Supreme Court delivers a big win for Trump and real democracy against the new intolerant left

Efforts by Colorado officials to keep the Republican frontrunner off the ballot have gone down in a heap, which begs the question, why don’t Democrats just run a decent candidate instead?

What’s the difference between “democracy” and “our democracy”?

A 9-0 ruling in the US Supreme Court.

Specifically, a ruling handed down Monday that comprehensively nuked plans by officials in Colorado – and by extension in left-wing jurisdictions across America – to keep Donald Trump off the ballot lest too many people be tempted to vote for him.

And while the reasoning some of the justices used to reach the conclusion that it is not for state bureaucrats to intervene in democratic processes might seem arcane, the important thing to remember is this.

It does not matter how much someone claims to loathe Donald Trump or think he is a threat to civilisation.

An entirely level-headed and not at all hyperbolic protest against Donald Trump outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty Images

If you use legal chicanery and esoteric readings of the law and sic the apparatus of the state on the man and his supporters, you are not doing so in the defence of democracy.

Instead, you’re a hypocrite, which is a label that exactly fits those who are often heard on American TV talking not about democracy but “our democracy”.

Trump speaks in the library at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Picture: Getty

Remember, in a democracy, two or more parties compete to win an election, the winners take power and the losers lick their chops, work out what went wrong and hope to do better the next time around.

In “our democracy”, however, only one side – the side that claims to be “defending our democracy” – can ever legitimately win.

The “our democracy” side believes that if the opposition (in this case Trump) were to be declared the victor, it would only be because of shenanigans, cheating and misinformation.

And because to them the other side is entirely beyond the pale, anything is fair game: lawsuits, criminal actions, even stopping poor benighted voters from ever having the chance to vote for the wrong candidate.

This distinction explains so much bizarre behaviour, from the Russia hoax to attempts to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop – uncovered by Miranda Devine at the New York Post in the weeks before the 2020 election – as a fake doctored up by Moscow.

US President Joe Biden is now consigned to using the short stairs up Air Force One. Picture: AFP

It also is why a New York judge, in a case brought by a New York Attorney-General who ran for office on a platform of nailing Trump to the wall, used an obscure reading of a statute to hit the Republican candidate with hundreds of millions in fines for the crime of … taking out loans that he later paid back.

Now, Trump’s foes – the same ones who used to claim that he was shredding the Constitution and tearing down democratic institutions and “norms” – are at it again.

The Atlantic magazine declared just hours after the ruling came down that “the Supreme Court is not up to the challenge”.

Despite audio from the hearings being broadcast and the decisions published online, CNN accused the Court of being the “least transparent”.

The Associated Press’s Seung Min Kim wailed that the Court had “(rejected) state attempts to hold (Trump) accountable for attack on Capitol in 2021”.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrat legislators announced they were going to come up with their own legislation to stop Trump’s name from getting on the ballots.

And Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold practically choked back tears on the hard-left MSNBC, saying (you knew this was coming), “It will be up to the American voters to save our democracy”. But, again, there is a point where all this talk of saving “our democracy” undermines faith in real, you know, democracy.

Trying to keep the other guy off the ballot, or using the courts to bankrupt him, is pretty third world stuff.

Putting up an increasingly decrepit Biden for a second term and insisting that he’s fine – talk about misinformation – only adds insult to injury. And saying that Trump is a threat to America’s constitutional order while working out how to override the Supreme Court is straight out of Orwell.

But while Trump’s foes are taking hit after hit in their quest to stop the man from running, there are also plenty of black swans that might take flight between now and November.

Recall that at this time in 2020, the last time Biden and Trump squared up the seriousness of the Covid pandemic, which was used to rewrite the rules around how Americans cast their ballots, was only just becoming apparent.

The death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matters and Antifa riots did not occur until May, though the unrest and threat of unrest continued right up to the election.

A few days before the 2020 election, this columnist was in New York City and saw all the ritzy shops in Soho and along Madison Avenue being boarded up.

A salesman in one of them, a shoe store downtown, explained it simply: “It’s in case the wrong guy wins.”

The “wrong” guy didn’t win (though it looked like he would for much of election night).

But the implication was clear.

If Trump had won, there would have been hell to pay.

Eight months out, and despite the polls, there are plenty of cards in the deck waiting to be played: Maybe not pandemics or civil unrest but an expanded war in Europe or some other horror we have not yet contemplated. And there is every chance still that Biden decides to pull the pin in the face of dire polls and friendly media outlets that are suddenly not so friendly.

In the last century, both Harry S. Truman and Lyndon Johnson chose March as the month that they would bow out and not recontest for a second term.

Biden might take his time and wait until he’s got the Democratic Convention sewn up in August to announce that, after consultation with his family and his medical team, he was handing his delegates for the nomination over to someone else.

Whatever the back-room machinations that might lead to that sort of thing happening, they’ll still be a lot more democratic than what the left is trying to do to Trump.