With it becoming ever-clearer that nothing in the courts is likely to stop Trump — polls show he can still win as a convicted felon from a jail cell — attention has turned to the third dirty solution, driving him off the ballot in as many states as possible to enable a Joe Biden walk-on win. The vehicle for this is supposedly the 14th Amendment, Section Three.

Section Three was ratified in 1868 following the Civil War as a way to keep former Confederate officials out of government. It reads in whole "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." (emphasis added)

The obvious ploy is to claim Trump engaged in some sort of insurrection on January 6 and with that making him ineligible to be president, his name should be automatically (self-enacting) removed from all ballots. Easier said than done; this use of the 14th Amendment is malarkey, will not succeed, and is simply another attempt at politically decapitating Donald Trump instead of beating him at the ballot box.

The problems with the 14th Amendment strategy begin with the question of whether the prohibition still exists. Written in 1868 to affect Confederate officials, the Article was overturned by Congress on behalf of several individuals. They could do the same for Trump. Then in 1872, the disabilities were removed, by a blanket act, from all persons except Senators and Representatives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States. Twenty-six years later, Congress enacted law that said the disability imposed by Section Three… incurred heretofore, is hereby removed.