There is much on the line in 2024. Some suggest that democracy itself, at least the American kind, is at stake.

My point is not at all to minimize the consequence of the coming election. However, even before the year was underway, we saw in rather vivid relief that the argument about democracy cuts both ways.

For many Americans, the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were the ultimate attack on America’s democratic institutions. I identify with this line of thinking even if I fail to embrace all of the remedies that flow from it.

This was an attack on the American seat of power without precedent save for the British assault on Washington, including setting fire to the Capitol building, as part of the War of 1812.

Insurrection is not one of the crimes for which Donald Trump has been charged. But there can be little doubt that was his intention. Well before the 2020 election, Trump previewed his plan to claim the whole thing was rigged if the results did not go his way. He then made the assertion repeatedly and with increasing desperation.

He rallied his troops to Washington on the 6th. He directed them to the Capitol. At best, he stood by, passively, as the place was ransacked. He hung his own vice president out to dry, and almost to hang. In the words of then-U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a conservative by any standard except for blind loyalty, Trump “summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

For those still in irreversible thrall to the former president, what part of Cheney’s analysis is in error?

Lest we forget, even in the immediate aftermath of the riot, roughly two-thirds of the Republican members of Congress shamefully, spinelessly voted to overturn the election results in one or more states.

If the totality of this does not constitute an ambush of democracy, just what would? At least, that is the widely-held perception, one which I share.

To make it worse, Trump’s recent comments as to his intentions were he to regain the office hardly offer reassurance as to his respect for democratic norms and constitutional limitations.

The record of Jan. 6 is what undergirds the efforts of plaintiffs, courts and election officials in a handful of states to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot under the provisions of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Colorado continues to occupy center stage in that pursuit.

I am not a lawyer and don’t even play one on television. I will leave questions of constitutional interpretation to them.

With that disclaimer, I do know that the plaintiffs in the Colorado case, Republicans Norma Anderson and Krista Kafer, as well as former Republican Chris Castillian foremost among them, are people of integrity, principle and courage.

That represents the view from one side of the nation’s stark political divide. But there is an alternative perspective, no matter the lengths to which many in my circle will go to refuse to acknowledge it.

In that alternate universe, Jan. 6 was a legitimate protest, albeit one that got out of hand and was not quite the “normal tourist visit” that a Georgia congressman pretended.

On that end of the political spectrum, where Jan. 6 constituted protected speech, the incursion on democracy is best exemplified by these attempts to deny Trump a place on state ballots.

Never in my lifetime has America seen so magnetic a figure as Donald Trump. Though remember that magnets have two ends – one that strongly attracts and an opposite that repels with equal force.

For one side, the events culminating in Jan. 6 were nothing short of an insurrection, the ultimate disdain for democracy, and Trump’s removal from the ballot is the necessary, appropriate, constitutionally-mandated response. For those on the other pole, Jan. 6, if unseemly, was constitutionally-protected dissent, while cases of ballot disqualification are thoroughly anti-democratic in seeking to deny voters the right to pick their preferred candidate.

It is all in the eye of the beholder.

While my bearing tends toward the political center, on issues relating to Trump I am not given to equivocation. Policy is secondary in my assessment. Character is foremost to go along with respect for core traditions and values of democracy. On that score, I regard Trump as a uniquely menacing figure who did not invent tribalism but put the exclamation point on it.

If Trump and Trumpism are to be defeated both in fact and in spirit, the verdict will need to come from the political process, meaning elections, as opposed to the legal process. The ballot box is more potent than the jury box or any judge’s pen.

Perhaps I will be proven wrong. But my take is that Trump will be on ballots in every state this year. That includes Colorado and Maine. The Supreme Court has ample grounds to reach such a conclusion. I do not know which argument the justices will hang their hat on, but they will find one.

At the end of the day, all of these efforts to disqualify the villain have only aided him. Whatever legal merit they might have, they are doomed to be unsuccessful. In state after state, voters so inclined will have the ability to check the Trump box or pull the Trump lever.

The Colorado court ruling, as well as the Maine order, may have momentarily caused the hearts of instinctive anti-Trumpers to jump for joy. But that reaction is likely ill-placed and fleeting.

Review the last year and you will notice that Trump’s poll numbers have climbed with most every indictment or adverse court proceeding. If his is to be a comeback story, God forbid, the start of it will be traced to the filing of the weak criminal charges in New York.

Most Americans harbor grave reservations as to Trump’s moral fitness for office. But many of those same Americans want to be the arbiters and the ones making that decision.

The net legal effect of these disqualification cases, starting with Colorado’s, is likely to be zero. Politically, however, they may well accrue to Trump’s benefit. As preposterous as it may seem, they have cast Trump as the martyr, the injured party, the put upon, the one standing up for ballot access.

And if there is one role at which Donald Trump truly excels, it is that of martyrdom.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for Colorado Politics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann