The Daily Fuckup

The Colorado Supreme Court’s December 19 ruling did more than shake up one state’s primary ballot. It said Donald Trump was ineligible for Colorado’s 2024 Republican primary ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the constitutional provision dealing with people who have taken an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection. That put the campaign into a legal fight over eligibility that was going to outlast a normal news cycle.

The ruling was not the final word. Colorado’s justices stayed their decision pending review, giving Trump a path to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. On December 21, that review had not yet been filed, but the pressure point was obvious: the dispute was headed toward a federal showdown over whether a former president can be kept off a state ballot under the post-Civil War amendment.

That matters politically because it forces a presidential campaign to run alongside a constitutional challenge. Instead of talking only about rallies, turnout and delegate math, Trump’s team had to prepare for briefing schedules, appellate deadlines and arguments over what Section 3 does and does not allow. The legal question was now part of the campaign environment whether the campaign wanted it there or not.

The case also carried a broader problem for Trump: once one state court had issued a disqualification ruling, other states and other judges could follow with their own decisions, creating a patchwork of rulings that would eventually need a national answer. That made Supreme Court review likely, even if it had not started yet on December 21.

For Trump, the immediate political value was familiar. He could cast the ruling as unfair treatment and rally supporters around the fight. But the practical effect was less helpful. The campaign was now tied to a ballot-access dispute that put January 6 and Trump’s conduct after the 2020 election back at the center of the story, not the edges of it.