cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4561007
A liberal group on Wednesday filed a lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado, arguing he is ineligible to run for the White House again under a rarely used clause in the U.S. Constitution aimed at candidates who have supported an “insurrection.”
If there’s one “good” thing to come out of Trump’s political career is that he was able to expose a lot of the weaknesses that our government and our Constitution have when it comes to enforcement of the Constitution, while simultaneously being too stupid to be able to do too much damage in the process. Things could be far, far worse if Trump had the poltical acumen of someone like Mitch McConnell.
What he’s shown is that we need to answer a lot of the questions that have been raised during his term. The Constitution says that someone who aides in insurrection or gives aid and comfort to those that do are disqualified from being President. Ok, but who defines “insurrection”? What is “aid and comfort”? Who’s responsible for declaring who is and isn’t disqualified? How is it enforced? And how can the answers to these questions not be turned around and used against us by the opposing party?
That’s the most on-topic example, but there are tons of examples just in the Constitution alone. How are these things defined? Who’s responsible for enforcement? What are the penalties for breaking these laws?
The answer to all of these questions is often little more than a shrug. And we do need to get these answers before Trump 2.0 comes along and exploits these unanswered questions to actually accomplish what Trump and his stooges were trying to accomplish on January 6th.
The bad part is that even when Democrats controlled both houses, there was virtually zero appetite to even discuss how to start answering these questions. And in the absence of congressional action, we’ll have to rely on the Supreme Court to be able to make an objective, unbiased ruling for future leaders to follow. And there’s no reason to believe that the Supreme Court won’t make an honest, objective ruling, right? We’ve got this…we’ve got this…
I hope.
In the case of the one recent person bounced out on 14th Amendment grounds… it was based on a conviction first. Even that conviction wasn’t grounds for immediate removal, that required a legal challenge.
In both houses of Congress, majorities (232–197 in the House and 57-43 in the Senate) found Trump to be liable for the insurrection:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
