I was talking about the sequence of events and the word choices used by official announcements. It’s exactly the same, only at an accelerated pace.
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Trumpwarts University™ and Modeling Agency.
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Puts an interesting new spin on Trump’s curious unwillingness, during the debates, to stop talking, to keep his mouth shut, to stop PROJECTING his BREATH – in Biden’s direction.
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Somewhere the Republican party must be having a hell of contingency planning session.
If he’s back on his feet in two weeks, no problem.
If he dies after the election, that’s planned for.
The middle cases where he lives but is damaged, or dies before the election are messy.
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LOL, I was going to say something like this, he’s never worked! At least as president
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Maybe Trump will use the powers vested in him by the Constitution, paragraph 1290, subsection (d)(3), to formally request 3rd party arbitration of this dispute by the Grizellas, who will awaken from their hibernation cycle in 6 months.
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He is the president of the United States, so he’s going to get the best possible care and drugs no one else will have access to - and even in the absence of that, his survival chances are 80%+ (they’re only that low because he’s got comorbidities and is showing symptoms). I figure there’s little chance that he’ll actually die. Far more likely he’ll be flat on his back for months - and I’m not sure what that means for this election. Candidate Pence? (As a write-in? How would that work, at this point?)
This worries me, too. But on the other hand, Pence doesn’t excite Trump’s base like he does - even among the fundamentalists, it seems. Some percentage won’t bother to show up to vote, and most people who hate Trump are going to see Pence as tainted too.
Yeah. I was thinking about this earlier and I realized - if he were faking it, a lot of people in the White House would be in on it, and some number of them would probably have already “let it slip” to the press. He’s surrounded by people who, if they don’t actually despise him, have their own ego-involved reasons for being there that makes them likely to tell all to reporters.
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IIRC they can name a new candidate. Though it’s likely too late to get that candidate on the ballot everywhere, and votes for Trump can not just be counted as votes for the new candidate. If Pence is the candidate, then votes for Pence as VP can not be counted as votes for Pence as president.
So it’s basically a last minute write in campaign.
However if Trump kicks it post election, and he’s won. Then Pence as the winning VP would become president and the new Congress would select a new VP.
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The Trump electors in the electoral college would vote for the Republican’s alternate
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“I just figure they’re so greedy they must have ventilators close at hand because they know they’re important and they are selfish.”
This is one take, but from what I understand about ventilators, not a good one. From all accounts the need for ventilators was overstated and there was never a shortage. In fact, the last stat I heard said 85% of COVID patients put on a ventilator died anyway - it is a last-resort, hail-Mary kind of treatment when it comes to COVID. I seriously doubt the WH would hoard them.
(That’s not to say Trump won’t end up on a ventilator - who knows? But if he does, that’s really not a good sign for his chances of survival.)
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I only work in DC and I’m not a pundit or insider, but personally I don’t think you have much more to worry about than before this happened. No Republican I know of takes Pence seriously. That’s basically how he got his job. He’s non threatening. There will be allot of infighting LONG before Pence’s name comes up as a candidate and even if the Pubs put all of their hopes on Pence, Americans don’t know him as anything other than a bumbling, ineffectual idiot with absolutely zero charisma.
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Everyone’s worried about Pence…
Eschaton
Friday, October 02, 2020
Next Step
Jared runs to the assembled press and shrieks in his bizarre voice, “I’m in control!”
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Rather: “Give me an example when Dumpy has done ONE MINUTE of actual ‘work’ in his entire goddamned life.”
He’s never “worked” in the semantic sense of having to be there by 9 or the boss will yell at ya, much less the sort of “work” that people like janitors, dishwashers, firemen, et.al do.
Another semantic sense of “work”: it must have taken a lot of “work” to have been given $413,000,000 from daddy, bought casinos, and lost all that. I’ll give him that: it must take some sort of “work” to be that much of fucking loser.
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Oh yeah. Forgot about that part.
Big mess one way or the other. Frankly i don’t think there’s much chance of them eeking out a win in all that disaster.
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And all night gas station and video rental?
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thanks for the big picture analysis! I was hoping people would chime in. 
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I don’t think it matters who is on the ballot that your or I mark, so long as the electors pledged to Trump agree on who to vote for. And THAT is the question, isn’t it? Sure, they could all cast their vote for Pence as president, but would they? I guaran-damn-tee that somebody is currently sounding some of them out, trying to figure out to get them to vote for somebody else as we speak.]
edited to add: I’m going to assume for simplicity’s sake that pledged electors are freed from their pledges (in the states where they are legally required to vote for the candidate that they are pledged to) if the candidate dies. But are they freed from their pledge to vote for Pence as VP? Could we end up with the VP nomination thrown to congress? Interesting times indeed.
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