Even some on the left have criticized the decisions to bar Trump from appearing on Republican primary ballots, describing them as “undemocratic” and an abuse of the 14th Amendment, which Colorado and Maine officials cited in the decisions. The amendment bars people from holding office who have “previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States” and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
Those arguments fail to grasp the threat that he poses and the gravity of his previous actions. We know from the House Jan 6. committee’s investigation, extensive media reporting, and state and federal investigations — not to mention our own eyes and ears — that Trump lost the 2020 election and instead of conceding defeat, tried to reverse the election results and remain in office. This was more than an abuse of power; it was an extraordinary, unprecedented violation of democratic values and principles.
We don’t live in a democracy if the loser of an election gets to stay in power — and that’s what Trump tried to do. He should never be allowed to be president again.
This is not a partisan argument. I strongly oppose Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). His record suggests that he is not only more conservative, radical and anti-democratic than Trump, but also that DeSantis would be more effective than Trump in implementing his policies. But I don’t have any problem with DeSantis or any of the other current Republican candidates being on the ballot because none of them have tried to overturn the results of an election.
Regarding concerns that the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban doesn’t apply to Trump, it’s true that members of Congress who wrote the law were addressing the events that led to the Civil War. Their goal was to bar people such as Confederate president Jefferson Davis from future government service. So it’s not clear the amendment was aimed at conduct such as Trump’s.
But I’m generally wary of being too deferential to the views of people who lived decades ago and often supported terrible policies very few do today, such as barring women from voting. Unless there is evidence that the authors of the 14th Amendment would have strongly opposed invoking the provision after a president’s words and actions encouraged an attack on the Capitol that would help him maintain power despite losing the election, we should defer to our present-day views of what counts as rebellion, insurrection and, more broadly, conduct that is unacceptable for a president.
In the 14th Amendment, we have a provision that is already on the books and that might allow us to keep Trump from ever being president again. We should use it.
The argument that doing so would be undemocratic is nonsense. Democracy is not just elections; it’s also a broader system of rules, laws and norms. Even if you think democracy is mostly about elections, you can’t support having Trump as president again, because he only supports elections if he is declared the winner. It cannot be a requirement of democracy that you allow the election of leaders who will then end free and fair elections — and therefore democracy itself.
It’s not ideal that Colorado state Supreme Court judges and Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, have unilaterally acted to remove Trump from the ballot. That feels undemocratic. But in reality, these officials are only stepping in now to enforce democratic principles because for three years, so many others haven’t.
In 2021, the U.S. Senate by a two-thirds vote could have convicted Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” that the House impeached him for. Then, by a simple majority vote, the Senate could have barred Trump from future office (though Trump likely would have contested such a decision in court). Instead, all but seven Republican senators voted against conviction.
Many of these senators claimed that convicting an out-of-office president wasn’t constitutional. In reality, most of them just didn’t want to cross pro-Trump voters in their states.
The Justice Department could have quickly moved to charge Trump with crimes. But Biden entered office determined to show he was above partisanship, so he nominated someone with a similar approach, Merrick Garland, to be attorney general.
The result: The Justice Department conducted a slow-moving, bottom-up investigation of Jan. 6, charging lower-level people who entered the Capitol that day before moving to Trump. I understand that approach; it’s how many investigations go. But it was fairly obvious in 2021 that Trump would run for president again — in part to cast investigations into him as partisan.
The people who have most shirked their responsibility to defend democratic principles are Republican voters. They were presented this year with a slew of presidential candidates, many of whom are just as conservative or perhaps even more so than Trump, but who did not try to overturn American democracy. They could have turned to any of those candidates. Instead, they are overwhelmingly sticking with Trump.
I would never vote for a Democratic candidate who tried to overturn an election that a Republican had clearly won. I wish Republican voters would show similar respect for basic democratic principles and their fellow citizens.
It’s easy to suggest that the Colorado judges, who were appointed by Democratic governors, or Maine’s secretary of state, who is a Democrat, are just partisans. But no one thinks they would have removed DeSantis or former New Jersey governor Chris Christie from the ballot. These officials are correctly recognizing the seriousness of what Trump did nearly three years ago, and unlike Garland, they aren’t ducking their responsibilities to preserve their nonpartisan bona fides. And they aren’t using any means necessary, but instead a means clearly written in the Constitution.
These officials are not partisans, but patriots. I expect the U.S. Supreme Court, dominated by Republican appointees, will reverse their decisions. But I sincerely hope that the three Democratic appointees on the court don’t also rule in Trump’s favor. The real affront to democracy is Trump, not officials following laws intended to keep people like him from gaining power.
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