrants and refugees about what the future holds for them.

Add in the incendiary nature of a change to the Supreme Court that could alter American life for the next generation, and the constant spectre of military and militia groups on the streets and you have a country that is fractured in a way that leaves it at risk of an earthquake of a significant magnitude.

You could argue that in following his 2016 playbook Trump isn't completely aware of how dangerous his rhetoric is (well, he has got away with it for more than three years) but I believe that is letting him off the hook. It is his ego that is Trump's driving force, above all else – and even if he could play dumb, there are plenty in the White House and Congress that are aware of the stakes.

So what to do in this dangerous moment? We have been in a contested election before in the last 20 years – George W Bush vs Al Gore in 2000. But that involved two candidates who realised the position they were in and abided by those conditions – however much jockeying there was for position. This time, it appears it will only be Joe Biden and the Democrats who will follow such conventions.

This will put them at a disadvantage – allowing Trump to use their calls for calm as a weakness. If there is one thing in Trump's character it is that he won't ignore a change to do so. There is no ultimate umpire in a US election, the system is not built that way (at least until we get to the Supreme Court, but again, at its core that is a subjective judgement by nine people if you are minded to ignore convention).

However, the Democratic Party have little choice but to live by the conventions that have underpinned American democracy for two centuries – and that is one of many reasons why Trump's words are so dangerous.