Kudos to Dean Phillips, who otherwise will serve as a footnote to the 2024 election cycle. The House Democrat from Minnesota kicked off a quixotic primary challenge to incumbent (and largely recumbent) Joe Biden earlier this autumn, hoping to wrest the party’s nomination in order to assure victory over Donald Trump.

But nearly alone among his Capitol Hill colleagues, Phillips wants to defeat Trump at the ballot box rather than the bar. Politico reported late yesterday on the rather novel development yesterday of having a Democrat blasting the Colorado state supreme court for its judicial bill of attainder, and demanding “immediate” action by the Supreme Court to restore order:

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips on Wednesday criticized the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot over his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, aligning with Republicans while placing himself at odds with key figures within his party.

“Do I believe Trump is guilty of inspiring an insurrection and doing nothing to stop it? I was there. Absolutely,” the Minnesota Democrat posted on X , formerly Twitter. ”Do I believe it’s wrong to ban him from the ballot in Colorado without a conviction? Absolutely. Do I believe the SCOTUS must opine immediately? Absolutely.”

Politico adds this amusing observation at the end:

It is unclear whether this position will help Phillips in his quixotic bid to challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination.

Oh ho! Yes, it’s “unclear” all right. Progressives like Rep. Cori Bush “welcomed” the Colorado court ruling, and so-called moderates like Senator Chris Coons cheered it as a “plain reading of the text” of the 14th Amendment. Joe Biden himself didn’t directly address the ruling, but told reporters yesterday that Trump was an insurrectionist, which means he’s not champing at the amicus bit to get SCOTUS to reconsider the Colorado ruling. Other leading Democrats, such as Chuck Schumer, have avoided the issue over the last two days.

So yes, it’s “unclear” whether this will help Phillips. On the other hand, it probably can’t do much to hurt his chances at the nomination, which are so small as to be practically non-existent. That strongly suggests that Phillips didn’t make that statement as a campaign consideration, but rather out of principle. It does him no good to take Trump’s side, and in reality he didn’t. Phillips took the side of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the principle of the presumption of innocence before an actual trial … or in this case, even an indictment.

Even if Phillips has no chance at the nomination or the presidency, that takes courage — and should be acknowledged and respected.

Phillips isn’t the only Democrat speaking out against his own short-term interests in this case. Robert F. Kennedy, running as an independent for president, warned yesterday that an illegitimate “judicial fiat” against Trump would make domestic unrest exponentially worse in the coming election cycle. “The country will become ungovernable,” warned RFK Jr:

“If Trump is kept out of office through judicial fiat rather than being defeated in a fair election, his supporters will never accept the result. This country will become ungovernable,” Kennedy, who initially launched a Democratic primary challenge to President Biden in April before switching to an independent 2024 bid in October, wrote on X.

“It’s time to trust the voters. It is up to the people to decide who the best candidate is. Not the courts. The people. That’s Democracy 101,” Kennedy said. “When any candidate is deprived of his right to run, the American people are deprived of their right to choose.”

Calling for a swift reversal, RFK Jr. said the 4-3 Colorado decision deeming Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause, “contributes to the perception that the elites are picking the President by manipulating the legal system, and through other interventions.”

“Every American should be troubled by the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove President Trump from the ballot,” Kennedy wrote on X. “The court has deprived him of a consequential right without having been convicted of a crime. This was done without an evidentiary hearing in which he is given the basic right of confronting his accusers.”

I’m much less of a fan of RFK Jr than I am of Phillips, but again, Kennedy is not just correct in this instance but also courageous in this stand. Kennedy stands to gain more directly than Phillips does if states can use judicial fiats to keep Trump off the ballots in November, but the damage to American jurisprudence and the body politic is more important to RFK Jr. And that reflects credit upon him as well, eight words I never would have predicted I’d write about him.

So where’s the media when it comes to defending democracy in the face of authoritarian darkness? John has another surprising development on that question coming up this afternoon. Stay tuned.