This whole matter of Trump being taken off the Colorado primary ballot has me in a tizzy…not that the country can't survive me being in a tizzy. It always has and always will. But it's times like this I feel glad that I don't absolutely have to have an opinion on this.
I'm reading learned legal scholars explaining why it absolutely was decided according to the law while other learned legal scholars insist it wasn't. And there are kind of two different questions here: Is it legal? and Is it a good thing? Those two questions do not necessarily have the same answer and it's real easy to confuse one with the other.
I think I more or less agree with Jonathan Chait who says, "To deny the voters the chance to elect the candidate of their choice is a Rubicon-crossing event for the judiciary. It would be seen forever by tens of millions of Americans as a negation of democracy."
And I think I more or less agree with Josh Marshall. You may need a subscription to read him but he says, "I'm equivocal about the whole idea. Trump is going to win or lose the old-fashioned way — based on the votes. I have no time to be distracted by strategies to short circuit that electoral reckoning.
And I think we oughta acknowledge that Aaron Blake is right: "Trump has repeatedly pushed the idea that a candidate's eligibility for president shouldn't be left up to voters. The candidate who a court now says is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president once showed great interest in having people he disagreed with disqualified under the Constitution's standards."
So I dunno. It seems unlikely that Trump could win Colorado's electoral votes, on or off the ballot. Still, Colorado's actions, if upheld, might lead to him being kicked off ballots in swing states. It also seems unlikely the Supreme Court he stacked will deliver a decision that displeases the guy. I don't know what will get decided. I'm just happy I'm not one of the ones who'll have to decide it.