TL;DR NY Times predicts trump will remain on the ballet and the ruling will likely have a very narrow basis in hopes of achieving unanimous consensus from the court.
So they will probably have to argue that the ratifiers of the amendment were so worried about insurrectionists taking over government that they wanted to prevent it, but not enough they thought the presidency should be barred to insurrectionists
Except we have the record for for their debate saying that the 39th Congress who passed the 14th Amendment knew that the Office of the President was indeed an office to be guarded. The reason they enumerated the others in Clause 3 was because multiple people wanted to ensure that those folks too were covered.
But even if the President isn’t enumerated Trump has this problem.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
— US Constitution, 10th Amendment
So it not being specified by the Constitution nor being codified by Congress as law, how States want to look at the 14th is up to them. So even if SCOTUS wants to play the “The President is not listed” card. It’s not explicitly denied. The tenth amendment indicates that if it’s not denied, States get to run with it.
What SCOTUS can rule upon is “due process” which is asserted by the 14th clause 1. SCOTUS could indicate that the process by which Colorado took doesn’t meet this bar. But then, SCOTUS would kind of be on the hook for indicating “well what is the official process?” And if they say “Well Congress has to make it up” then we fall back into the “if Congress doesn’t say anything, States get to run with it” problem that the 10th amendment grants.
See Colorado isn’t trying to impose their will unto everyone, which means this squarely falls into a “State’s rights” kind of thing. And that’s going to get tricky for the Conservatives to word salad themselves out of that corner they’ve painted. That’s not to say they won’t, but it’s going to be an interesting read to say the least on how they rule.
I can understand their hesitancy to rule with Colorado because then it’ll open a floodgate that we all know that particular states will attempt to abuse. But boy oh boy have they been so strong on States should get to do what they want so hard that this kind of thing was just waiting to come back and bite them on the ass.
