The Republican candidate was the favorite heading into Super Tuesday, with fifteen states voting. His disqualification in Colorado was overturned by America's highest court.
Washington correspondent
Trump won his first victory the day before Super Tuesday. The Supreme Court's decision, announced Monday morning, to overturn the 14th Amendment disqualifications against him in Colorado and Maine lifted one of the mortgages weighing on his campaign. By confirming his candidacy, the Supreme Court offers him a symbolic victory over his opponents until he is likely to achieve victory in the primaries that will take place this Tuesday in about fifteen states.
The Supreme Court's unprecedented decision, posted on its website Monday morning, also removes the final suspense of Super Tuesday. This day, with most states, including Colorado, participating in primaries at the same time, is likely to confirm Trump's dominance over the Republican Party and that of his opponent Joe Biden over the Democratic Party.
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The Supreme Court intervened in the electoral process 24 years after the Bush v. Gore affair, which gave George W. Bush the presidency and deeply divided the country. It voted unanimously to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court's disqualification of Trump in Trump v. Anderson, which invoked the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who leads or supports an insurrection from holding office. Federal Court. The judges carefully avoided ruling on the charges against the former president. They simply held that a state of the nation did not have the authority to decide on the application of the Constitution at the federal level.
According to their decision, a state can invoke Section III of the 14th Amendment to “disqualify any person holding or attempting to hold any office in this state.” But “the states have no authority to apply Article 3 with respect to federal functions, particularly the presidency,” the nine justices ruled unanimously. While a majority of five justices hold that this power belongs exclusively to Congress, a minority opinion holds that such clarification is unnecessary and preempts other future cases.
Avoid chaos
The court explained that giving each state the freedom to interpret the Constitution risked chaos. “The result could well be that the same candidate would be declared ineligible in some states and not in others. The resulting patchwork would likely result in the severing of the direct connection between the national government and the people of the United States at large. » “If Article 3 were to be applied after the nation has voted, the disruption would be all the more serious and could lead to the annulment of the votes of millions of people (…). “Nothing in the Constitution requires us to endure such chaos,” the justices ruled.
Chaos is thus avoided, at least for the time being. Trump, already the big favorite for the Republican nomination, sees his candidacy confirmed by the highest American court and his role in the events of January 6, 2021 de facto minimized. Super Tuesday can therefore take place normally in Colorado, where Trump's name was already on the ballot, and in the fifteen states that are holding their primaries at the same time. But this normality is only an illusion.
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The first Tuesday in March has long been an important moment in the U.S. election calendar, with more than a third of each party's convention delegates honored. His results are often decisive, but not this year.
Like the rest of the primary campaign, Super Tuesday 2024 is almost tension-free. Not surprisingly, two candidates dominate their camp. Joe Biden, the outgoing president, has imposed his new candidacy on the Democratic Party. But the very worrying poll numbers for his election campaign are causing panic in his camp. More than 70% of voters think it's too old, especially among Democrats. Entire swaths of his 2020 electorate are turning away from him, particularly women, young people and minorities, key categories for Democrats. According to a recent poll, his voting intention is 43%, compared to Trump's 48% in the November election. But in the absence of an alternative, the party is betting everything on this unpopular man, who at 81 is showing increasingly clear signs of physical decline.
Despite all odds
There is also virtually no tension left on the Republican side. After Donald Trump's success in the primaries and caucuses since the beginning of the year, he should confirm his dominance in the Republican Party. His candidacy is favored by party rules that allocate all delegates to the candidate who comes first. His campaign expects to win at least 773 delegates on Super Tuesday and secure the nomination in the following weeks.
Her most recent rival, Nikki Haley, continues her campaign against all odds. Mathematically, she no longer has a chance of winning the nomination. His only win was the small District of Columbia (Washington DC) on Sunday.
But his candidacy, which brings together about a quarter of the Republican electorate, points to one of Trump's handicaps in the general election. Instead of bringing the Republican electorate together, Trump's aggressive rhetoric against what he calls the Rino (“Republicans in Name Only”), his divisive personality and, above all, the way he tramples on rules and norms continue to undermine him Rejection of part of the conservative electorate. The results of Super Tuesday, particularly in states like North Carolina, one of the key states that could decide the general election, should be an indicator of the extent of this rejection.