The people should decide on Donald Trump, not the courts

In a big victory for democracy, but a big blow to the partisans of ‘Our Democracy™’, the Supreme Court of the United States just reversed the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, which had determined that Donald Trump could not appear on the ballot for president in that state. 

A coven of anti-Trump activists, desperate to stop the juggernaut that is the Trump train, argued that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment authorised them to remove Trump from the ballot because he had engaged in ‘insurrection’ on 6 January 2021. 

Let’s leave aside the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment, designed to apply to rebels who had joined the Confederacy during the Civil War, even applies to the president. Leave aside, too, that the 6 January jamboree was not an ‘insurrection’. The critical issue is that states do not have the authority to muck about with federal elections. In the more elevated language of the Scotus order:

This case raises the question whether the States, in addition to Congress, may also enforce Section 3.