Booting Trump from the ballot is the best way to prevent a second Jan. 6

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Thursday over whether or not Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot, as both the plain language and rich history of the 14th Amendment undeniably show is legally required. If the Supreme Court rules for Trump, it will be strictly due to their thorough corruption and politicization. As Vox’s legal reporter Ian Millhiser argues, the arguments for keeping Trump on the ballot are “embarrassingly weak.” Anyone who doubts this should re-read the Constitution, which couldn’t be clearer: Anyone who has “previously taken an oath” of office and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” cannot run again. 

In the face of bulletproof legal reasoning against Trump, many of the nervous nellies who don’t want to see the law followed have shifted tactics, warning that following the Constitution is simply too dangerous because MAGA-Americans will have a tantrum over it. On Monday, Politico published an expert round-up with headlines that made it seem like the threat of violence is simply too great to go forward with enforcing the law. “Mass far-right protests involving gun-toting vigilantes,” warns one dire pullquote. “‘National divorce’ would gain new momentum,” blares another. “Trigger serial, overlapping waves of resistance,” threatens yet another. 

If one didn’t read past headlines — and the response on social media suggests most did not — this all seems like scary stuff indeed. In reality, however, most of these experts were not that worried about some violent MAGA uprising — if the Supreme Court does the right and proper thing. Additionally, most of these folks actually argue that fear of MAGA violence is not a reason to avoid the legally sound decision, because even if there is violence, the need to preserve our Constitution and democracy far outweighs that concern. Plus, as I’ve argued before, if you give in to MAGA threats, all you’re doing is encouraging them to use violence to undermine democracy even more. 

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But really, the arguments run deeper than that, for one simple reason: The single best way to prevent future MAGA violence, especially in the long term, is to take Trump off the ballot.

The potential for violence will only grow as Election Day draws nearer, as the MAGA movement feels the end of democracy coming closer to their grasp. The sooner their hopes of a Trump dictatorship are dashed, the less likely they will be able to respond with the organization and outrage necessary to make another January 6 happen. 

As much as he wishes otherwise, Trump simply doesn’t have a standing army to mount a military coup. Any effort to steal the 2024 race will have to look like his efforts to steal the 2020 race: By cheating and defrauding the electoral process to illegally seize power. Trump turned to violence after the 2020 election only after exhausting every avenue to get judges and state officials to steal it for him. This time around, he’s likely to encourage violence much sooner, to make up for not having presidential authority to mount a pressure campaign. As long as Trump is on the ballot, there are multiple targets he can direct MAGA terrorists toward in his efforts to steal the election. He’s already prompting them to attack polling booths in urban and minority neighborhoods. The haphazard efforts to target vote-counting centers could be more organized this time around. If President Joe Biden wins again, the state-level certification ceremonies of Biden electors could be threatened. And, of course, there could be more violence in and around January 6, 2025, as Trump will undoubtably once again pressure Congress to steal the election for him.

On Sunday, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, seeded the possibility of another Capitol insurrection on ABC News, by arguing that the outcome should not be determined by the voters in those states. Instead, he proposed “the U.S. Congress should have fought over it” instead of simply accepting the will of the voters. By pushing the idea that Congress can and should have the power to throw out an election they don’t like, Vance is starting the rationalization process that could very well lead to another riot. 

All Republican coup ideas depend on the assumption that it will be a close enough election to steal. If Trump isn’t on the ballot, it wrecks all their plans. There may be a lot of angry redhats out there, but there won’t be any evident way to use violence to affect the outcome. January 6 happened because they were given real reason to believe they could steal the election by blocking the counting of votes. So sure, there may be some lashing out if Trump is taken off the ballot, but without a plan for how their violence will change the outcome, a lot fewer Trump supporters will be willing to take the risk. 

One expert Politico interviewed did note that removing Trump from the ballot would likely prevent violence, no matter how furious it would make his supporters. Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes that Trump’s campaign “will probably generate so many violent incidents,” and that if Trump loses, “his disbelieving supporters are likely to engage in major violence.” While there may be some incidents of violence if he’s taken off the ballot, she points out that they will be diffuse, making it much easier for law enforcement to deal with than a centralized attack like we saw on January 6. Basically, MAGA will be violent one way or another, but much less so without a goal — stealing the election for Trump — that the violence is meant to achieve. 

Kleinfeld’s point about how the potential for violence is lower the further away from the election got bolstered on Tuesday, when the D.C. appeals court ruled that Trump is not immune from prosecution for January 6. As expected, Trump reacted to the verdict with his usual all-caps posts on Truth Social. He’s clearly implying someone else should risk their life or freedom in reaction, while he sits safely at Mar-a-Lago.

But despite Trump’s self-pitying hyperbole, the response to Tuesday’s decision from the MAGA base was …. nothing. None of the gun-toting vigilantes clashing with leftists that we were warned about. People didn’t even really leave their houses to protest. Even the response on Twitter, which has turned into a rat’s nest of MAGA-fried idiocy under Elon Musk’s leadership, was surprisingly muted. It’s not because they were taken by surprise, either. The decision has been anticipated for weeks, but no one in MAGA world seemed to have used that time to organize any kind of response, much less a violent one. It’s a reminder that months out from the election is a low point in MAGA energies, which means that it’s also the best chance of heading off future violence at the pass by removing him from the ballot. 

No doubt detractors will dismiss this argument as partisan wishcasting from someone who wants Biden to win. In reality, however, it would not be great for Biden if Trump is removed from the ballot soon. Biden’s best chance of winning in November is against Trump. If the Supreme Court moved quickly to take Trump off the ballot this month, that would give Republicans a chance to nominate someone, such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has a much better chance at winning.

Deep down inside, the power players in the GOP know that this would be a huge relief. They all live in constant terror that they’ll be the next Republican whose career is sacrificed to appease Trump’s endless appetite for ruining members of his own party. As former vice president Mike Pence would know, it’s often Republicans who are in danger if Trump sends his goons to commit violence on his behalf. If the Supreme Court was smart, they’d take this chance to get rid of him for good so they can move forward with garden variety Republicans that share all their backwards views, but don’t enforce their will so much with violence.