This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Does anyone have the head of a pin available? 

I ask because that’s what I would need to house all I know about the recent decision by the State of Colorado Supreme Court to ban Donald Trump from the presidential election ballot in their state because he incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The basic decision threatens to roil – there, don’t you like that word as much as I do? – the 2024 election.  And, now, it has resulted in threatened violence against the judges who wrote that decision.

On one hand, the ruling goes against Donald Trump.

On the other hand, there are early indications that the ruling could have a reverse spin effect:  That is, it could redound to Trump’s credit for either of two reasons:  (a) Trump, ever the narcissist, will contend the ruling indicates that power structures are out to get him and he remains a victim, or (b) the case is not legally crystal clear and the U.S. Supreme Court may have no choice but to overrule it.

The issues are complicated enough that I am not able to understand all of them, residing as I do in the cheap seats out West.

So, even on this Christmas eve day, when there probably are better things to do, I quote below from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times to provide background on the Colorado case, which is nothing if not monumental.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:  It has been obvious for months that politics and the law were going to bump into one another in the 2024 campaign, given the double role that former President Donald J. Trump has been playing as a criminal defendant and leading Republican candidate.

But in a way that few expected, that awkward bump has turned into a head-on collision.  It now seems clear that the courts — especially the Supreme Court — could dramatically shape the contours of the election.

The nine justices have already agreed to review the scope of an obstruction statute central to the federal indictment accusing Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.  And they could soon become entangled in both his efforts to dismiss those charges with sweeping claims of executive immunity and in a bid to rid himself of a gag order restricting his attacks on Jack Smith, the special counsel in charge of the case.

…a number of the issues the court is now confronting could drastically affect the timing of the proceedings against Trump, the scope of the charges he should face or his status as a candidate, with potentially profound effects on his chances of winning the election.  

“In this cycle, the Supreme Court is likely to play an even larger role than in Bush v. Gore,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a non-partisan group dedicated to improving election administration.

“It’s not just the issue of whether or not Donald Trump engaged in insurrection, which would disqualify him from holding the presidency under the 14th Amendment,” Becker said, “but also issues related to presidential immunity and criminal proceedings in general.”

In fact, there are so many moving parts in the overlapping cases that Trump is facing that it is all but impossible to predict which issues might get taken up, how the justices will rule on the questions they consider and what effects their decisions might have as they flow downstream to the lower courts that are handling the former president’s four criminal cases and his many civil proceedings.

It is important to remember something else:  Trump is interested in more than winning arguments in court.  From the start, he and his lawyers have pursued a parallel strategy of trying to delay his cases for as long as possible — ideally until after the election is decided.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  The Journal wrote under this headline:  “What Is Insurrection?  Trump Puts Once Obscure Questions Before Courts.”

Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the White House are forcing judges all the way up to the Supreme Court to confront obscure legal questions that long seemed largely academic but now carry big consequences.

For one, what counts as insurrection against the U.S.?

Ratified in the wake of the Civil War, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was enacted to keep former Confederate officials from gaining power during Reconstruction.  Congress last invoked the law in 1919, when it refused to seat Victor Berger, a socialist accused of having given aid and comfort to Germany during World War I. 

But last year a state court in New Mexico used it to remove a participant in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol from an elected position as county commissioner.

Soon liberal groups, supported by some conservative opponents of Trump, unleashed a wave of lawsuits against the former president, asserting that his encouragement of efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power to President Biden amounted to an insurrection and disqualified him from running for president in 2024.

The Supreme Court justices could take a range of approaches to deciding the case.

On appeal, Trump will likely argue that Section 3 doesn’t apply to the office of the presidency, since it refers to other federal roles, including Members of Congress and electors, as well as to “officers of the United States,” but not specifically to the president.  

Trump also is expected to argue that Section 3 can’t be enforced by state election officials. The former president’s lawyers have said further legislation by Congress is required to make Section 3 enforceable.

Another consideration will likely be on the justices’ minds in deciding on the case:  Whether, as all of Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination have suggested, it subverts democracy to have a court rather than voters decide on who they can choose as president. 

AND MORE FROM THE WALL JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD:  Under this headline – “The Folly of Colorado’s Trump Disqualification” – the writers said this:

The decision by four Colorado judges to bar Donald Trump from the state presidential ballot is an ugly turn that augurs nothing but trouble for American law and democracy.  Even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the ruling, as it probably will, the Colorado decision will confirm for millions of Americans that Trump’s opponents will do everything possible to deny them their democratic choice.

Anti-Trump lawyers have been peddling that Trump can be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  Colorado’s 4-3 Supreme Court majority is the first court to buy the argument, and in the process it has blundered into the middle of the 2024 election.  The four Democrat justices join special counsel Jack Smith and New York and Georgia prosecutors in providing ironic assistance to Trump in gaining the GOP presidential nomination, and maybe the White House.

The court said Trump is disqualified under the post-Civil War 14th Amendment because he inspired and “engaged” in an “insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S. that took place on January 6, 2021.  They rely largely on evidence compiled by the House January 6 special committee.

Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election through Jan. 6 was disgraceful, and it is one of several reasons not to trust him with so much power again.  It was an attempt to obstruct the counting of electoral votes.  But the evidence is unpersuasive that this amounted to an insurrection or rebellion under the statutory or constitutional meaning of those terms.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:  Even the more liberal Post got into the act under this headline:   “Should courts throw Trump off the ballot? Not so fast.”

Never mind whether Donald Trump should be president a second time:  The U.S. Supreme Court now looks likely to determine whether he even can.  The justices must do so, mindful that the legal issues involved are murky — and that the implications of a court determining whether a candidate may participate in a democracy’s elections are substantial.

Obvious as this analysis might seem to citizens appalled at the then-commander in chief’s conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, the law is not so clear.  The court had to answer “yes” to a vexing series of questions:  Does Section 3 apply to the presidency?  The answer here is probably “yes.”

The provision doesn’t list that office even as it does list others — but the Colorado court majority found the idea that Section 3 should exclude the most powerful position of all implausible.  

Harder still is the question of whether Congress needs to pass legislation for Section 3 to take effect.  

Yet these puzzles are relatively mundane compared with the case’s most consequential conundrum:  Whether Trump really did engage in insurrection.  

THIS FROM ME:  Now, this conclusion.  I avoid all the to-ing and fro-ing over what federal election law says.  I simply go to what Trump did on and around January 6.  His conduct compels the truth that he not be allowed to be president again, either by court decision or vote.