Yes, the damage to the country might be severe, even irreparable; but a mere electoral loss would not solve the problems he has left us, and his followers would remain to haunt our future and obstruct all our efforts to heal. Yes we must do what we can to discredit this toxic fascism from the American soul once and for all, but I doubt we will be successful. Just think, if Hitler had negotiated a peace in 1944, Naziism would still be there and still a danger. He had to be allowed to bring the world to the brink of destruction before Nazi Germany could be wiped out forever. And even today, the glowing embers of fascism remain, ready to smolder on to a full blaze without warning.

Trump has to be allowed to almost wreck the country, to discredit himself and his philosophy so irreparably that it can never come back. To fully stamp out that disease by retaliation as you suggest would only drive it underground, to install a permanent right wing fifth column. That's what happened at the end of the Civil War, and we can see that Reconstruction only led to the KKK, Jim Crow and then segregation. Lincoln knew how to genuinely reconcile with the South, but his assassination only allowed the gangrene of Confederacy and slavery to spread in other, slightly less virulent forms.

No, if Trump is defeated at the polls, his followers and philosophy will remain, and mere persecution will only strengthen them for the inevitable next time. You cannot externally drive out a movement based on original sin, it must be allowed to poison itself from within. Besides, if you use their own methods against them, you really become no better than they are. After a while, our campaign to drive out the Right would simply become an excuse to perpetually extend the hegemony of the Left. This is the fundamental error Conservative politics has reintroduced to the American system, that the "other side" is so evil that ANYTHING we do to destroy them is justifiable, if not mandatory. Not even the most progressive Constitution can protect us from that kind of reckless hate. This is what the Republican party under Trump has become. We must not let it happen to us too.

No matter who wins the next election, Americas's full promise and glory will be postponed for another century. The fall of Communism did little to reform Russia, did it?