This week in the saga

The ballot war becomes a scoreboard. Michigan's high court declines to strike the name, and he counts the campaign like a fight record — thirty-five and one, the one being Colorado, ridiculed and stayed. Then Maine: no court this time, no bench of justices — a single secretary of state, by her own signature, removes him from the ballot, and the chapter's title has its meaning. The candidate as a case caption; the name as something a pen can cross out. He spends the year's last days wishing his enemies an early salutation the way he wished them Merry Christmas — as a threat with a bow on it — and when midnight turns the calendar he says the quiet part like a prophecy: it will be a historic one. The chronicle does not disagree.