The NYT, for all your Centrist whinging needs. /s
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ALSO: Twitter, for making dumb ideas seem elaborate and clever
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Obligs:
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The groans of actual constitutional scholars and lawyers was audible in the stratosphere.
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I would, without hesitation.
The biggest reason this won’t happen is because Trump doesn’t want to be President.
Even living in his golf club / Fox News bubble, he is very aware that the vast majority see him as a clown, an embarrassment. It doesn’t matter whether he believes any of that, but he IS sick and tired of hearing it and fighting it.
I believe he’d be pretty (if secretly) disappointed if he’s propped up enough to steal a 2nd term.
Which is exactly why the “Presidential harassment” and mocking and calling out must continue apace.
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My imagination provides the following scenario. I have no idea if it’s likely.
1.Trump creates election chaos by an attempt at cancellation.
2. The left coast states (all governed by Democrats) secede.
3. We find out about the loyalties of members of the National Guard and the armed forces people in bases in western states.
I would love to think secession would be on the table, at least.
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I’d hope that more people like myself were being kept up at night by terrible things Trump is actually literally doing right now, at this very moment, than an imaginary alarmist situation created by a career alarmist.
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Whatever happens I think that it’s safe to assume that he won’t leave willingly, and that whatever
he leaves behind will be as well and truly fucked up as he can manage.
I agree with @KathyPartdeux that he is a physical coward but we can’t assume that he will leave
behind any light bulbs.
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Maybe! I think they wouldn’t, though. Pathological voting is the only reason Republicans ever get into power. Left wingers are sloppy voters compared to the opposition.
That fellow Americans ARE the opposition is significantly responsible for the issues at hand. Politicians have created enemies out of contrywo/men through divisiveness and conflict based rhetoric. Isolating voters by giving them an enemy is how both sides secure their power. It does not serve anyone but politicians and their ‘donors’ (bosses). Certainly not America as a country.
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https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1190371976608669696
https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1190372493787377667
OK, IANAL, still less an American constitutional lawyer, but that seems to directly contradict the 20th Amendment:
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
…
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
(Emphasis added.)
So without a presidential election (and a victory in same), and without a complaisant Congress willing to declare him acting President, Trump as a matter of law stops being POTUS at noon on 20 January 2021.
I mean, he could declare himself President, and if the armed forces backed him he could make that stick. But that’s a straight coup d’état, not quasi-legal chicanery.
[Edited to replace duplicate tweet with the one I originally meant to include, and to refine some details.]
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With the enormous number of legal cases arrayed against him Trump needs to stay in office to avoid almost certain jail time. He’d be imprisoned already for dozens of criminal offenses if that bullshit monarchy law protecting presidents from the law wasn’t still in play.
America is about no one being above the law and everyone being equal and free under it. Treating presidents like rock stars or gods only ever undermined that. Letting them get away with almost anything never served the people. And the people are who a president MUST serve!
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I can see state courts in Donnie-leaning areas supporting Donnie on this, but I cannot see state courts in areas that lean democratic allowing their elections to be interrupted.
That would work against Donnie’s interests, legally.
I still maintain that such distuption would allow him to dispute the legitimacy of the election but I strongly disagree that the courts will have any part in legitimizing it.
That law was only meant to shield presidents who are otherwise operating in the realm of the office.
As in ordering intelligence operations – if you or I did, it’d be illegal. Sending troops to a warzone. Those kinds of things. Now we can argue if a president should be indemnified for ordering the capture or killing of a terrorist organization or enemy forces (and I think it is something worth examining), but it wasn’t intended for how it’s being wielded now.
Which is why we need to be careful about the laws that get passed. It doesn’t matter if it’s intended to be used in such a way, if it can be, it will be.
Especially since:
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YOUR arguments are comprehensive and sound
Eichenwald, on the other hand,
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Yup. Looks like he just wants an excuse to scare people out of voting for a socialist.
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Can you elaborate? What part(s) did I get wrong, fractally or not? If there’s no election, will Trump still in fact still be legally president at 12.01pm EST on 20 January 2021?
[ETA: in retrospect, that reads as unnecessarily, even aggressively, defensive. Apologies.]
(Stricken for utterly misunderstanding the post I was replying to. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.)
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I am very sorry, I totally missed that.
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Your elaboration is unnecessary, very gracious and much appreciated.
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