The echo of the past hangs over the 2024 presidential elections in the United States.
This Saturday marked the third anniversary of the storming of the Capitol, an insurrection instigated by then-President Donald Trump, who tried to stop the proclamation of Joe Biden’s victory to perpetuate himself in government.
While the current president stressed on Friday in a speech, delivered in a place as symbolic of the country’s independence and its democracy as Valley Forge (Pennsylvania), that on January 6, 2021 “we were on the verge of losing what is the United States.” “United,” Trump replied after a few hours in Sioux Center (Iowa), calling the hundreds of detainees in this matter “hostages” and “patriots.”
But the shadow of January 6 is even longer in its projection on the next elections. Between the speeches of Biden and Trump, the Supreme Court emerged. The highest judicial authority in the United States agreed to review Colorado’s unprecedented decision to ban Donald Trump from participating in the upcoming primary elections in that state for believing that he encouraged the insurrection. The court scheduled oral arguments for February 8. This decision places the nine justices of the high court in the middle of the 2024 electoral process, right in the middle of the primary period.
It is the most significant involvement of the Supreme Court in the electoral process since the 2000 elections, after deciding the elections in favor of George W. Bush, to the detriment of Al Gore, by five votes to four, in a partisan division of conservative and progressive judges .
There the polarization of the nation emerged and caused damage to the reputation of the institution.
His decision in this new case could have a domino effect if he ratifies the decision of the Colorado justice system. Accepting this measure would cause a national earthquake, since it would set the coordinates for any other state to establish a similar ban. Maine has already made an identical decision.
Trump claimed victory because this represents an expeditious route, in a court that consists of six conservative judges and three progressive ones, with the confidence that he will succeed. At Sioux Center he recalled that he appointed three judges, whom he praised before stating that “I hope for a fair result.” Those same judges participated three years ago in the deliberations on the alleged electoral theft, which Trump used to encourage the failed coup d’état.
Colorado became the first state to decree that a presidential candidate can be removed from the polls by a provision of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution established after the Civil War. That article was introduced to prevent insurrectionists who violated their constitutional oath from taking office and thus prevent the Confederates from returning to power.
There is a division among scholars regarding the application of this provision in the Trump affair. He, his lawyers and his followers believe that it is an interference of justice in the electoral process, something undemocratic that does not apply in his case. According to this reading, cited in some states to deny Trump’s veto request, this prevention is not applicable to presidents.
However, other experts argue that originalism (the textual reading of the Constitution) works in favor of disqualifying Trump. It is curious that conservatives always resort to this originalism to defend the right to bear arms (second amendment) or to say whatever without consequences (first amendment).
In the middle, there are those who ask whether it would be good for the country to prohibit the participation of a candidate or whether this would be an invitation to violence.
“Fear of a negative response cannot and should not cause the Supreme Court to disregard the text of the Constitution,” writes conservative David French in The New York Times. “In truth, the main reason the fear or backlash is so strong and so widely articulated is the seditious nature of the Trump movement itself,” he adds.
The judicial claim regarding the “immunity” that Trump says he deserves for being president is also on its way to the high court. This is his main allegation to be exonerated in the case for trying to annul the electoral result and instigate the storming of the Capitol.
January 6, 2021 was a dark day for most Americans (Democrats and Independents), according to polls. Still, Trump says it was “a nice day.” Many Republicans have condoned that attitude and will vote for him. The primaries will start on the 15th with the Iowa caucus.
And what is even more surprising is that a large part of conservative legislators, perhaps scared by the steel mallet of the former president or perhaps because they admire and envy the authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, today opt for a rewriting of history.
They soon forgot the fear they experienced on January 6, 2021, their races to hide, the anguish of asking Trump, in vain, to send troops to put an end to an evil that not even the Confederates dared to attempt.
They prefer to support Trump’s big lie that the elections were stolen from him and that the insurrection occurred on November 3, 2020, election day, instead of that January 6 in which thousands of Trump supporters tried to end the peaceful transition of power. It happens that today, as then, not a single piece of evidence has been shown and everything is conspiratorial conjecture. Not even the judges appointed by the former president endorsed that fiction.
Biden put his finger on the wound at Valley Forge. “Whether democracy remains the sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time,” he said, pointing to the threat that is Trump.
At Sioux Center, Trump replied that Biden’s speech was “a pathetic attempt to create fear” and a way to divert attention from the economy (the data is going like a shot) and the immigration problems at the southern border. That is the word of someone who has said that, if he wins, he will be dictator for a day and who promises revenge against those who attack him. And he has already warned that if the Supreme Court endorses Colorado, “there will be a big problem. Does everyone understand what I say?”