(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . SCOTUS is Right to Keep Trump on the Ballot [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-03-05 The Supreme Court has ruled that “…States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.” This means that states cannot remove Donald Trump from the ballot in November. While the left is collectively suffering this ruling as a death blow to the Constitution, it’s actually a surprising affirmation that, even with the MAGA driven rise of the Confederacy, the Union still stands. For now. It’s important to remember that the Court’s decision was unanimous. It wasn’t another 6-3 ruling where the radical right justices overpowered the minority left. It was a case where all of the justices agreed that states could not apply Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to federal candidates. Granted, they did not agree on how the disqualification clause should be executed at the federal level, but they did agree that it would take a federal effort to remove a Presidential candidate, or any federal level candidate, from the ballot. In a political season where white nationalists are actively dismantling the Reconstruction Amendments, have recently attempted to overthrow the government, and continue their forward march towards dismantling Democracy, SCOTUS has reaffirmed that the federal government still has authority over our present day confederacy of states. The Union still stands. As many have pointed out, this is a stark departure from the Court’s rulings on voting rights, abortion, and masking. In each of these cases SCOTUS has allowed the volatile patchwork of suppression, forced birth, illness and death to play out state by state. This has caused chaos, confusion and trauma across the nation, especially for people of color, women, and people living with disabilities. The Confederate model of governance is particularly scathing for minorities. Democrats have rightfully noted that the Court’s ruling on disqualification is a dramatic departure from their Confederacy resurrecting norm, but the argument the SCOTUS ruling was a unanimous defense of Donald Trump doesn’t hold water. Justices Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor aren’t trying to create openings for insurrectionists to take control of the White House. They are attempting to defend it from the Confederacy. When the Voting Rights Act was all but completely neutralized by the conservative majority through the case of Brnovich vs the DNC (2021), Justice Kagan wrote in her dissent, “The Voting Rights Act was meant to replace state and local election rules that needlessly make voting harder for members of one race than for others. The text of the Act perfectly reflects that objective. The ‘democratic’ principle it upholds is not one of States’ rights as against federal courts. The democratic principle it upholds is the right of every American, of every race, to have equal access to the ballot box. The majority today undermines that principle as it refuses to apply the terms of the statute. By declaring some racially discriminatory burdens inconsequential, and by refusing to subject asserted state interests to serious means-end scrutiny, the majority enables voting discrimination.” Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson’s predecessor Breyer wrote in their Dobbs dissent, “…the Court does not act ‘neutrally’ when it leaves everything up to the States. Rather, the Court acts neutrally when it protects the right against all comers. And to apply that point to the case here: When the Court decimates a right women have held for 50 years, the Court is not being ‘scrupulously neutral.’ It is instead taking sides: against women who wish to exercise the right, and for States (like Mississippi) that want to bar them from doing so. JUSTICE KAVANAUGH cannot obscure that point by appropriating the rhetoric of even-handedness.” Standing once again in favor of the Union over the Confederacy, the three Democrat appointed justices affirmed that it is the job of the federal government to decide who and who cannot appear on a ballot for the Presidency. In their concurring opinion, Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson explain: “Our Constitution leaves some questions to the States while committing others to the Federal Government. Federalism principles embedded in that constitutional structure decide this case. States cannot use their control over the ballot to “undermine the National Government.” U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U. S. 779, 810 (1995). That danger is even greater “in the context of a Presidential election.” Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 794–795 (1983). State restrictions in that context “implicate a uniquely important national interest” extending beyond a State’s “own borders.” Ibid. No doubt, States have significant “authority over presidential electors” and, in turn, Presidential elections. Chiafalo v. Washington, 591 U. S. 578, 588 (2020). That power, however, is limited by “other constitutional constraint[s],” including federalism principles.” There are those that would argue that this ruling flies in the face of Constitutional law. David French, for example, has argued that SCOTUS has “erased past of the Constitution” through this ruling. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Constitution was written to bind the nation together, not tear it apart. The Reconstruction Amendments were written to subjugate Confederate ideals for the strength of a protected Union. The justices did not argue that Trump could not be removed from the ballot. They concluded that in order to be removed, it must be done by Congress. And Congress has responded. Jamie Raskin has indicated that he will present legislation designed to keep Trump and future insurrectionists from running for office at the federal level. It will likely face stonewalling from the House of Representatives, but it is a start. As Raskin said himself, "I don't have a lot of hope that Speaker [Mike] Johnson will allow us to bring enforcement legislation to the floor, but we have to try and do it." In the meantime, Democrats must do the work of preventing an insurrectionist from taking control of the White House ourselves. We must overwhelmingly defeat Trump at the polls. We must vote Blue down ballot so we can pass Raskin’s legislation should it stall out in the current Congress. And we must also prepare for the state level disqualifications that SCOTUS has opened the door to. The ruling also states, “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office.” There is no reason to believe that Republicans wouldn’t readily use this power to remove any and all Democrats they see as a threat to their authority. The chaos we have avoided at the federal level will likely be seen in future elections at the state level. If the Confederacy was given the authority to decide who and who could not be disqualified from the ballot, we would be ushered into an era where Red States would refuse to allow Blue candidates to run and vice versa. Before November, Red States would move to disqualify Biden. Blue states would move to disqualify Trump, and we would have a Cold Civil War on our hands for the White House. There could be no fair resolution to this scenario, and there would likely be violence. There are many that argue that the rule of law must be upheld despite the potential consequences. They should rest assured that the rule of law was upheld. For now, the Union still stands, much to the chagrin of the neo-Confederacy. And in November, Democrats need to continue this work by defeating them once again at the polls. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/5/2227664/-SCOTUS-is-Right-to-Keep-Trump-on-the-Ballot?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/