As former President Donald Trump dominates the Republican presidential primary, some liberal groups and legal experts contend that a rarely used clause of the Constitution prevents him from being president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.
Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.
The effort is likely to trigger a chain of lawsuits and appeals across several states that ultimately would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly in the midst of the 2024 primary season. The matter adds even more potential legal chaos to a nomination process already roiled by the front-runner facing four criminal trials.
None of the republican candidates are minimally acceptable. All of them are authoritarian and wish to end democracy. I think it’s more dangerous if one of the less crazy-sounding ones gets the nomination. Biden is unpopular and there’s a very real chance anybody who’s not Trump will win simply by virtue of being somebody “new.”
The ideal scenario is that Trump gets the nomination but can barely campaign in the general because of all of his court obligations. It gets even better if he’s knocked off a few state ballots and/or the republican party tries to take the nomination away from him after the fact and they tear each other apart with infighting.
No candidate is minimally acceptable, but there is a huge difference between Trump and the others. The others are normal bad, and most of the horrible things they do can be reversed democratically in 4 years. I genuinely don’t know if American democracy can survive another 4 years of Trump.
Also, your assumption that Trump is less electable than other Republicans is not obvious to me. We don’t like him, we think he’s obviously bad, but I think, just like in 2016, this is clouding people’s judgment. He has high unfavorables, but so does Biden, and Trump also has cult-like popularity.