Trump's 'political superpower' will keep him on ballot despite insurrection: columnist

The evidence is plain to see — Donald Trump is an insurrectionist who ordered his followers to ‘take their country back” as they stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to deny a legitimate election, a New York Times columnist wrote Friday.

But the ex-president’s “political superpower” means the U.S. Supreme Court will not be throwing him off the ballot, added Jamelle Bouie.

“If Trump has a political superpower, it’s that other people believe he has political superpowers,” he wrote. “They believe that any effort to hold him accountable will backfire. They believe that he will always ride a wave of backlash to victory. They believe that challenging him on anything other than his terms will leave him stronger than ever. Most of this is false. But to the extent that it is true, it has less to do with the missed shots — to borrow an aphorism from professional sports — than it does with the ones not taken in the first place.”

His comment was an attack on the argument that Trump should not be booted from the ballot under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment clause because of fears of what such a move would do to democracy, coupled with concerns of repercussions from Trump’s supporters.

The clause states anybody who has taken part in an insurrection against the U.S. cannot hold political office. It has been used to remove him from ballots in Colorado and Maine so far, both of which decisions are being appealed.

"There is a real question of whether this attempt to protect American democracy — by removing a would-be authoritarian from the ballot — is itself a threat to American democracy. Will proponents and supporters of the 14th Amendment option effectively destroy the village in order to save it?” asked Bouelle.

He continued, “In 2020, President Trump went to the voting public of the United States and asked for another four years in office. By a margin of 51 percent to 47 percent, the voting public of the United States said no. More important, Trump lost the Electoral College, 306 to 232, meaning there were enough of those voters in just the right states to deny him a second term.

“The people decided. And Trump said, in so many words, that he didn’t care. What followed, according to the final report of the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, was an effort to overturn the results of the election.”

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That, he wrote, was undeniably an insurrection which should — on paper, at least — make upholding the 14th Amendment a no-brainer.

“Trump sought and actively tried to subvert constitutional government and overturn the results of the presidential election. And what he could not do through the arcane rules and procedures of the Electoral College, he tried to do through the threat of brute force, carried out by an actual mob,” he wrote.

“Looked at this way, the case for disqualifying Trump through the 14th Amendment is straightforward.”

But, he added, “The real issue with disqualifying Trump is less constitutional than political. Disqualification, goes the argument, would bring American democracy to the breaking point.”

“ … if we take the Constitution seriously, then Trump, by dint of his own actions, should be off the board."

“Not that he will be,” he said — and that’s because of the “the zone of exception that exists around the former president.”