Should Socialists Support Removing Trump From the Ballot?

A long-shot campaign to remove Donald Trump from the presidential ballot in states across the US raises an important question about the best tactics for fighting the right.

(Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr)

Efforts to remove Donald Trump from the presidential ballot this year are underway in more than half the states in the US, and advocates of the approach have already succeeded in doing so in Maine and Colorado. The push raises an interesting question about how to fight the far right, one without an easy answer. 

I’ve tried to collect the strongest arguments for and against the attempt to remove Trump from state ballots. My thoughts are still forming, and I’m open to being swayed either way — I’m an “undecided voter” on this issue! So I want to know what you think. Vote in the poll or leave a comment below.

The Case for Removal

Argument 1: It’s the right thing to do.

Advocates for removing Trump from the ballot start with a strong but intuitive moral argument. Trump represents an enormous threat to Americans’ political and civil liberties. The January 6 attacks were a real if badly botched attempt to force Congress to keep Trump in office — an attempted “insurrection.” 

Therefore there should be no doubt about the need to prevent Trump by any means necessary from returning to power (and it just so happens that the US Constitution forbids those who have participated in an insurrection from holding government office). The socialist writer

Joe Mayall

made an argument along these lines a few days ago.

Argument 2: The Weimar precedent.

Knowing what we know now, wouldn’t it have been best if Weimar Germany had done everything possible to prevent Adolf Hitler and the Nazis from taking power through elections? Antidemocratic groups have no right to use democratic spaces to spread their politics. We should do everything to deny politicians like Trump a platform, including taking steps to remove them from state ballots.

Argument 3: Suppressing the far right works.

“You can’t argue with results,” some might say. Look at Greece: the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, which in 2014 won almost 10 percent of the vote in European Parliament elections, met fierce resistance from popular and left-wing movements in Greece and was finally crushed by the courts in 2020. 

The courts ruled that Golden Dawn was a criminal organization responsible for murder and political violence. The leadership wasn’t just banned from running for elections — they were imprisoned. (Though others on the left warn that while Golden Dawn as a party may no longer be a menace, its ideas have permeated more “respectable” conservative parties in Greece and its influence is still felt. And new parties of the far right are also filling the void left by the criminalization of Golden Dawn.) The party hasn’t been able to recover since. Hardball tactics ought to be applied against the far right in the United States as well, starting at a minimum with denying Trump the ability to run for president.

Argument 4: Our comrades on the left elsewhere are also fighting to ban the far right.

From Germany, where some on the center-left and left are championing the push to ban the Alternative for Germany party, to Brazil, where comrades on the left supported banning Jair Bolsonaro from running again, socialists are backing these kinds of actions to crack down on the far right. Why should the US left take a different approach?

The Case Against Removal

Argument 1: It’s a doomed effort…

While we might wish it were otherwise, the judicial system in the United States is stacked to favor the right. The case for removing Trump from the ballot will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court, and with a 6-3 Republican majority it is almost certain to come to Trump’s aid. (Though advocates for renewal might argue in turn that you never know until you try. Perhaps enough of the elite layer of the GOP is genuinely frightened and/or jealous of Trump’s rising power that they might bring pressure to bear against members of the Supreme Court to confirm Trump’s removal.)

Argument 2: …that will only further radicalize the far right.

Not only is the attempt to remove Trump from the ballot a doomed effort, but it will have the added negative effect of further radicalizing his right-wing base, who will only grow more paranoid about elite liberal attempts to suppress them. 

Argument 3: Only a democratic majority can beat Trump, not courts and legal cases.

Even if the Supreme Court had a Democratic majority that might rule in favor of the case to remove, the only real way to defeat the far right is through an open contest in which “the people decide” and the right is finally beaten decisively, breaking their spirits. Presidential candidate Cornel West made this argument: “we don't want the courts deciding the outcome of elections — this power must reside with and for the people.” Even Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has made a version of it. 

Nor is this just a practical argument about what will “work best” to defeat Trump. Some might argue that judges deciding who can and can’t run for office actually does smack of rigging an election. There could even be something philosophically or ideologically wrong, at least for committed small-d democrats, about unelected judges deciding for the people who their representatives should be.

Argument 4: There’s a slippery slope here that will bite the left in the ass in the future.

Socialists are all too familiar with government attempts at political repression. The McCarthyite Red Scare, and the repression of Socialist Party activists more than a century ago — including the 1919 expulsion (carried out by force by armed police) of New York Socialist assembly members from the state legislature — are an important part of our history. While we might detest Trump’s politics, it’s not too hard to imagine a successful attempt to remove him from the ballot serving as a precedent for future attacks on the rights of socialists to run for office — perhaps because they participated in civil disobedience in solidarity with Palestine.

Argument 5: The Trump threat is overstated.

Some on the left may still hold the view, as well, that the Trump threat to political rights and civil liberties is overstated. They may argue that January 6 was not an insurrection but some kind of unplanned riot, and that while Trump’s politics might be detestable, they’re not qualitatively different from those of many prior Republican and even Democratic administrations. The attempts to remove him from the ballot and prevent him from running for election are therefore dangerous and even hysterical overreaches on the part of his liberal opponents.

What Do You Think?

I’m still thinking through this question but starting to piece together what I think. I’m very interested in your perspective. Vote in the poll below, drop a comment, or message me directly.