It’s become fashionable for some to say that we shouldn’t be hung up on January 6th, that it is, after all, time to move on. And it’s not just the Trump supporters who led the insurrection. The thinking is that it is a bit lazy somehow, holding on to the familiar. You’re stuck in some relevance-affirming cocoon. And it’s time to get outside. It’s an attitude that most especially prevalent among those who judge their seriousness about politics and the validity of their perspectives precisely in inverse proportion to their personal engagement and investment in the big questions of political life. Let’s call them the supercilious center. The attitude is pervasive among elite political reporters and editorialists.

In fact, January 6th remains at the center of our politics. It’s as important as it’s ever been. We often say that it’s not just what happened on January 6th but the criminal conduct leading up to it. That’s true, as far as it grows. But what’s more true is this: It’s not so much what happened on January 6th or even in the weeks leading up to it. What’s truly important is what came after January 6th.

I wanted to respond to a few questions and comments about my disqualification post. It’s a complicated issue that a number of you have raised. In so many words, I said that in the very unlikely case that the Court found that Trump had participated in an insurrection and allowed the Colorado decision to stand, it would still be up to individual states to remove him from the ballot. Clearly no red state is going to do that. And it seems unlikely that any purple states would do it.

TPM Reader BS writes: “I think you’re underestimating the impact of the (admittedly slight) possibility of SCOTUS affirming the removal of Trump from the Colorado ballot. However the majority phrases it, this will be seen and interpreted as the GOP-dominated SCOTUS, the highest court in the land, finding Trump GUILTY of insurrection.” (Don’t hold BS‘s initials against him.)

As BS goes on to argue, this would unleash a tidal wave of recriminations within the GOP and open the door to swing states removing Trump from the ballot.

We’re now waiting to see when — almost certainly when — the Supreme Court will take up ex-President Trump’s appeal of Colorado’s decision to strike his name from the presidential ballot. As we’ve noted, there are many unknowns about just how the Court might respond, though it seems almost inconceivable that the Court won’t make a decision which forces Trump’s name back on the ballot.

But let’s at least consider the possibility that it doesn’t, that the Court allows Colorado and presumably Maine to keep Trump off the ballot. What then? Does this really have practical significance for the 2024 election?