After nearly three weeks of hand-wringing from all sides, Donald Trump is back on the Colorado primary ballot. The news was announced by Jena Griswold, Colorado's Secretary of State, on Friday evening, claiming that the Supreme Court's acceptance of the case was the catalyst for the reversal.
See: Colorado Supreme Court Votes to Boot Trump off the Ballot Using the 14th Amendment
This represents a major reversal for Griswold herself as well. At the end of December, she put out a statement ranting that Trump had committed "insurrection," urging the Supreme Court to act quickly to confirm the state court's decision. Her latest comment is far more mundane, seemingly giving up the ground she originally staked out.
Regarding the specifics here, this isn't surprising to anyone who was able to take a deep breath when Trump was originally removed. As I wrote following Maine's decision to pull Trump from its ballot, these are cheap stunts not meant to succeed technically, but rather to put the Supreme Court in a position to rule for Trump.
What does that tell you? It tells you that none of these cheap stunts are meant to succeed technically. It's essentially a foregone conclusion that the U.S. Supreme Court will not only keep the stays in place, but they will ultimately rule against the states trying to use the 14th Amendment without any due process to bar Trump from the ballot.
In the end, Bellows doesn't believe she'll win. She just wants her name in lights while setting up the U.S. Supreme Court to play the bad guy for half the country. It's a tactic the Biden administration has used over and over, enacting illegal measures with an eye on passing the buck to the judiciary so they can cry foul when they lose.
What does that accomplish? It hands Democrats fresh fodder to try to once again delegitimate the nation's high court. Once a final decision is made and these Democrat states are fully slapped down, members of the left are going to lose their minds on the Supreme Court in an attempt to drive turnout in response. Get ready for a lot of "treason" and "tyranny" talk about the conservative justices.
That was always the goal here. All the shouting from the right was pointless because Trump was never going to be kept off the ballot, and all the celebrating from outlets like CNN and MSNBC was pointless because Trump was never going to be kept off the ballot. Welcome to the kabuki theater that is modern politics.