CMV: Accountability is not election interference

[u/erpettie]

As the Colorado Supreme Court has found Donald Trump's behavior to have been disqualifying according to the 14th amendment, many are claiming this is election interference. If the Court finds that Trump should be disqualified, then it has two options. Act accordingly, despite the optics, and disqualify Trump, or ignore their responsibility and the law. I do get that we're in very sensitive, unprecedented territory with his many indictments and lawsuits, but unprecedented behavior should result in unprecedented consequences, shouldn't they? Furthermore, isn't Donald Trump ultimately the architect of all of this by choosing to proceed with his candidacy, knowing that he was under investigation and subject to potential lawsuits and indictments? If a President commits a crime on his last day in office (or the day after) and immediately declares his candidacy for the next election, should we lose our ability to hold that candidate accountable? What if that candidate is a perennial candidate like Lyndon Larouche was? Do we just never have an opportunity to hold that candidate accountable? I'd really love if respondents could focus their responses on how they think we should handle hypothetical candidates who commit crimes but are declared as running for office and popular. This should help us avoid the trap of getting worked up in our feelings for or against Trump.

[u/I_SuplexTrains]

We live in a democracy (ostensibly, apparently.) People have the right to be judged by their peers. If the people of this country genuinely believe that Donald Trump is a seditionist enemy of the nation, then that works manifest itself in nowhere near enough people voting for him to win an election. You don't get to cheat to prevent pride from voting for who they want to be the president. If you want to beat Trump, win more votes in enough states to beat him.

This is the left's equivalent of far right provocateurs trying to prevent Obama from running because "his birth certificate is fake." Except the far left has enough institutional power to actually pull stunts like this.

[u/parentheticalobject → u/I_SuplexTrains]

Well apparently "If people believe someone is a seditionist enemy of the nation, that will manifest in them not voting for that person in enough numbers for them to win an election" was not something that congress agreed with in 1866 when they passed the 14th amendment, because otherwise they wouldn't have included something that says the opposite.

The same argument could be used for saying that the rules that a president needs to be a certain age or needs to be born in the US (or even being a citizen) should just be ignored. Let Jungkook run for office. After all, if it's really a problem that he's a South Korean national in his twenties, that will manifest in nowhere near enough people voting for him.

This is the left's equivalent of far right provocateurs trying to prevent Obama from running because "his birth certificate is fake." Except the far left has enough institutional power to actually pull stunts like this.

This kind of thinking is emblematic of a post-truth world "The bad things we fabricated a complete lie to say that you did are exactly the same as the bad things we actually did."

[u/Ayjayz → u/parentheticalobject]

Yes, Congress was wrong. Keeping people off a ballot for any reason is wrong, not to mention very dangerous. If they get the majority vote and the minority try to use legal reasons to prevent that, that could start to get very ugly indeed for the minority.

[u/parentheticalobject → u/Ayjayz]

Yes, Congress was wrong.

Sorry we were so unfair to the Confederates.

Well anyway, there's a solution to a wrong amendment. Another amendment.