The biggest threat to the Constitution in 2024 is the “legal battle” being waged against Donald Trump, and the Supreme Court is as much a target of it as Trump.
Consider President Trump's efforts to ban voting in states like Colorado and Maine.
The architects of these efforts hope that most Americans don't know how presidential primaries and general elections actually work.
What if a blue state's highest court or a Democratic secretary of state rules that Trump is not qualified to be president?
If the problem remains at the state level, little will change.
This is because voters do not directly choose party candidates or the president.
Primaries and caucuses vary from state to state, but they are just the first steps in the process that ultimately elects delegates to a party's national convention.
Those delegates take turns selecting candidates.
Colorado requires delegates to support a pledged candidate, even if that candidate has withdrawn from the race.
However, withdrawing candidates can release their delegates with a simple letter, and all delegates are automatically unbound after the first vote at the convention.
If Colorado kept Mr. Trump off the ballot, but needed delegates from that state — an unlikely scenario at this point — the state would have already dropped out of the state's vote and voted for Mr. Trump. You can win delegates by getting voters to support one of your supported candidates. : Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy would be fine.
Yes, it would be troubling, but if Republicans are determined to nominate Trump, the few blue states won't stop him with voting bans.
The general election is also an indirect election.
When voters choose a president and vice president, they are actually voting for the slate of electors promised to those candidates.
Removing Trump from the vote does not disqualify the electors who pledged to him and his running mate. Even if Trump does not vote, the Republican vice presidential nominee will appear on the ballot.
It's even conceivable that this could happen in blue states and battleground states. help If moderate voters are fed up with President Trump and decide it's easier to vote Republican by putting only the vice presidential candidate on the ballot, they could also get a ticket to the Republican Party.
But the same slate of electors represents both presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and Mr. Trump will have electors pledge tickets even if his name is not on the voters' ballots.
States that have banned President Trump may seek to disqualify their electors, but this risks creating a constitutional crisis at both the state and federal level.
Colorado, for example, has a law that replaces “faithless electors” who do not vote for the winner of the state's popular election. But what happens if the Republican ticket wins but no presidential candidate is listed on it?
If a Republican ticket with only the vice president on it wins the popular vote, it would make little sense to replace Republican electors with Democratic electors.
With so many different rules in each state, there will be plenty of room for Congress to challenge the Electoral College votes as they are counted.
Enjoy the irony. If President Trump were to win the electoral votes despite states' efforts to ban him, Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats in Congress would have a meeting with Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. It would be the same position the Republicans were back in.
Will Harris count Trump's electoral votes?
But that won't happen. That's because even the Democrats pushing President Trump's ban know that states will be preempted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In fact, it is a trap set by them.
SCOTUS will take charge of the Colorado case, and Democrats hope to embarrass the Republican-controlled court.
If the judge rules against Trump, the election and the Republican Party will be thrown into turmoil.
Trump and his allies, far-right state governments, and perhaps the entire organized Republican Party could rebel against the ruling and vote Trump out anyway, further deepening the constitutional crisis.
But the justices are likely to rule in Trump's favor, which would cause Democrats to question the court's legitimacy.
And that's the strategy. Make new decisions like the Dobbs abortion decision that will increase Democratic enthusiasm and turnout.
Even if Trump were to win, his reputation would be further damaged, and if he were to win, Democrats would be able to exploit voter anger on the Republican-controlled Supreme Court.
The law destroys democracy by taking decision-making away from voters and putting it in the hands of the courts, while ensuring that half the country, one political party or the other, will be outraged by the judiciary's conclusions.
Democrats have given their supporters the illusion that they will win by disqualifying Trump rather than defeating him, but that scenario won't work and legal issues will only create more conflict.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
Twitter: @ToryAnarchist
