QOTD -- The Irredeemable Insurrectionist

 

In keeping with the theme of today's anniversary and the subsequent Constitutional issue at hand (see post below), Jamelle Bouie asks, in The New York Times, "If Trump Is Not An Insurrectionist, What Is He?"  Flowing from that, Bouie addresses the issue of whether it's undemocratic to bar the Malignant Loser from the ballot:

The unspoken assumption behind the idea that Trump should be allowed on the ballot and that the public should have the chance to choose for or against him yet again is that he will respect the voice of the electorate. But we know this isn’t true. It wasn’t true after the 2016 presidential election — when, after winning the Electoral College, he sought to delegitimize the popular vote victory of his opponent as fraud — and it was put into stark relief after the 2020 presidential election.

Trump is not simply a candidate who does not believe in the norms, values and institutions we call American democracy — although that is troubling enough. Trump is all that and a former president who used the power of his office to try to overturn constitutional government in the United States.

Is it antidemocratic to disqualify Trump from office and deny him a place on the ballot? Does it violate the spirit of democratic life to deny voters the choice of a onetime officeholder who tried, under threat of violence, to deny them their right to choose? Does it threaten the constitutional order to use the clear text of the Constitution to hold a former constitutional officer accountable for his efforts to overturn that order?

The answer is no, of course not...

The Republicans- in- robes on the Supreme Court could not escape ruling on this fundamental issue, as much as they might have wished.  But, whatever the decision (Bouie expects them to weasel a way to allow the Malignant Loser on the ballot), delegitimatizing election results that don't go their way will remain key to the Malignant Loser's Christofascist Republican playbook.  They're all irredeemable insurrectionists now.

QOTD -- The 14th Suggestion

"...The 14th Amendment is treated as a suggestion but rarely imposed in full measure when the status quo will be upended. This was perhaps most famously on display in 1955, in the case of Brown II, when the Supreme Court undercut its majestic decision of a year earlier in Brown v. Board of Education, by hedging on the immediate end to segregated schools and counseling instead that local officials should move with “all deliberate speed.”

"The Colorado court’s approach to Section 3 continues this tradition. To find that a president incited a violent insurrection against the United States but hold that such a president can still run for public office — indeed to return to the presidency itself — could not stand in starker opposition to the words and spirit of Section 3.

"The 14th Amendment has once again proved too bold for the judges empowered to interpret it. Political forces are at play again, this time fearful of a backlash if Trump is removed from the ballot. As this case makes its way through the appellate process and, most likely, to the Supreme Court, it should be understood in the context of how the timidity and unwillingness of judges to acquiesce to the judgment of the 14th Amendment’s framers effectively derailed our democracy’s promise after Reconstruction and until the mid-20th century. We must ensure that it does not do the same in the 21st." -- Sherrilyn Ifill, Harvard Law professor and former President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, concluding an op/ ed on the judicial branch's history of pusillanimity when it comes to enforcing the 14th Amendment.  Colorado Judge Sarah Wallace's decision not to bar the insurrectionist Malignant Loser from being on Colorado's ballot, after finding that he incited an insurrection, will be appealed all the way to the Republican Supreme Court.