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Andy Craig@andycraig.bsky.social |
2733 followers 447 following 11711 posts
Election law and policy and occasional pugs.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Never for POTUS, but I believe there have been rare cases for lower offices and some overseas of a candidate winning, then some knockout bombshell scandal hits, and so they bow out before actually taking office.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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As I recall their answer to what happened next was well let's just have a do-over election, which is definitely not a thing.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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This is the plot of the excruciatingly terrible movie, Man of the Year, where Robin Williams plays a thinly veiled Jon Stewart running for president. Though in that one he bows out because, of course, the voting machines were hacked and he didn't really win. 2006 was a different time.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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And that was back when it was in March!
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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A great American tradition that, as a test of hardiness, we make all our elderly politicians gather outside for hours on end during the worst weather of the year.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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If nothing else, doing a 25th invocation would make it clear they can't just take the oath whenever they want, oh hey guess what I changed my mind, at any point during the next four years and immediately take power. I suppose you could argue a re-election second term oath isn't strictly necessary.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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I'm not sure failing to take the oath is a "failure to qualify." I think it's an "inability." But you become president at noon on Jan 20 regardless, and the oath doesn't affect if you "qualified" as in you're the eligible winner. Oath is only required before exercising powers, not the office itself.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Yeah, it's fun to tease out the hypotheticals but usually if the answer is some obviously crazy result, there's a feasible workaround.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Fun question: if they just don't show up, does that actually trigger any of the succession rules? "death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify" is the list. You might have to do a 25AS4 invocation by the VP + Cabinet to say not taking the oath creates an "inability."
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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This is one reason laws against faithless electors are actually bad and the Supreme Court was wrong to uphold them as constitutional. But the Court did say that, so you'd have to deal with that and it's no sure thing.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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On the face of them, yes. I'd bet against that holding up in such circumstances, that they'd find the wiggle room and put the elbow grease into it necessary to get a favorable administrative (secretary of state) and/or judicial ruling about it. But some states do lack any clear statutory provision.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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You'd get into arguments about it, not all state elector-binding laws clearly address it, either on death or dropping out. But you'd have a very strong argument the law can't require them to vote for a dead person (thus ineligible), and still fairly strong re: somebody who's declined the office.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Right. In theory as long as you change your residency before the electors meet and vote in mid-December, you're fine. And you can change it right back the next day. It would be extremely ill-advised and violate the spirit of the rule, but evading the letter of the rule is trivially easy.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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So when that happens state legislatures tend to get annoyed and pass a law banning it, saying for any offices being elected as a ticket like that you have to fill both spots.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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The minor party silliness is sometimes, from weird deliberate choice and/or screwing up on the ballot access petitions, there have been minor parties on the ballot with nobody for Pres and only a candidate for VP, or vice versa, and also for Gov/LtGov in states where those are elected as a ticket.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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But that's the same thing they'd have to file anyway when they say the VP candidate is the new presidential candidate, that's not automatic. The party would have to confirm it and at the same time they'd say who the new VP candidate is.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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No, because it's the same electors who vote for both offices. But you would run into some potential problems saying your replacement ticket doesn't have a VP candidate. Some state laws forbid that, b/c fringe minor party silliness in the past. The party would need to fill both spots.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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It helps that the actual people being elected in November are the electors, and there's no need to replace them. They can still vote for the new nominee(s) in December when it counts.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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It wouldn't be automatically bumping up the VP candidate to the prime spot, it'd go off who the party says are its nominees. In theory it could be somebody else. Though same thing because obviously the VP candidate is who they'd pick.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Like, hypothetical god-forbid catastrophe three days before the election and the DNC has to meet and name new nominees for both spots on the ticket. People's votes would still count for the replacements, and the elector slates would still vote for the new candidates when they meet in mid-December.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Formally the DNC would name a new VP nominee but just like the convention, it's a rubber stamp for whoever the top of the ticket picks. For ballots, it would depend how late in the process it is re: ballot-printing deadlines. Though even after that the votes would still count for the new ticket.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Part of what's so unfortunate is it's not clear cut. That would make it a much easier call, either way. He plainly does have good and bad days (and good/bad hours, by his own admission). Even at his worst he's not completely incoherent, but he is clearly struggling some in ways he can't hide.
