“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
At least temporarily in this election year, the center of attention is shifting to the Supreme Court. Two cases involving Republican front-runner, former president and insurrectionist Donald Trump both have the potential to have a major effect on the politics of 2024.
Rulings in one direction could all but eliminate Trump from American politics and rulings the other way will have the opposite effect.
As much as I believe it would be a disaster for America to see Trump back in the White House, upholding Colorado’s ruling to ban him from the ballot using the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause would be a terrible mistake. If Trump’s voters aren’t allowed to vote for him, he will become a martyr. He will insist that he would have won except that the libs wouldn’t allow it.
On the other hand, the Court will be asked to rule whether being president made him immune to any sort of prosecution. This is the one that will truly matter. The ballot question just gives voters a chance to select or reject Trump, while declaring him immune to prosecution removes the element of justice from it.
Allowing voters to choose and the courts to rule is the most reasonable, the most American way of dealing with the matter. Meanwhile, Trump keeps getting more stupid and more arrogant all the time.
On Saturday in Iowa, Trump suggested that if he had been president in 1861, he could have negotiated a peaceful solution between North and South that would have prevented the Civil War.
“The Civil War was so fascinating, so horrible,” he said. “So many mistakes were made. See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died, so many people died. You know, that was the disaster.”
He said if a tough guy like Andrew Jackson had been president, he would have found a way to get it done, implying that he — Donald Trump — could have done it too.
Trump said Jackson had seen the war coming and was angry about it.
Of course, Jackson died in 1845.
He was also a Tennessean who owned slaves, and his performance toward Native Americans showed him as one of the more vicious racist presidents ever.
It says something awful about America in 2024 that the Civil War has become a major issue in the Republican primaries, first with Nikki Haley denying slavery was a cause of the war and then Trump saying negotiations could have prevented it.
There’s no question both of them were playing to the base, trying to please the people who believe the Confederate battle flag was a positive symbol and people who aren’t white, male or evangelical can’t be real Americans.
Yes, these are definitely the times that try men’s souls.