The backlash from the decision will not affect Trump’s campaign, but it will greatly affect President Joe Biden and other Democrats, Daniel Lazare, an author and journalist told Sputnik. Republicans will view the decision as a partisan effort to remove Trump from the ballot, and will see such a ruling as an attempt to “steal” the presidential election in 2024. That same Republican viewpoint was also the catalyst for the January 6 US capitol attack which has landed Trump in this most recent legal dilemma.
Lazare joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Wednesday, and shared his thoughts on what the impact of such an unprecedented event could be.
“I expect damage to come to the Biden campaign,” said Lazare.
“I mean, I think the blowback from this will be tremendous,” he continued. “I think that for many voters and certainly for most Republican voters this to them is the final proof that the Democrats are weaponizing the judicial system in order to essentially deny and to knock Trump out before he even has a chance of, you know, appearing on the ballot.”
“To the Republicans, it seems that Democrats are trying to manipulate the system to steal the election, to deprive them of their democratic right to take part in an election. And they just see this as the final nail in the coffin. And in the course that this Supreme Court could undo the damage by overturning the Colorado decision. But still, I think that the Democrats will wind up severely hurt by this decision,” Lazare concluded.
Lazare agreed when asked if this could be seen as a partisan issue, considering the fact that the Colorado Supreme Court has seven justices all appointed by Democratic governors.
“In Texas the vice governor, or whatever he's called, has called for removing Joe Biden's name on the ballot,” said Lazare in reference to Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s suggestion to take Biden off of the state’s primary ballot.
“If this decision stands, there'll be a lot of support for that kind of counter move. And it could happen in many places across the country, at which point you will no longer have an election,” he added. “Instead, we'll have something close to a civil war.”
“And I think that Democrats will regret this. The Democrats have been trying to block Trump via the judiciary since 2017. And the effect has only been to make Trump stronger and themselves weaker. This is the culmination of a half dozen years of what is really a failed political strategy,” Lazare concluded.
When asked why Colorado’s Supreme Court did not base their ruling off of the criminal case in Georgia, where Trump and others were indicted on charges of illegally conspiring to change the election results in that state, Lazare said: “It's about insurrection".
“That was a big issue in 1868. Yes. Yes. Just three years earlier,” said Lazare, most likely referring to the US Civil War that lasted from 1861 until 1865. “Yes, that's right, the insurrection had been defeated.”
“And I think what happened on January 6th does qualify as an insurrection, but it is based on an extremely narrow and parched reading of the Constitution, because the Constitution supposedly is about political democracy and giving Americans rights not only free speech, but rights to elect their government. And if Donald Trump, who at this point is the leading candidate in terms of the polls, is denied a place in the ballot then Americans have been deprived of their democratic rights to choose their own leaders. And I think that is extraordinary,” he said.
The host of Political Misfits, John Kiriakou, then emphasized that the decision made by the Colorado Supreme Court was not unanimous, seeing as the vote had been 4 - 3. He added that the decision will make Biden look desperate; as if the president believes the only way he can win is if Trump is removed from the ballot.
“One problem is that America does not have a single presidential election. It has 50 separate elections. And responsibility for those elections is really unclear,” responded Lazare. “So if state judges start playing games about who can appear on the ballot, then we're going to have complete anarchy. We won't have anything approximating a national election. It's extraordinarily dangerous.”
“I just think these Democrats are so foolish and they are hurting themselves because they're confirming the widely held suspicion that they are manipulating the courts in order to decide the election ahead of time before the voters get a chance to vote,” he added.
Kiriakou then pointed to a recent poll that showed Trump to be increasingly popular among Republicans when compared to his polls in July. In a similar poll, it showed Trump holding support of 67% of Republican and GOP-leaning voters, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former governor and ambassador Nikki Haley are tied with 11% support.
“I think that Nikki Haley, who has done a fairly good job - I think everyone agrees on the campaign trail - is trying to raise her profile nationally. And I mean, I don't know what the consequences will be, but it could be some kind of plum job in a Trump administration, or it could be that she'll be really well-positioned in 2028,” said Lazare.
“[DeSantis'] campaign has collapsed or is collapsing as we speak,” added Lazare. “And so I think in other words, Americans have had a chance to take a good look at DeSantis and they decided they don't like what they see.”
The ruling made by Colorado’s top court on Tuesday is unprecedented. This is the first time in the country's history that a state supreme court has disqualified a person from holding office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The reasoning behind that decision was drawn from his conduct during the January 6 storming of the Capitol.
Trump will appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court, a court which holds a conservative majority, and three justices who were appointed by him. In accordance with procedure, the court has stayed the ruling until January 4, or until the US Supreme Court rules on the case.