This week in the fight to save democracy: An Ohio election & the 14th Amendment.

We are not in the end game yet, but I can see it. Well, more honestly, I can see the path, if not yet the courage, though I am convinced the courage will come, because it must, because the cause is just, and because we are capable of much greatness.

I was living a good life during the Obama years. My business was largely overseas, so I hadn’t paid as much attention to our politics as I had earlier in my life when I served in both elected and appointed offices. But the election of Donald Trump turned my life upside down. I left my business overseas and came back to Chicago to fight for our democracy.

At that time, Wisconsin and Michigan and Indiana and Iowa and Kentucky were red states. Illinois had a Republican governor. Across much of the country Americans looked at labor unions as nothing more than one side of a contract dispute.  It seemed to me, and to many others, that the right wing in America was on the march, and with Mr. Trump it had a cruel and autocratic edge.

I brought labor unions and business leaders together to rescue the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Reader and began to elevate voices that needed to be heard. When the Operating Engineers and Carpenters and other unions stepped up to help rescue a beloved news brand, minds began to change. People started to Labor as once again engaged in bigger questions about who we are. Editorially, we took strong stands that helped Democrat J.B. Pritzker oust the anti-union Republican in the governor’s mansion. I then left the news world and turned to the partisan fight in the states around us.

I tell you this as background because I did nothing that millions of others did not also do. During those years, organizations like Indivisible, Move On, Swing Left and Run for Something became on-ramps for a vast mobilization. Old school, and let’s be honest, corrupt, State Democratic parties, like the one I was so familiar with in Illinois, were transformed by superb, value-driven leaders like Lavora Barnes in Michigan, Ken Martin in Minnesota, and Ben Wikler in Wisconsin. They made it possible for people from every corner of their states to get involved. And people did.

This is the point: when our democracy was threatened, when an autocratic movement targeted our rights and freedoms, when a political movement arose that did not see us as one nation, but rather as a racially divided pie they could carve, Americans everywhere volunteered to fight back.

The results have been stunning. Labor unions and the working people they represent have a renewed place in the American economy and in the national psyche. Democrats have taken charge in Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota, and have transformed their governments in ways that represent our values. These governments no longer favor fossil fuels over cleaner energy sources. They protect reproductive freedom. They invest in education and training. And, contrary to Republican predictions, they have attracted vast amounts of private capital to build and expand businesses.

In Wisconsin, where the nation’s most partisan gerrymander protected the Republican legislature, a Democrat, Tony Evers, has now twice been elected Governor. Recent changes in the makeup of that state’s supreme court mean gerrymandering litigation will now get a fair hearing. Similarly, in Red Ohio, the next most gerrymandered state, this week the overreaching autocrats suffered a huge defeat when they tried to change the state’s constitution, in part to stop an amendment to enshrine the right of reproductive freedom. Now Ohioans are moving from defense to offense, following the path that other great lakes states already blazed.

The reaction to these victories for democracy was predictable. The right has doubled down on its autocratic and lawless behavior. When the United States’ Supreme Court, no fan of voting rights, struck down the racial gerrymander in Alabama, what did Republicans do? They ignored the ruling and sued again. Mr. Trump, the party leader does not even pretend to care about the rule of law, let alone democratic norms and institutions.

So, we enter this next election cycle with everything at stake and we know what we are up against.  Now it is time to be as tough as we are determined. This week conservative legal scholars, including a former clerk to Chief Justice Roberts, told reporters at the New York Times that Donald Trump is not qualified to be on the ballot.

They are not talking about his character or his crimes. They are talking about the constitution. Specifically, article three of the 14^th Amendment. I’ve written about that before. That’s the part of our constitution that says you can be elected as a fascist or a bigot or a crook, but if you raise your hand and swear to preserve and protect the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and you subsequently participate of encourage an insurrection, then you are no longer qualified to hold office. The scholars looked at the language of the amendment, its history and application after the Civil War, and they are convinced that only a 2/3 vote of Congress can lift the ban on Mr. Trump’s eligibility to run for office.

I know I have asked a lot of you already. We need to continue to support our friends in state after state where the fight is most fierce. Today I am asking you take on a new task. Wherever you live, call or write your state Attorney General and Secretary of State and say that you expect the law to be applied to Donald Trump, not just in the federal courts, but in their decisions when they print ballots. He is ineligible by virtue of his support of an insurrection. He must not appear on the ballot.

And once that’s sorted, we can get on with the slow process of assessing his criminal culpability in court.