The Daily Fuckup

On Dec. 18, 2023, Donald Trump’s campaign was waiting for a decision it could not control. The Colorado Supreme Court had already heard the ballot-disqualification case and was expected to rule soon; the court issued its opinion the next day, on Dec. 19, 2023, in Anderson v. Griswold, No. 23SA300. The ruling said Trump could not appear on Colorado’s 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot, though the decision was stayed while the case moved into further review. ([courts.state.co.us](https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf?utm_source=openai))

The case turned on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars some people who took an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection from holding office unless Congress removes the disability. By the time the Colorado court ruled, that legal question had already become a campaign problem, not just a courtroom one. Trump’s team had to answer the possibility that a state court could treat ballot access as an eligibility question. ([courts.state.co.us](https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf?utm_source=openai))

That made Dec. 18 a pressure point, even before the opinion dropped. The campaign was waiting on a state high court that had finished hearing the case and was close enough to a ruling that every side knew the next day could force a new line of attack or defense. Once the opinion came out, the fight stopped being hypothetical and became a live order from a court. ([courts.state.co.us](https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf?utm_source=openai))

The broader consequence was simple: Colorado was no longer just Colorado. A merits ruling under Section 3 gave opponents of Trump a concrete precedent to cite and gave Trump allies a fresh argument that the courts had overreached. Either way, the campaign had lost control of the clock. The case had already moved from a state election dispute into a national eligibility fight by the morning after the decision. ([courts.state.co.us](https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/Supreme_Court/Opinions/2023/23SA300.pdf?utm_source=openai))