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By Daniel W. Drezner

Speculation about how long Donald Trump will last as president has been rampant since the spring. By summer it was quite clear that: a) Trump was not going to grow up in office; and b) the best staffing in the world would not be able to make him even a mediocre president. Yes, constitutional checks and balances are still working, but that is cold comfort when so many officials and analysts are talking so casually about war with North Korea.

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The past week seemed to spark anew frenzied cries that the president is seriously unwell and therefore something must be done. The president's reported conviction that it wasn't him on the Access Hollywood tapebordered on the delusional. The plea deal with Michael Flynn reminded everyone of the legal threats that have been tapping, as of Robert Mueller gently rapping, rapping at Trump's chamber door.

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The Senate passed a garbage tax bill, even as the president's Gallup poll numbers plummeted. The White House's orchestrated leaks about Rex Tillerson's departure, clearly designed to shame him into stepping down, seemed redundant. At this point, nothing can shame Tillerson more than the job he has done as secretary of state.

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So it is no surprise that some hope the Mueller investigation will bring Trump down, or that the president will eat himself into a coronary. It is certainly possible that these things will happen. As someone who has vehemently opposed Trump for years, however, I hope they do not.

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Constitutional law experts: Congress could impeach Trump on these 3 charges | Opinion

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To be clear, it is not that I believe the Mueller investigation to be a fruitless endeavor. In a little over six months, the special counsel has managed to indict Trump’s former campaign manager and reach a plea deal with Trump’s first national security adviser. The more malfeasance Mueller and his team exposes, the better.

He has done a far better job of draining the swamp than the president of the United States.

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Still, if Trump is forced out by constitutional-but-unprecedented means, I fear the repercussions. Consider the 25th Amendment. As Ezra Klein observes — in a Vox article making the case for impeachment, no less — removing Trump this way would lead to all kinds of blowback:

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(Photo by Chris Kleponis | Pool/Getty Images)

The Founding Fathers designed impeachment for someone exactly like Donald Trump | Opinion

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Of course, this also undercuts Klein’s argument for a lower threshold for impeachment. If Trump was removed from office that way, the political blowback would probably be the same. Regardless, in contrast to the 25th Amendment, impeaching and removing Trump from office remains a true hypothetical. In this polarized age, the only way Trump would be removed from office is if Democrats win 67 seats in the Senate. That is not going to happen anytime soon.

For Trump to lose properly, it has to be at the ballot box. Trump has to run for reelection and be repudiated by American voters. He has to lose the popular vote again, get trounced in the electoral college, and see his party pay the consequences of backing the most ignorant, illiberal president in modern American history.

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Jacob T. Levy knows a lot about constitutional democracy, and over at the Niskanen Center's blog he makes a powerful case of the need for a political over a legal solution to Trump's failures as a leader:

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The absolute best way for Trump and Trumpism to be repudiated is through democratic and not merely legal means. If Doug Jones defeats Roy Moore in Alabama despite a presidential endorsement, that represents a blow to Trump in the same way he was humiliated by the Virginia state elections last month.

If the GOP loses badly in the midterms despite a healthy economy, that is an even bigger repudiation of the head of the Republican Party. And if Trump loses bigly in his quest for reelection in 2020, such a resounding defeat might shock the GOP into repudiating white identity politics.

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Electing Trump once was a fluke involving a fractured GOP, an unpopular Democrat nominee, and the Democrats having won the previous two terms. Electing Trump twice would be national suicide. If the United States has any chance at regaining its bearings as the greatest constitutional democracy in the world, the populist in chief must be revealed as genuinely unpopular. And it has to happen at the ballot box.

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Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Find him on Twitter @dandrezner

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