Friday, Dec. 29, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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The U.S. Supreme Court must decide — very, very soon — if former President Donald Trump can remain on the ballot in Colorado and elsewhere despite his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt.
I say that knowing that the court has lost a ton of credibility in the eyes of tens of millions of Americans. It interfered in the 2000 election in a way that guaranteed the Republican nominee, George W. Bush, would become president. That subsequent independent vote recounts by media outlets suggested that Bush would have won Florida even if the court had not stopped the official count and clinched the White House anyway, does not negate the stench from that decision.
If you believe I’m saying this only for partisan reasons, just know that I voted for Bush that year (but not four years later).
The court lost more credibility with its decision to uproot a half-century of legal precedent and rip away from women the right to an abortion — despite several conservative justices strongly implying during confirmation hearings that they would not vote to do that. That decision has had disastrous health effects on a growing number of women.
I say all this knowing that Justice Clarence Thomas has been exposed by ProPublica as compromised and unethical, and that Chief Justice John Roberts has done little to curb that open corruption.
The Supreme Court must step in on the Trump Colorado decision before this becomes a free-for-all — where candidates are left off the ballot in some red states but allowed on in some blue ones based on a variety of dubious and legally questionable reasons. It would lead to chaos. Opportunistic politicians and activists are already urging such actions.
I wish I had faith that the men and women on the Supreme Court had the credibility they need during a time like this to calm the waters. They don’t because they largely squandered it.
No matter our political affiliations, it should disturb us all that public trust in such an invaluable institution is at a record low. Still, there is no other sensible way in this flawed democracy to settle the questions the Colorado decision disqualifying Trump raises. The judges who declared Trump couldn’t be on the Colorado ballot clearly realized that. They stayed their own decision until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.
As a wise person once said, the Supreme Court is not final because it’s infallible, but it’s infallible only because it is final. I’ll leave the merit of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to the legal experts, though I’ve seen plenty who say on its merits alone it was a strong decision.
But I don’t buy the argument made by Trump defenders and others that the decision, if upheld, would short-circuit the democratic process. That can only be true if you don’t believe in checks and balances, or that the court system is not a legitimate part of our democracy.
I was taught that checks and balances were a bedrock of this experiment called democracy, and that the judicial system was a coequal branch of government, and that no man should be above the law, even if he runs for president to escape accountability for the awful things he has done and fomented.
It’s sad that Trump, who cares only about himself, is at the center of yet another stress test for our way of life. We barely passed the last major one, the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt that sparked the Colorado case. Honestly, though, I’m not sure we passed. We couldn’t rally together around our supposed shared love of this place after a violent attack in the heart of the nation revealed an ugly sickness from which we have yet to emerge.
The Supreme Court can’t heal us because no matter what it decides, tens of millions of Americans will believe it did so with untoward motivations. But it is the only institution that can staunch the bleeding.
Issac Bailey is a McClatchy Opinion writer in North and South Carolina.
