With yesterday’s one-two haymakers — personal attorney Michel Cohen going full “rat” and campaign manager (and career-long DC sleazeball) Paul Manafort getting nailed with eight felony convictions — only the most deluded Trumpist goober can still pretend our man in the Oval Office isn’t a criminal. More to the point, if you have been paying attention since way back when he was just a sleazy tabloid caricature, you know Donald “Drain the Swamp” Trump was a criminal before, during and after getting elected President of ‘Murica, USA.

In fact, as is now being confirmed in the starkest terms for those reluctant to believe, Trump’s criminality is directly related to him “winning” the presidency. Period. The guy’s naked illegality — first with paying off Bunnies and porn stars a fortnight before the election he won on the basis of 78,000 votes in three states — and second with whatever he actually did with the Rooskies in terms of illegal hacking, trading stolen e-mails and scamming Facebook cannot be separated from his ascension to the White House.

So, can we now have a serious, non-hysterical, fact-based and rational conversation about the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election?

What does The Constitution have to say about a candidate engaging in A: Criminal pay-offs and B: Conspiracy with a hostile foreign power to achieve election?

From what I’ve read, not a lot in terms of invalidating his election in the first place.

The fact there is no clear legal mechanism much less any precedent for this situation has led most people to dismiss even the discussion. I mean, that isn’t how we play the game in this most exceptional of republics.

No matter how they win — whether Joe “The Prohibition Liquor Baron” Kennedy cooking a deal with Chicago mobsters to get out the dead vote in Cook County, or George W* being waved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on a straight 5-4 partisan vote of the Supreme Court, we ‘Muricans are always admonished to accept the results with equanimity. Because … well, because that’s just how things are done here in the world’s greatest democracy.

Except that we’ve never had a situation where a candidate actively conspired with our foremost foreign adversary to get where he got. Bimbos? Sure. Rooskies? Not so much.

If you’re saying, “Whoa, Nelly! We haven’t got to that whole ‘collusion’ thing, yet,” I will only point out the fact that Trump and his bejeweled urchins have lived off the proceeds from business with Russian gangsters at least since he went belly up in Atlantic City and that that much has been laying out in plain sight for years. After that you can start factoring in the notorious meet up with the Rooskies in Trump Tower to talk, you know, “adoptions.”

Then for a special Super Duper Bonus Package you can imagine for maybe a half-second how much more vivid detail Team Mueller has on all this not even remotely sophisticated sleaze.

So what is the solution? There is no language or precedent for voiding Donald Trump’s election certificate on the basis of criminal fraud and conspiracy against the United States, and certainly none that would hand that certificate and the remainder of his term over to the candidate who actually won the popular vote by a large and convincing margin.

But if this lunatic farce continues to spiral out of control as it most certainly will with what Cohen will now tell Mueller, what Michael Flynn has already revealed to prosecutors and all the hammers that are going to drop on gormless little Donny Jr., Jared the human cipher and Ivanka the Princess of Entitlement, are we really going to sit still and accept the Trump kleptocracy being handed off to Mike Pence?

If Trump achieved the Presidency through criminal (and treasonous) means, those are the same means that put Pence there. (Never mind for the moment his own legal exposure over what he damn well had to have known about Mike Flynn and the Russians.)

With all the talk about a looming Supreme Court fight over whether Mueller can subpoena Trump, or whether a sitting President can be indicted, I think there’s an even more relevant conversation to be had about “suitable remedies” for an election decided on the basis of tawdry criminality and outright conspiracy against the Constitution.