In an important victory for constitutional rights, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Colorado court ruling throwing Donald Trump off the Republican Party primary ballot, a move that would have prevented millions from voting for the candidate of their choice.
With Democratic prosecutors facing legal obstacles bringing to trial other lawsuits targeting Trump, liberals have stepped up their attacks on the tens of millions of his working-class supporters, who President Joseph Biden calls “semi-fascists.”
The high court ruled March 4 that states lack the power to bar presidential candidates by using a section of the 14th Amendment that barred Confederate Civil War secessionists from holding office. It was adopted as part of crucial Reconstruction era amendments enacted to advance gains for Black rights won through the Second American Revolution.
The Supreme Court’s ruling ended similar challenges to Trump’s candidacy in Maine and Illinois, as well as plans for comparable moves elsewhere.
The Democrats are in a partisan frenzy to use any means possible to stop Trump’s candidacy, regardless of the impact on constitutional freedoms won in blood by working people over decades. Their fervent hope is that the 2024 election will be decided by Democratic Party-appointed judges, not the people.
Trump appeals Smith’s charges
Days earlier Democrats were outraged by the Supreme Court after it exercised its responsibility to hear Trump’s appeal for presidential immunity from charges brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. He accuses Trump of conspiring to “defraud” the United Sates by challenging the results of the 2020 election. The court set fast-track oral arguments on Trump’s appeal during the week of April 22, but their taking the case makes it more possible it will not go to trial before the November election.
The court said it will rule “whether, and if so to what extent, does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed the decision to hear the immunity appeal means “the Supreme Court is placing itself on trial.” Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post says the court taking the case ensures a “terrible outcome” — making it less likely Trump can be jailed before the election.
“There is no cavalry coming. No saviors,” moaned Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s former attorney general.
For decades the capitalist rulers have ruled through the two-party system, seeking to convince working people their only choice is to hold their nose and vote for first one, then the other, lesser evil. Today that system is fraying at the seams.
The two main parties of capitalist rule are embroiled in intense factional warfare. The Democrats’ crusade against Trump doesn’t directly target the working class. But it inevitably leads to serious blows against constitutional protections that workers need and have a vital stake in defending.
Smith’s case against Trump for challenging the 2020 election results rests entirely on making a “crime” out of things he said. But saying an election is stolen isn’t illegal, nor is pressing officials to hunt for voter fraud, urging Vice President Michael Pence to halt the 2020 election certification, or backing lists of alternative electors in case legal challenges to the state election outcome are successful. It’s all free speech.
Liberals hatred of the ‘deplorables’
With the results of the primaries, and the Supreme Court ruling, it is increasingly likely the election will pit Biden against Trump. The liberal press is intensifying its attacks on Trump’s supporters. “White rural voters support politicians who tell them lies they want to hear,” insists columnist Paul Krugman in the Feb. 26 New York Times. He says they’re “the single greatest threat facing American democracy.”
“Does Biden Have to Cede the White Working Class to Trump?” asks Thomas Edsall in the same paper. Despite Biden passing legislation that Edsall says benefits workers, “the rollout of these measures has so far done little to improve Biden’s prospects.” Workers just don’t know what’s good for them.
Underlying liberals’ frequent complaints about a “white working class” that supports Trump is the view that workers who are Caucasian are incurably racist and bigoted. But the fact is more Black and Latinos say they will vote for Trump in 2024.
Racism is a product of the capitalist rulers’ need to foster divisions — racism and national chauvinism — to weaken working-class struggles against their oppressive system. There is less racism among workers today as a result of the conquests of historic Black-led struggles that brought down Jim Crow segregation.
Blinded by a “woke” outlook that defines people by their race, not by their class, the liberal anti-Trump media is perplexed at the fall in Biden’s poll ratings among Blacks since 2020, as if African Americans are innately Democrats. “Republicans see improvement with Black voters despite themselves,” the Feb. 26 Washington Post complained.
Underneath Democrats’ scorn is their fear that more and more working people see that the bosses and their parties only have “solutions” that dump the costs — monetary and human — of their crisis on us.
The working class is the only force that can chart a course out of today’s deepening capitalist crisis by organizing independently of the bosses’ two parties and advancing on a road toward taking political power into our own hands. This perspective is at the heart of the Socialist Workers Party campaign in 2024.