I’d be willing to bet that if you told him that a) he would ‘get out of jail free’ and b) could keep all the campaign money for himself, he’d run away to Mar-a-Lago and never be seen again.
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It’s not “doubling down” it’s just being honest. For whatever reason, that’s what my crystal ball was saying. Sometimes the crystal ball is a bit foggy.
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When there’s no light, we call it radio.
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I think you’re absolutely correct about the brand. I was considering, though, another possibility regarding staying out of jail: if Republicans see that he absolutely cannot win, they COULD mount a campaign to convince him that he’s probably going to jail when he leaves office UNLESS he drops out, allows Pence or someone else more electable to become the nominee, and to accept a pardon should they win.
In all likelihood, though, he’s going to Dr Strangelove this thing all the way down.
EDIT: And this is what happens when I respond, THEN think - most of the charges he’s facing are not federal, and would not be subject to presidential pardon.
So how does the toxically vain narcissist who never wants to appear weak or as a loser explain quitting?
It would be the best thing for the GOP – maybe – but then again, he never does anything selfless.
Also, LBJ was politically astute and could see the bigger picture. Once he knew he couldn’t win, he decided to take one for the party. The Orange Man, however…
I understand. But that would deprive us of the possibilities of seeing him in some state courts, or in prison, or … so many other delightfully rewarding scenarios.
The only way he could quit is by announcing it while already being in a country that won’t extradite him to the USA.
Not a lot of options (although Trump Tower Pyongyang does have a nice ring to it, and they already have that weird empty hotel they could give him), but it would be interesting to know where he has stashed his money and whether the US could have it frozen.
Trust me, nothing about the system is obvious.
Your ballot will list the actual candidate. However, based on who wins the race at a state wide level, delegates will be selected by a process that varies by state and party. One way or another these electors (usually party insiders get the job as a perk) have pledged to vote for the candidate listed on the ballot when the electoral college meets in early January. Various states have rules that require them to follow their pledge, but the legality of those laws is in question and in fact 2 ruling from the supreme court are expected any day now on this subject. Even so, those cases have to do with the ability to punish electors from violating their pledge after the fact – they can’t actually reverse a dissenting vote.
It is pretty common to have up to a small handful of “faithless electors” especially when the outcome isn’t close. However, those people are just people, and in a significantly unusual circumstance might do something completely different. And it isn’t clear what a pledge would even mean if the presumptive candidate had taken themselves out of consideration. Voting for Pence (or whoever the VP is the obvious solution that would probably be relatively uncontroversial, but there might be factions within the republican party that try to get their state’s electors pledged to someone else. And even then, I’m not sure if they have to pick a vice president too or if that can be handled once the president is sworn in and can fill that vacancy in the normal way.
So yeah, ultimately the electoral college will decide, but how exactly those electors get chosen if a candidate changes is at least subject to challenge.
If the electoral college is unable to reach a majority, then the question gets punted to the newly elected congress with 1 vote per state. But that would be a mess as well, especially if there was alleged impropriety in the electoral college vote.
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That’s part of the Brokered Convention pathway. There’s prereqs to make that happen but it’s possible.
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“Isn’t your election indirect,” - Yes, but many American voters do not understand this.
Well, we’ve only been around less than 250 years and have not quite worked out that detail yet. Some people say they Are bound, some say that a delegate can vote for anyone.
As you surmise, in America we are electing an elector, not a canditate ,with our vote. But that elector might not have to remain faithful. Some states bind their electors, but even that might not be legal .Lawsuits are currently being worked through the courts to determine this.
Here’s a good summary of the nonsense:
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US Citizens vote for the president. The electoral college then is supposed to vote the will of the people in order to select the president.
Originally in the constitution it leaves how electoral votes are apportioned to the states, just saying each state gets the sum of their congresspeople in electors. But how the electors are distributed is not explained.
Theoretically the electoral college system is to prevent the people from voting in a nonsense candidate like donald trump. The electors originally were not strictly bound to the popular vote.
Over the years, basically every state has legislated their electors to vote as state based blocs for either democrat or republican, based on who won the majority of the state.
In essence the electoral college is a “saftey measure” to prevent the people who “voted wrong” from causing the consequences of a trump getting elected.
Turns out the electoral college is just a wothless antidemocratic bludgeon.
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He can go retire in Moscow, safe from extradition, free from any danger of ever being held accountable for his crimes, and Putin constantly rubbing it into our noses. And I’m fine with that. Just as long as he’s gone from here.
Thumbs up for the Regina Spektor paraphrase…intended or not, it made me think of her and that’s a win right there!
I’m aware that when a President leaves office they keep a group of guards for the rest of their lives that are paid for by our taxes.
I’m hoping Trump’s will be prison guards.
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Thank you all for your replies.
I’m more confused now than before, but i think this is a feature not a bug.
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Romney maybe?
Good enough!
I could see him quitting for one reason alone: if he knows he’s going to lose, he definitely won’t want to stick around and lose to Joe Biden. If he quits, he can claim he would have won and was forced out. He can then whine and moan all he wants. It’s a total Hitler move: Hitler in the end said the German people deserved to lose because they fought so poorly for him. I could see Trump going that route. Everybody abandoned him, Americans didn’t sufficiently love him. He’ll still say he would have won because contradictions never stopped him before.
Of course, one thing we’ve all learned about Trump is that few things are predictable.
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It would be the cushest Secret Service detail evar. Spend your days in the Warden’s office at Riker’s checking CCTV on “Prisoner 452021” , then out to the yard for exercise (gotta appear to keep the prisoner from getting shanked in the yard), go home, have a brewski and fuhgeddaboudit til tomorrow. All on a sweet, taxpayer salary in the 6 figure range.
Where do I apply?
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