The Supreme Court Rules

Many pundits are fools.

Well, the left’s quixotic effort to remove Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot seems to have come to a pretty solid end.

Actually, “quixotic” is the wrong term.  Don Quixote at least meant well, after all.

But the idiocy of the Section Three “Insurrection” disqualification always struck me as obvious.  The entire Supreme Court today agreed.  And this  tweet seems like the proper send-off for that plan:

Trump derangement syndrome is real, and has captured some of the most famous minds of the legal academy.  Laurence Tribe – once a very serious scholar and one willing, occasionally at least, to break with left-orthodoxy – is one example. 

Is there an anti-Trump conspiracy theory or legal argument that he hasn’t embraced?  He was all in on the “Russian collusion” hoax, which was pretty obviously false but which sucked in so many Democrats before Trump was even sworn in.

Also the 25^th Amendment argument for disqualifying Trump for mental incapacity, also floated before he was sworn in, and which seems particularly ironic given the shamblingly demented occupant of the White House today.  It was also ridiculous for anyone who’s ever actually read the 25^th Amendment – as presumably Tribe and other lawprofs have – since removing a president under that provision requires the concurrence of most of his own top appointees.

(There were also calls for impeaching Trump before he was sworn in – indeed, before the electoral votes were officially counted – on the grounds that his mere existence, or something, was a high crime and misdemeanor.  I don’t remember if Tribe was among the backers of that one, but other law professors were.)

Law professors live in a world of abstract ideas, and of few consequences.  (Unless one offends the wokies, of course).  There’s thus a strong tendency to play to the groundlings, which in this case means the hosts and audiences at MSNBC and NPR.

Happily, our Supreme Court is made up of people with more grounding in real law and the real world.  As the per curiam opinion noted, the 14^th Amendment is about reducing state freedom of action, not expanding it.  (And although the Court didn’t reach the question, the notion that the January 6 clown show was an “insurrection” for purposes of the 14^th Amendment is laughable in itself.  The 14^th Amendment was drafted against the background of the Civil War, in which numerous states waged armed rebellion under their own constitution.  The January 6 events, in which the “insurrectionaries” were welcomed into the Capitol by Capitol Police, hardly compares.  It’s light years even from the Whiskey Rebellion.)

Yet large sectors of the legal academy  -- and, of course, the political press -- took the Section 3 argument seriously.  After the Supreme Court’s ruling, Keith Olbermann opined that the Supreme Court – including its liberal members, all of whom joined the decision – has “betrayed democracy” and “must be dissolved.” Apparently, letting people stay on the ballot so the voters can decide matters is a betrayal of democracy.

Well, Keith Olbermann.  Still, he’s not alone in his opinions, which are basically beyond parody, although the Babylon Bee tried valiantly:

And that’s funny.  But what isn’t funny is that our nation has a ruling class much of which is entirely unserious.  The games it plays pose a real risk of civil disorder, or outright civil war.  It doesn’t care, and is largely incapable of grasping the seriousness of what is really at stake, despite (because of?)  the hyperbolic language it habitually employs.

That’s not funny at all.  But it’s where we are.

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