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Jacob T. Levy
@jacobtlevy.bsky.social
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I'm up at the UnPopulist, discussing, you know, Montesquieu and stuff, as usual.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Sure, but the ascertainable facts do not unanimously point in the direction of "he's totally fine, nothing to see here." Both what we've seen of him publicly ourselves, and what we're hearing from people who deal with him. It's at best mixed, but mixed is decidedly not great.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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It would be like saying nobody who's not a doctor should have an opinion about what they saw during the debate. Of course nobody can or should try to make a medical diagnosis based off that. But neither is it reasonable to tell people to just ignore it and act like they didn't see what happened.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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The president has to talk to lots of people who aren't doctors and it's not good if he's leaving even a substantial fraction of them, perhaps at some times even if not others, with the impression that he's not all there. That's not a question of amateur medical diagnosis. It's job performance.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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I see lots of people discussing things I'm not interested in and don't want to discuss, even to disagree. That's when you just keep scrolling. Jumping in to yell at people about how they should shut up and not discuss what they've chosen to talk about on here is tedious and merits an instant block.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Perhaps. But this was before the debate. He had no particular reason to expect it, and it seems some people there got the same worrying impression.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Did he not see him at all other than on stage? If so, that is weaker, but also a bit unusual. You figure they'd have at least chatted backstage briefly. Granted, that's not an extended conversation if so. But it'd be more than just the same watching him read the teleprompter everyone else saw.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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What they wanted Pence to do last time mattered because they wanted to use it as a fig-leaf excuse for a coup, using Trump's powers as the incumbent president. Not because it could have made any difference to the outcome if Congress proceeded to vote on it, they clearly would have overruled him.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Presumably it's Grassley if Republicans retake the Senate (new Congress takes office three days before). But he didn't support the shenanigans last time, and more importantly there just isn't any such power in that role. Not just on the explicit law, but practically as well.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Fifty million people saw him in the debate.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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George Clooney's musings on the politics of the situation, and the ever-ridiculous mini-primary nonsense, aren't relevant. But I don't have any reason to think he's lying when he says the man was as bad in-person as he was on the debate stage, and that he's seen him enough to know that's a change.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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The fact that reports from people who've seen him at length in person are, at best, mixed on how bad he is, is not reassuring on the question of if he's fit for office right now. Like, even if that's a minority interpretation, that at least a substantial minority walk away thinking it is damning.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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I kind of take the headline as a tongue in cheek joke, that's DB's style, but people are mistakenly taking it as a serious point.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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That was my thinking, too. He'd be an albatross around her neck, keeps it alive, he's still a target, doesn't give her the boost etc. But I've gone a bit softer on it, such that I don't think it's actually worse than him staying in the race. Partly b/c my estimation of the latter has only gone down.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Describing St. Petersburg as "Putin's hometown" is a pretty ridiculous bit of headline clickbait trolling.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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I tend to agree a resignation is better for Harris in November and that's all that matters, though I feel somewhat less strongly about it than I did initially. At least, I can see Biden finishing the term as not definitely catastrophic, though it'd still be a missed opportunity for boosting Harris.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Hypothetically, if House and Senate majorities were determined to reject electoral votes and overturn the election, it doesn't matter if it's Harris or whoever else ceremonially presiding over the joint session. And if they don't have the votes to do that, it also doesn't matter who's presiding.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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It's really not. The Senate president pro tem does it absent a VP, and either way the role has no power over the process. Both explicitly in the law and as a practical political matter. Either Congress has the votes to do something crazy or they don't, but it's up to Congress. Chair is irrelevant.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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There's definitely a political opportunity to be seized in using the confirmation hearings to attack the nominee. There's little political opportunity in whipping hard against frontline members who would, probably correctly, see voting yes as a better play in their competitive races than voting no.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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I've also seen repeated suggestions that it might makes some difference to the electoral count on Jan 6, or that it would put Johnson in charge of that, and neither of those is true.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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The bigger downside to a potential confirmation is not the possibility of a vacancy itself or how long it might last, it's that the nominee (presumably her new running mate) would have to go up to the Hill for a performative raking over the coals in committee hearings, like Rockefeller did.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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People are also being too confident that Johnson would definitely lose no more than three votes, or see that as a fight worth having, on a confirmation. But even if so, it's ridiculous to let the political calculus be overridden by "what if the president gets assassinated in the next six months?"
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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I see (2) as overstated. It's not that big a deal if VP is vacant for a few months, if that were to happen, and certainly not enough to outweigh any boost to her chances in November. But also, Biden resigning is much, much less likely than Biden dropping out, whether that's the right call or not.
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Matt Grossmann
@mattgrossmann.bsky.social
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Lead Trump campaign operatives are hoping Biden stays, believing polls showing their best options are among young minority voters, slowly confronting Trump vulnerabilities, & refocusing away from broad voter contact toward low propensity Trump voters:
www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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“It’s your fault none of you primaried me” has been a particularly tone deaf bit of his messaging attacking Hill Dems.
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CNN
@cnn.com
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JUST IN: Vermont's Peter Welch has become the first Democratic senator to call for Joe Biden to step aside as the party's presidential nominee.
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Andy Craig
@andycraig.bsky.social
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Puerto Rico would be a purple state! They elect Republicans frequently to island-wide offices including their non-voting House member right now.
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Walter Olson
@walterolson.bsky.social
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My roundup of short items for Cato on the radicalizing effect of rigged-election lies, a stunt by the Illinois legislature, a non-link between mail voting & fraud, two online RCV panels I spoke on, and how a climate of intimidation deterred a potential Trump prosecutor. www.cato.org/blog/electio...
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