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I think this is probably true. Most of the things he’s being charged with now happened decades ago. He didn’t recently try to take out a loan with inflated net worth. These events happened years ago, without comment, and without charges being filed. In fact if I recall correctly there was some concern in one of the cases that the statute of limitations would run out before the charges were filed. That’s not an evenhanded application of the law, and in fact is pretty good evidence that had Trump never been elected President, he would not be facing charges.
As far as ballot acces, I think Trump or his supporters would have a pretty strong argument that this is restraint on democracy in the sense that we’re essentially looking at a situation where one of the two major party candidates simply won’t appear on the ballot. Which means that essentially Joe Biden or the Democratic nominee if they need to put him in a care home, is simply handed the electors from any state that removes Trump with little recourse for republicans who will almost certainly nominate Trump.
Wouldn't their recourse be to not nominate Trump?
Wouldn’t the ability of the ruling party to essentially force the opposition to forego the candidate that they think can win at least problematic is a democracy?
The essential argument is that it’s perfectly okay for democrats to remove the republican nominee from the ballot is states they control, and the reason that it’s okay is that the republicans are supposed to pick someone democrats like, or once the democrats start removing the preferred candidate they’re free to un-nominate their preferred candidate for someone else. But this essentially gives democrats (and republicans if it stands into next cycle) the right to simply not put the opposition on the ballots they control. Which is not in my view a Democratic system, which at bare minimum requires that voters be allowed to vote for whoever they want to without interference.
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In which case NYS would have gotten what they wanted (by leveraging their State courts on what is clearly a Federal issue), no?
Sure, but if it were unpopular it would be a hollow victory, as Trump holds rally after rally for his chosen successor who sweeps to power as swing state voters offended by New York's actions turn out in droves.
The problem here being that there is no chosen successor to Trump, and there really can't be, because Trumpism is the incoherent and inchoate thoughts of a single, particularly inconsistent, man. In the past eight years despite the best efforts of many to seize the mantle no infrastructure has been created, the mainstream Rs who have tried to co-opt Trumpism aren't trusted and the DR true believers trying to pull Trumpism in their direction don't have a real constituency.
This kind of lawfare only works against Trump because there's no backup. If you tried this on, for example, actual Hitler, Goebbels or Himmler or Roehm would have won the election and cleaned their clocks. Crucifying St Paul didn't stop Pauline Christianity, let alone Christianity as a whole.
Now maybe you can argue that the cathedral will do the same to anyone who gets too far off the reservation, but one must admit that Trump offers a uniquely target rich environment. We should at least try a candidate without them. Doug Mastriaono was a good example of a true believer without the baggage... He faced no lawfare in his gubernatorial run but got bodied in the general election anyway.
No maybes about it -- once they have discovered this power, why would they stop? Lest we forget, "Literally Hitler" has been applied to every Republican candidate in recent memory, including Mitt Romney. (!)
It's maybe been stickier than usual due to the target-rich environment, but if state lawfare can disqualify candidates nationally you only need it to be sticky in one state -- and the opposition is really only left with one box to try.
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Hopefully they don't try it, or only try it in deep blue states like California where it's common knowledge it wouldn't affect the result. Because if there's a situation where Trump would plausibly have won if not for being stricken from the ballot, that's straight-up a stolen election and the democratic covenant against revolt is broken. There's one final "hope" insofar as there's some chance that the Republican machine would accept it, but my money would be strongly on full-scale civil war at that point since it only takes one Republican state government to declare secession; the rest would then be essentially forced to do likewise in order to avoid being asked to fight the rebels.
Honestly, at the point of "elections will be stolen if they don't go the prescribed way", I'm not even sure revolt would be wrong.
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