Sidney Blumenthal for The Guardian:
Imagine it is 6 January 2025. The bell tolls for the day of electoral college certification again. All the events of 2024 converge:
The US supreme court’s likely ruling in Trump v Anderson denying Colorado’s disqualification of Trump under the constitution’s 14th amendment, section 3; the exoneration of Joe Biden by special counsel Robert Hur for handling documents while sideswiping him as near senile; the ruling on Trump’s immunity; the trial for his coup attempt; and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s defiance of federal court rulings in deploying his national guard to the border, supported by other Republican governors who have mobilized their guard units in similar acts of nullification – all these happenings could hurtle to a convulsive confrontation.
The supreme court was precisely cautioned against fostering “potentially disastrous turmoil” if it were to rule against Colorado, in an amicus brief submitted by Benjamin Ginsberg, who for decades was the leading Republican party attorney on elections, along with two prominent legal scholars, Richard Hasen, professor at the UCLA Law School, and Edward Foley, professor at the Ohio State University Law School.
The brief by Ginsberg et al was unvarnished: “A decision from this court leaving unresolved the question of Donald Trump’s qualification to hold the office of president of the United States under section 3 of the 14th amendment until after the 2024 election would risk catastrophic political instability, chance disenfranchising millions of voters, and raise the possibility of public violence before, on, and after November 5 2024.”
The brief added that “the grounds for avoiding the merits are not credible: Colorado manifestly had the authority to determine Mr Trump’s legal qualification for the office he seeks, and this court has jurisdiction to review that federal-law decision on its merits. To punt on the merits would invite chaos while risking great damage to the court’s reputation and to the Nation as a whole.”
But apparently the justices failed to read this brief, just as they apparently failed to read the various amicus briefs filed by distinguished historians.
Picture how the scenario might unfold as though reading it as a history from the vantage point of one year from now. The Ginsberg brief predicts the dire consequences that would flow from the supreme court ruling against Colorado. If we layer on to that prophesy the seemingly disparate events of this winter of our discontent we can see, through a mixture of fact and speculation, a disastrous unraveling….