Normally campaign season is a period of heightened engagement, as people scour the Internet to research even the most inane questions, knowing that at the end of the process, they get to cast votes on them. It’s why news companies tend to fatten up in election years, like Grizzlies during salmon runs. People are absorbed by dramas in which they feel themselves to be participants.

This year the public is being forced to research questions in which they have no say. We all understand now that there’s a disqualification clause in the 14th Amendment. We also understand that this clause seems to have been written with deliberate vagueness. I’m no lawyer, but I doubt the 14th Amendment was designed to empower unelected state officials to unilaterally strike major party frontrunners from the presidential ballot. If it was, that’s a shock. I must have missed that in AP Insane Legal Loopholes class. Is there any way this ends well? It feels harder and harder to imagine.

[Nope. Even if the Supreme Court intervenes to put an end to this nonsense, it will set them up as the target of progressive ire once again. That will be especially true if such a decision comes down 6-3 or 5-4, rather than 9-0. This is an effort to dismantle representative democracy, largely by unelected officials in state judiciaries and executive branches. There is no way this ends well. — Ed]