OPINION: Best thing NM Dems can do for Trump is to disqualify him from ballots

Nov. 9—I know a lot of my Democratic friends are feeling a little dismayed right about now.

After almost a decade of frequent comparisons to Hitler, a bogus Russian collusion hoax, two unsuccessful impeachments, prime-time TV hearings of a select committee of Congress, an FBI raid on his Florida home, a civil sexual assault case, 91 felony indictments amounting to a possible 700 years in prison and an attack on his real estate empire in a civil fraud trial in Manhattan in which no one claims to be a victim other than the judge and the prosecutor, many of my left-leaning friends had hoped President Donald J. Trump would have been little more than a cult leader by now, with a few stubborn "followers" who needed a little "formal deprogramming" to set them straight.

But it isn't working out that way.

Trump was running neck and neck with President Joe Biden in polling this summer and is running away with the Republican nomination for president, even foregoing the GOP debates, with a seemingly insurmountable lead in the run-up to the primaries.

The latest news that has rocked the presidential tundra is a New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday, which found Trump leading Biden by 4 to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania and Michigan were keystones to Trump's 2016 victory. So was Wisconsin, where the NYT/Siena poll found Trump trailing Biden by just 2 percentage points.

A repeat sweep of the Rust Belt would practically ensure a second term for Trump.

No Republican presidential candidate had won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin since President Reagan won 49 states in 1984. Add to those three states Ohio and Florida, states Trump won in 2016 and President Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012, and I can see why some of my Democratic friends are contemplating pouring ashes on their heads and covering their loins with sackcloth.

A majority of voters in the Times/Siena poll say Biden's policies have personally hurt them, and two-thirds of the electorate see the country moving in the wrong direction. Time-honored Democratic coalitions are falling apart, especially in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the divisions it has laid bare within the Democratic Party.

It gets worse. Voters under 30 favor Biden by only a single percentage point, according to the Times. Biden's lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits. Black voters are now registering 22% support in swing states for Trump, "a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times," the Times reported.

The Times analysis said Trump is poised to win more than 300 Electoral College votes, far above the 270 needed to take the White House.

In desperation, liberal groups have filed lawsuits in Colorado, Minnesota and other states to bar Trump from 2024 ballots, citing a rarely used constitutional amendment barring from office those who had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution but then "engaged in insurrection." A similar 14th Amendment case was used by a Santa Fe judge to kick an Otero County commissioner out of office in September 2022.

Commissioner Couy Griffin wasn't running for reelection and only had a few months left in office, but the rarely used clause of the 14th Amendment ratified in 1868 was successfully used by an out-of-state liberal group to remove Griffin, a duly elected commissioner, after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge for talking on a bullhorn on a Capitol Hill balcony on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump isn't likely to win New Mexico, even as he narrows Biden's lead among Hispanic voters to single digits. Biden beat Trump by almost 11 percentage points in New Mexico in 2020. A Republican hasn't won New Mexico since George W. Bush won here by less than 1 percentage point in 2004.

We are one of the most anti-Trump states in the union. Here's an example of the Trump Derangement Syndrome from a letter writer to the Journal in response to an Aug. 6 editorial:

"Never in the annals of American crime has anyone come close to his crimes. If you add up all the crimes of Al Capone, Charles Manson, TedKaczynski, Richard Nixon, Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Spiro Agnew, Michael Milken, you cannot get close to the dire straits that your hero has put the United States," wrote the writer from Santa Fe. "You can print this as a missal from one of your former readers. And while you are at it, terminate my subscription."

The letter writer has since offered two new letters to the editor, so we think he's still with us, albeit under protest.

If my Democratic friends here in New Mexico want to help Trump win the presidency, they should join Colorado and the larger effort to disqualify Trump from election ballots. Nothing says tyranny like ballot denial. Denying Trump ballot access here would help his chances in the Rust Belt, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia.

That's because Newton's third law of motion often applies in politics: to every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

Trump is climbing in the polls precisely because Americans like an underdog. They don't like a pile-on, they don't trust the media, and they want leaders with grit, perseverance and the audacity to push back. No one can deny the 45th president has all that in spades.

In their blood lust to destroy Trump, my Democratic friends can actually help him, and even put New Mexico in play, if they simply follow their California instincts and Colorado aspirations and file lawsuits seeking to prevent voters here from being able to vote for him in 2024.

Journal Opinion editor Jeff Tucker interned for Democrats in the Indiana House of Representatives in 1991, interned for a Democratic congressman on Capitol Hill in 1992, ran unsuccessfully in a Republican primary for a seat in the Indiana House in 1998, and has been on the road to recovery from politics ever since.