Look, I understand that Republicans have always criticized Democrats and Democrats have always criticized Republicans.

But it’s one thing to tar your opponents as out of touch, or wrong on this, or soft on that, or unfit to lead. It’s quite another to accuse the other major party of “rigging” the nominating process for its presidential candidate. False charges like this one are exactly what Putin and our other adversaries want to see.

As The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin wrote after Super Tuesday: “Welcome to Campaign 2020, where Russia will be trying to sow confusion and conspiracy theories and Trump will be amplifying Russian disinformation – even as U.S. security agencies try to expose it. That puts a heavy burden on ordinary voters to sort out the real from the fake.”

The bottom line is this: Russian operatives are actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections, to undermine the faith Americans put in those elections, and our faith in democracy itself.