Stop Preemptively Surrendering To Trump And His Anti-Democratic Thugs

Let’s be more like Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.

Maine joined Colorado this week and barred insurrectionist in chief Donald Trump from its primary ballot. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows determined that Trump had violated the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.

The Associated Press reports:

“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

The Trump campaign immediately slammed the ruling. “We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.

---

---

Oh no! Donald Trump and his stooges are complaining that the upcoming election is rigged and that if Trump loses, it’s only because Democrats stole it. That is not brand new information. Trump said the same crap in 2016 and later in 2020, when he set the stage in advance for his attempted coup. This is all the more reason why Trump’s name should appear nowhere near a ballot. He actively undermines faith in elections, which inevitably leads to violence.

But, hey, what if we just beat Trump decisively at the ballot box, like characters in an Aaron Sorkin script? Yes, that’s certainly a thought … that an idiot might have.

Here’s Idiot Number One, Maine’s senior US Senator Susan Collins:

Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a Secretary of State chosen by the Legislature.   The Secretary of State’s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned.

And here’s Idiot Number Two, US House Rep. from Maine, Jared Golden:

I voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the January 6th Insurrection. I do not believe he should be re-elected as President of the United States. However, we are a nation of laws, therefore until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.

The 14th Amendment doesn’t require a criminal conviction to disqualify an insurrectionist. Golden’s short-term memory still functions, so he recalls that he voted to impeach Trump after January 6. Collins was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict him. This was not a criminal trial, but a successful Senate conviction would’ve nonetheless disqualified Trump from holding federal office again. There isn’t even an appeal process, unlike in a criminal trial. In other words, I don’t know what the hell these two are talking about here.

Collins laments that removing Trump from the ballot “denies Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice.” However, Trump specifically tried to deny voters in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan the opportunity to choose the president of their choice. His assault on democracy might’ve ended (temporarily) on January 6 but it didn’t start there. He refused to concede the election he’d obviously lost, blocked the peaceful transfer of power, and tried to outright steal the Electoral College victory from Joe Biden. He hasn’t denied any of this! He all but shouts, “Damn right, I ordered the Code Red!” to anyone who’ll listen. If he loses again, there’s no reason to believe he won’t sic another unhinged mob on the Capitol. This is why you don’t let unrepentant election-denying insurrectionists run for president again and try debating them on abortion rights and foreign policy like they’re a normal candidate.

Even liberal writer Jeet Heer at The Nation seems to suffer from 2020 amnesia. In his article, “More Democracy, Not the Courts, Will Defeat Trump’s Authoritarianism,” he argues that “the 14th Amendment gambit is a distraction from the larger real project of building a solid pro-democracy majority.”

Look, I was alive and watching lots of HGTV in 2020, so I clearly recall that we built a solid pro-democracy majority that decisively rejected Trump by seven million votes nationally and 74 votes in the Electoral College. There was plenty of democracy in 2020! But ultimately it took the courts and brave election officials to defeat Trump’s coup attempt. Trump filed 62 baseless lawsuits contesting election processes, vote counting, and the vote certification process in nine separate states. If the courts hadn’t held firm, he might’ve succeeded in disenfranchising millions of (predominately minority) voters and remaining in power against the people’s will.

Beneath all the confounding circular logic and selective memory, there’s also abject fear of Trump and his violent supporters. After the Maine decision was announced, political consultant Matthew Dowd declared this constitutional remedy somehow “bad for democracy.” He wrote on the generic social media site, “What worries me is that red states will now start disqualifying Biden.” This might seem like a very complex legal argument, but bear with me: Joe Biden has never rejected the results of a free and fair election, blocked the peaceful transfer of power, and pressured election officials to violate their oaths and “find him” the votes necessary to “win.” (There are Democratic governors in Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — all key swing states — but no one assumes Biden will pressure them to overturn his loss.)

Dowd is advocating for nothing less the presumptive surrender to fascism, and he’s not alone. It’s naive at best and disingenuous at worst to suggest that MAGA cultists will actually accept Trump’s second defeat at the ballot box, considering they didn’t accept his first one. We’re in for a fight regardless. But this nation can’t endure if we won’t fairly apply the law to a fascist like Trump out of fear that a major political party will then retaliate without regard for the actual law. That’s not a functioning democratic state but rather a reign of terror.

Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.

Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more fun content.