Best way to beat Trump? At the polls

Mark Barabak:

“There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” Newsom said in a statement issued last week. “But in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”

The governor was correct on both counts.

Trump, who channels Mussolini when he isn’t plagiarizing Hitler, is, in fact, a pestilence preying on America and its freedoms. He must never, ever get remotely close to holding public office again.

But a court ruling or some administrative sleight-of-hand is not the way to beat him.

Banishing Trump from the ballot would only turn him into a martyr and, as his repeated criminal indictments have shown, Trump is a virtuoso at victimhood. He and the MAGA movement need to be defeated — soundly and unequivocally — at the ballot box.

Some argue that allowing Trump to run in 2024 is too risky because, well, he might win. But that’s how our political system works, like it or not. Voters decide.

The time to punish Trump for Jan. 6 and politically neuter him came in February 2021 when 43 Republican senators voted to acquit the scheming ex-president after his impeachment in the House.

Several of those senators, including Texas’ Ted Cruz and Florida’s Rick Scott, are up for reelection next year. Voters in their states can hold them to account, if they choose.

Ending Trump’s candidacy via decree would also worsen the lack of faith in our shaky elections process, convincing a not-insignificant portion of the voting population that the system is rigged against Trump, just as he falsely and incessantly claims.

But what if Trump wins the GOP nomination and then loses the White House again? Some fear Trump will refuse to acknowledge his defeat, a stance that seems about as certain as New Year’s Day arriving on Jan. 1.

So what? Let Trump spew his gaseous claims — which have proven their own renewable energy source — and he can continue to lead his party to defeat at the polls, as he did in three straight elections from 2018 to 2022.

As long as Republicans remain in Trump’s dangerous thrall, they deserve to lose.