09

Yesterday's most active threads had a distinctly political slant with three of the four top threads dealing with political topics. The first of those was titled, "Supreme Court Hearing on 14th Amendment and Trump" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. As the title makes clear, this thread is focused on yesterday's oral arguments before the Supreme Court as it reviewed the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the presidential primary ballot. Several of the posters were listening to a live stream of the proceedings and then posting their immediate reactions. Mixed in with those posts were questions, statements, and opinions from other posters. Almost everyone was pessimistic that the Court would keep Trump off the ballot, they only disagreed about why the justices would make such a decision. Explanations ran the gamut from such a decision being legally and morally justified to it being the result of a corrupt and bought-off court. One of the issues that both the justices and and posters debated was whether removing Trump from the ballot would result in Republican states removing Democratic candidates in the future. While many posters saw this as a realistic possibility, they were frustrated by the suggestion that removing Trump for a real reason — provoking an insurrection — would result in Democrats being removed for manufactured reasons. One poster responded to this discussion by writing, "If Trump murdered someone and we sent him to jail for it, would that open the floodgates to accusations that Democrats committed murder even if they never killed anyone?" Both the justices and DCUM posters agreed that potential problems could be avoided if the Court defined what is or is not an "insurrection", but justices made their reluctance to do such a thing clear. Posters also critiqued a distinction that some justices attempted to make between an officer vs an office. Ironically, given that this case hinges squarely on Trump's involvement in an insurrection, the Court mostly stayed away from addressing the insurrection or Trump's involvement. Not only did the Court shy away from suggestions that it define "insurrection", but despite the wish of many posters that the Court decide whether or not Trump engaged in an insurrection, that is not the role of the Court in this instance and there were no attempts to address that question. Several posters expressed consternation that Justice Clarence Thomas had not recused himself from this case due to his wife's involvement in the January 6 insurrection. To them this exemplified both Thomas' corruption and the larger Court's illegitimacy.