AMAZINGLY, I AGREE WITH CHRIS CHRISTIE. PARTIALLY.

I spent all of last evening after the news broke about the Colorado decision thinking about this. I find I agree with Chris Christie. I do not agree with him that the decision is evidence of an “out of control judiciary.”

I do agree with him that we - the voters, the people from whom all legitimate governing power in our system is derived - must be the ones who decide our future.

Asking Big Daddy Court to make things all nice again does nothing to deal with the problem of Trump and the anti-democratic movement he leads, not in the long run. If this decision is affirmed, it lets us off the hook and allows us to escape reponsibility for our own future.

While he may be off the ballot, there is every likelihood that this will solidify his leadership of MAGA and turn MAGA into a truly violent, insurrectionary movement. Such a decision could in fact be the flame that lights the fuse to the powder keg that is our contemporary politics. That would be the worst possible outcome. That doesn’t mean the system should flinch in the face of that threat.

The situation puts us on the horns of a dilemma:

Trump needs to be held accountable for his action in organizing, directing and promoting the January 6 insurrection.

At the same time, he needs to be decisively defeated politically, so thoroughly that it shatters MAGA.

There is the J6 case in Washington, that Jack Smith is prosecuting - the other Big Decision the Court is faced with along with the Colorado decision.

In a perfect world, Trump would be convicted in the J6 case, and then decisively defeated by the voters.

If we are really a self-governing country, then WE have to decide that Trump loses. Kicking the can down the road with a court decision does not solve the real problem we face. That problem is that a significant section of the population is willing to support a man who tells them if he takes power that he will destroy this constitutional democratic republic. Removing him from the ballot does not resolve that. We can have a political war and defeat him - and MAGA politically - or we can have a civil war, which is what this decision points us toward.

Each of us who find MAGA to be repugnant have to reclaim our voices and not become prisoners of reacting to reactionary rhetoric. A better understanding of the many positive accomplishments of the Biden Administration and an ability to articulate them in ordinary conversation would help. That said, it is a relief to finally have Trump called out by a court of law for his actions.

But, if we truly want a civil society, we are all going to have to work for it.

We do have a legal process and in this case, the legal process was followed assiduously. There were no shortcuts, no extraordinary maneuvers.

All throughout December 2020, Republicans insisted that, no matter how foolish or baseless President Trump’s claims might seem, he was entitled to pursue the legal process vigorously to its end.

Why is that not true ihere? Why is Trump entitled to have his day in court, but the forces looking to apply different laws to achieve a different end are not?

The answer is, this isn’t really about people respecting process. It’s all about the result. Many of the people who insisted Trump could pursue all available legal remedies in 2020 because they hoped for a result in which Trump was proven right and allowed to remain in power, are today outraged that people in Colorado pursued legal remedies and won a result the first group wants to avoid.

To be clear: The people complaining about the Colorado decision are not complaining about the legal process, but the legal result.

If a legal process you agreed upon ahead of time produces a result you don’t like - tough shit. Take your TS Card to the Chaplain and he will punch you. You can argue the result was poorly decided, unwise, that it will create problems. But you cannot say, “How dare these judges make this decision. They have done something outrageous that shakes our democracy to its very foundation.”

That is the position Christ Christie and Nikki Haley and every other Republican who has decried the decision is arguing from. It’s bullshit, but - hell - they’re Republicans and bullshit is all they have. Always.

It is plausible to argue the decision could energize Trump voters and scare swing voters into supporting him because they believe the system is “out of control.”

It is also plausible the Colorado decision might - by highlighting Trump’s insurrection - convince swing voters that he is an agent of chaos who cannot be trusted again with the power of the presidency.

How many times since 2015 have people insisted that something he did, something he said, will either doom Trump or assure victory?

There always seems to be an argument, whenever Trump does something terrible, that holding him accountable can only help him. Impeaching him in 2020 will just make him stronger. Impeaching him in 2021 will turn him into a martyr.Dont raid Mar-a-Lago to get classified documents, since you;; upset his base. Prosecuting him for this crime or that will make his base love him more.

We have seen this before. A wicked man does immoral and illegal things, and the reaction of those with the power to stop him say we must indulge his depredations, since if we tried to hold him accountable, he would become even worse.

That didn’t work in Munich in 1938 and it hasn’t worked anywhere else, either.

However, expecting the system - however flawed - to protect us and give us permission to do nothing but wring our hands, and celebrate when the system appears to work, as it seems to have yesterday, doesn’t work either, not in the long run.

Progressives have, over the past 50 years, continued to delude ourselves that the Warren Court was not the historical aberration it was. If you doubt that, look at the history of Supreme Court decisions before 1954, and since 1973. But we still want to believe that we can safely let nine un-elected lawyers decide the major questions of our time.

However, things given can also be taken away by the same organization - as witness Roe and Dobbs, and many other decisions of the past 50 years since the Warren Court passed on, where the Good Decisions got trimmed and even reversed - but we continue to believe we don't have to act ourselves.

The argument against that is that the places where the right to abortion still holds are those states where the citizens acted politically to put that right into law, not merely depend on a legal decision. I well remember when Willie Brown put the right to choice on the ballot nearly 50 years ago here in California; people asked him why he was going to such effort when there was Roe, to which he said what I said above: what has been given can be taken away, put it in the constitution and it’s a lot harder. A lot of the questioning of his decision was rooted in a lack of belief that the people - given a choice - would make the right decision. That is the primary reason progressives have turned to the courts to obtain change legally that should have been made politically - we don’t trust people to be capable of self government.

The question of Trump is a political question, regardless of the laws. The laws can be used and are - witness yesterday, or the fight Jack Smith is making in Washington - but the only way Trump and Trumpism will be defeated is electorally, through politics.

It must be defeated by putting aside the Chardonnay and the nice cheese plate, while we go out and work our asses off to beat the enemy of democracy like a drum.

Removing him from the contest does make him a martyr to MAGA. Not defeating him politically in 2024 makes certain that the next elections and the ones after those and the ones after those and the ones after those will be contests over whether we are a constitutional democratic republic or will give ourselves over to the forces of anti-democracy - whether Trump is the candidate or some other (and there are numerous others).

The question of what kind of country we are and will be has to be faced - now or some election in the future, and elections are like scrubbing the bathroom floor, the longer you put it off the harder it is. We have to win by actually defeating them.

We have to take back the difficult job of being The People of the United States, the sole source of governmental legitimacy in a constitutional democratic republic.

No more shortcuts, no asking Big Daddy to take care of it for us because it's "too hard" to get off our dead asses and onto our dying feet and do the job only we can do with any permanence.

It's nice the Colorado court said what it did; that can be used to convince people who still need convincing despite living through the past 8 years. Convicting Trump in the DC court of having created the J6 insurrection will be good; there are lots of people who already say such an event would make them change their mind about who to vote for - and there are more out there who can be similarly convinced.

Democracy is hard work and there are no shortcuts, no matter what we tell ourselves. A good court decision is nothing more than an organizing tool.

This is an existential battle. Pushing them aside is not the solution. Defeating Trump so badly even that lying asswipe can't claim it was stolen is the only way to Finish. Them. Off.

Don't believe me? Look at the history of the civil rights movement since Brown v Board. The court spoke, but the people had to act politically to make the decision become reality. That is why that is one decision the other side knows they do not dare overturn.

Your support for That’s Another Fine Mess as a paid subscriber over this next rollercoaster year will really help keep things going. It’s only $7/month - a couple cups of coffee - or $70/year (saving you $14).

Comments are for paid subscribers.