Donald Trump’s legal team has been busy challenging decisions in Colorado and Maine to remove his name from the primary ballot. The final decision will clearly be made by the Supreme Court, where both cases will likely be struck down according to most legal scholars. But Trump won’t be alone in facing this type of challenge. It turns out that Democrats across the country are seeking to have other Republicans’ names removed from ballots. The New York Post reports that a Democrat in Pennsylvania has filed a challenge to remove the name of Congressman Scott Perry from the ballot. And he’s not the only one.
As the decisions disqualifying former President Donald Trump from the 2024 election work their way through the courts, a new filing in Pennsylvania seeks the same “ballot cleansing” by barring Rep. Scott Perry.
It’s only the latest effort targeting congressional candidates as Democrats seek to bar opponents as “insurrectionists” for questioning the election of President Biden.
We have become a nation of Madame Defarges — eagerly knitting names of those to be subject to arbitrary justice.
Former congressional candidate Gene Stilp, who’s made headlines by burning MAGA flags with swastikas outside courthouses, filed the challenge.
The Post reminds us that Cori Bush previously authored a bill that would have removed numerous Republican members from their ballots over their refusal to denounce the January 6 riots. She attracted 63 cosponsors, including the Squad for the proposed legislation, though it never went anywhere, of course. But that’s still an alarming number of members who would be willing to attempt a stunt like that.
This is happening at the state and local levels as well. In Pennsylvania, a state senator filed an ethics complaint against Republican state senator Doug Mastriano, seeking to have him tossed from the ballot. Other examples can be found in multiple other states. And not one of these people has ever been charged with insurrection, to say nothing of having been convicted of it.
We are further reminded of the blatant hypocrisy on display here. This is particularly true of Congressman Jamie Raskin. He sought to block the certification of the 2016 election, citing supposed Russian election interference and God-only-knows what else. But now he is leading the charge to have Trump preemptively removed from the ballot. The Democratic Party is full of election deniers, most notably Stacy Abrams and Hillary Clinton, but it’s apparently okay when they do it.
Perhaps we should have been able to foresee this, as disastrous and undemocratic as it all is. The Democrats and their allies can see a potential electoral disaster in the offing and they are virtually helpless to do anything about it. Joe Biden’s policies have produced a trainwreck across the country and he’s now polling only slightly higher than several sexually transmitted diseases. Democrats who haven’t spoken out against Biden’s policies are easily painted with the same brush. If Biden performs on the ballot anywhere close to where his poll numbers sit (an outcome that is far assured, but remains possible), the down-ballot headwinds could add up to a wipeout.
With all of that in mind, Democrats don’t see many options. The only way for an unpopular candidate to ensure victory is to run unopposed. Since the Republicans stubbornly refuse to simply disappear, their opponents are attempting the next best thing by trying to make them disappear as an option on election day. Could it work? It certainly doesn’t seem like it should be possible, but we’re living in the 2020s now Weirdness is part of the new fabric of reality. I won’t be completely shocked at this point if a 112-foot-tall Stay-Puft marshmallow man shows up on the ballot.