Is barring Trump from office undemocratic? Let’s assess point by point
The decision by the Colorado supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the Republican primary has received pushback from some predictable and some notso-predictable quarters.
The former president’s supporters of course consider him the great Maga martyr, temporarily hindered by nefarious elites from his rightful return and revenge; in this morality play, the US supreme court, besieged with accusations of being undemocratic, can now play the savior by putting him back on the ballot and making the people Trump’s ultimate judge.
Some liberals also fuss about the political fallout of the decision, worried that barring Trump from running will provoke chaos and violence. And the left, suspecting a “liberal plot against democracy”, is not happy either: they reproach the liberals who welcome Trump’s disqualification for wanting to short-circuit the political process – thereby revealing deep distrust of democracy or at least defeatism about confronting Trump in an open contest. All these concerns are mistaken.
The Colorado supreme court comprehensively refuted Trump’s claims, especially the ones bordering on the absurd. The justices patiently argued that parties cannot make autonomous, let alone idiosyncratic, decisions about who to put on the ballot – by that logic, they could nominate a 10year-old for the presidency. They also painstakingly took apart the idea that the now famous section three of the 14th amendment covers every imaginable official expectation of the president. In terms clearly tailored to appeal to justices on the US supreme court, they explain that plain language and the intent of the drafters of the amendment suggest that insurrectionists – including ones at the very top – were not supposed to hold office again, unless Congress voted an amnesty with a twothirds majority.
The court’s majority also made the case that the House of Representatives’ January 6 report is not some partisan attack on poor Trump and hence could be admitted as evidence; they then drew on that evidence to show that Trump had clearly engaged in insurrection; they did not have to prove that Trump himself had led it (of course, he didn’t valiantly enter the Capitol to “save democracy” – his words – but tweeted the revolution from the safety of the White House).
We know that few Maga supporters will be swayed by the evidence – in fact, the entry ticket to Trump’s personality cult is precisely to deny that very evidence. But it is more disturbing that liberals still think that prudence dictates that Trump should run and just be defeated at the polls.
For one thing, the same liberals usually profess their commitment to the constitution – and the Colorado court has given an entirely plausible reading of that very document. Should it simply be set aside because supporters of a self-declared wannabe dictator threaten violence?
Some liberals also appear to assume that, were Trump to lose in November 2024, their political nightmare would stop. But someone who has not accepted defeat before, doubled down on the “big lie”, and ramped up authoritarian rhetoric is not likely to just concede. Would the logic then still be that, even if the law says differently, Maga supporters must somehow be appeased?
The more leftwing critique is the most interesting. Liberals are charged with having a Mueller moment again. By trusting courts to save democracy, they reveal how little faith they have in the people; they appear to hope that, magically, wise old men (it’s usually men) like Robert Mueller, acting for more or less technocratic “institutions”, will solve a challenge through law when it should be solved politically.
The only question is: by that logic, are any measures meant to protect democracy but not somehow involving the people as a whole as such illegitimate? Had Trump been impeached after January 6,would anyone have made the argument that this was the wrong process and that he just should keep running in elections no matter what?
Countries other than the US are more comfortable with the notion that politicians or parties expected to destroy democracy should be taken out of the democratic game. The threshold for such a decision has to be very high – clearly, there’s a problem if attempts to save democracy are themselves undemocratic. Here the Colorado decision is more vulnerable: as one of the dissenting judges pointed out, Trump might not have been given due process; even prosecutor Jack Smith, a master legal chess player, is not going after Trump for insurrection.
Three factors can mitigate anxieties about undemocratic measures to save democracy, though: one is that, before a drastic decision like disqualification is taken, an individual has to exhibit a very consistent pattern of wanting to undermine democracy. Check, for Trump.
Second, there has to be some room for political judgment and prudence: disqualification is not automatic and not for life; in theory, Congress could pass an amnesty for Trump in the name of democratic competition.
Third, banning a whole party can rightly make citizens with particular political preferences feel that their voices are silenced; in this case, though, no one is removing the Republican party. And, of course, two Trump epigones remain on the ballot.
Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University. He is also a Guardian US columnist
“Today we are robbed of the potential so many have to offer,” he declared. “The only way to achieve our full potential is to channel the talents, ideas and contributions of every person in the world.”
Now, in homage to this admirable ideal, Zuckerberg is offering the underprivileged residents of the Hawaiian island of Kauai the chance to live up to their full potential, to wit, “building a lavish ultraluxury compound where Mark Zuckerberg can hole up and survive the apocalypse while the hordes of normal people perish”.
As the journalist Guthrie Scrimgeour details in a staggering investigative story for Wired magazine, Zuckerberg has spent almost a decade buying up land on the island for the construction – now well under way – of a sprawling, 1,400-acre compound of mansions, treehouses and tunnels. The crown jewel of the $270m project is a 5,000sq-ft underground shelter with “its own energy and food supplies” and “what appears to be a blast-resistant door”.
Odd, is it not, that a man whose primary concern is global equality would need a subterranean apocalypse shelter designed to seal him off from all of the (equal) people outside who would be, presumably, burning or starving or being eaten by the zombies? Wouldn’t Zuckerberg’s powerful passion for enhancing the future of all mankind compel him to fling open the armored doors to his compound and welcome in all of his fellow Hawaiian islanders, for whom he has the deepest concern and respect? Or, even simpler, compelled him to have spent the hundreds of millions of dollars that he spent on this tightly secured elitist fantasyland on something a bit more public-minded? I’m sure that his soaring, scenic parcel of land would make an excellent public park.
A millimeter below every billionaire’s charitable spirit lies an endless well of self-preservation. This sort of desperate planning for the End Times gives the lie to everything that Zuckerberg and his moneyed peers say about the rising tide that lifts all boats. When the tides rise high enough, your rickety boats will sink, while they will float away on their yachts. Every charitable check can be seen as a tranquilizer dart, designed to pacify the public just enough that they won’t start wondering why the nice plutocrat who came to their island and bought all the land built such a big wall around it all.
The most fervent quasi-religious hope of every billionaire is that he can have it all; that he can both bask in opulent wealth and be a good person, beloved by one and all. Unfortunately for the rich, this hope will always be revealed as an impossible dream.
Moral philosophers have long pointed out that the mere act of giving away some money does not absolve you from the responsibility of doing something ethical with all the restof your money. To feed one hungry child and then let a thousand more starve as you build your mansion is not an act that balances the scales of right and wrong.
In a resource-constrained world, there is no escaping the moral imperative for the wealthy to use their stupendous resources to help the needy as much as possible. There is no buying your way out of that situation. The “indulgences” that the Catholic church used to sell to escape the effects of sin were, we all now recognize, a scam. The charitable foundations of modern billionaires can be understood the same way.
Of all the problems that the existence of billionaires creates, the biggest is simply the fact that having that much money gives individuals too much power. Sure, you, the average person, might get drunk and dream about buying up an entire town’s worth of land to build your exclusive treehouse survivalist kingdom, but you don’t have the means to actually do it. And that is a good thing. When society allows people to get 10-figure net worths, all of the
Like Ozymandias, Mark Zuckerberg may one day learn the hard way that all of his planning has been for naught
most idiotic fever dreams of the human mind begin springing into reality.
That is not progress. Capitalism’s tendency to grant godlike powers to the sort of people that are sociopathic and tasteless enough to accumulate billions of dollars is one of its most embarrassing flaws.
But, like Ozymandias, Mark Zuckerberg may one day learn the hard way that all of his planning to elevate himself above the risks of the mortal world has been for naught. If the apocalypse does come, hurling us all into a state of nature, the first thing that is going to lose all of its value is money.
The security guards that you hired to protect you are going to think more about protecting themselves. The construction workers who built your compound will know where all the food is hidden. The mighty billionaire boss will inevitably find that no pile of gold is high enough to keep away fate.
Should have been a socialist, Mark. If the worst happens, then at least you would have had some comrades who you wouldn’t need to pay to watch your back.
Hamilton Nolan is a writer on labor and politics, based in New York City
their will. Yet ultimately, he is a political phenomenon, and truly vanquishing him will require convincing sufficient voters, not a handful of justices. He must be beaten at the ballot box again.