Pwnallthethings

Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 04:22 UTC

low-information swing voters in WI love this one thing

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 04:20 UTC

(fwiw, I think the analytically better way to look at it is that the constitutional higher barrier for treaties is an error, in the same way that the high bar to amendments, and the treason clause are, all of which have since been creatively neutered because they are misregulation)

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 04:10 UTC

IOW you can end a defense treaty simply by eroding the confidence the paper signifies; it doesn't even need you to shuffle the paperwork to formalize it

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 04:08 UTC

This is also the fundamental problem of Trump2/NATO. The *entire* value of the Washington Treaty is that everyone understands the mutual-defense obligation as unambiguous and certain. If the confidence is not there, in member nations or hostile capitals, the rest of it doesn't really *do* anything

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 04:02 UTC

Eh, maybe. I think the basic problem is that if the President decides he won't honor a mutual defense obligation, the paper stops doing anything useful beyond that point no matter what you try and do to salvage it

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:57 UTC

Q: "Is this actually a treaty or just an intergovernment MOU?" A: well first of all, great question, love it, but, and I cannot stress this enough, the tldr is nobody cares

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:54 UTC

Its like when you end up with the Paris Agreement and conlaw folks say "well it's not formally a treaty because it's not gone through the Senate" and I'm over here being like ok but "formally" is doing literally all of the work there.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:52 UTC

hahaha sometimes useful to switch modes and remember that conlaw/law/succession/election law are, in some odd but profound ways, also just power coordination modalities, so you can view them from either angle

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:41 UTC

(putting on my IR hat) "the president is, ultimately, just who everyone in power agrees the president is"

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:20 UTC

True. But what a hypothetical lol

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:15 UTC

20A might get you there if it's clear they will /never/ take the Oath. Tho amuses me if it were a second term where they'd already taken one does the first inauguration roll over?

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:13 UTC

You can probably do without A needing to agree anything by 20A (they have not qualified if they refuse to take the Oath), but man this would be an amusing skit: what if someone is elected president /against their will/

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:09 UTC

wait, Jan 20? But it's cold and I've already got plans

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:08 UTC

Trying a bit to imagine the absolute state of someone winning the presidential election and then turning around and being like "you know what, nah"

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:05 UTC

A very extreme hypothetical, but there you probably have A-B wins anyway, and drop to 20A to hand B the WH keys, same as if A-B wins and A refuses to take the Oath of Office

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:04 UTC

Oh, so if A-B wins, and A *voluntarily* drops out post election but pre-certification?

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 03:00 UTC

All the faithless elector laws require the electors to vote for their PE if available, VPE otherwise, or some secret third thing** if neither are ** varies by state

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:58 UTC

Until the convention, their ability to keep a Biden-replacement off the ballot is /precisely identical/ to their ability to keep Biden himself off the ballot.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:55 UTC

who cares? They're going to file frivolous lawsuits. They'll lose them.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:53 UTC

nope (or at least, not unless A or their party somehow wanted that)

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:50 UTC

Right. "Visibly and unambiguously permanently and totally incapacitated"

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:48 UTC

(and lest anyone assume this to say anything beyond the hypothetical, everyone in their right mind understands that switching a candidate voluntarily post-ballot would be insane. It is pedantically possible, tho very much only as a hypothetical)

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:46 UTC

Right. In an election between A-B and C-D, A dies literally the day before the election, it'll be too late to reprint the ballots, and it'll be carnage, but formally all the A-B votes for president seamlessly become and get counted as B votes.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:43 UTC

If the top of the ticket drops out or dies, every state provides for the candidate to select a new VP and continue on the same ticket, which is to protect the election from a candidate dying close to an immovable election. Past the election, 12A takes over, past certification, 22A, past Jan 20, 25A.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:37 UTC

If we're being pedantic past the convention itself they can still swap in Harris (she's on the ticket anyway), but every sane person should recognize that absent Biden literally dying that's not a sane thing to do past late August.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:34 UTC

Right. That says there's no problems until the convention. Starts getting messy very quickly afterwards, but until then no issue.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:30 UTC

Anyway, tl;dr is they need to work out the party politics. All the rest is just noise.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:28 UTC

If they pick someone other than Harris, there's some procedural hurdles migrating the Biden-Harris PAC (but not the Super-PACs), but even /that/ is just process. If the politics is there, everything else will follow smoothly enough. The problems all stem from the politics very much /not/ being there

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:26 UTC

Not until after the convention formally nominates Biden. Until then it's not a close call that they can, in principle, pick whomever they like.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:24 UTC

all end up as rounding errors

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:21 UTC

everything beyond that is just paperwork

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:21 UTC

That's what I mean by "it's political". They can switch if they want to or not switch because they don't want to. But, when you pull back the curtain, the only relevant question is "can you win 270 EC votes".

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 11, 2024 at 02:17 UTC

the problems of switching at this stage are extremely real, and everyone should be very aware of those, but they are all political, not procedural at this stage

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 23:15 UTC

lol true

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 23:08 UTC

Better for him, better for the party, better for the country, and better for their election chances to just force it to a conclusion

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 23:07 UTC

Right. Biden would step aside at a threshold far below that. He's old; he's not crazy

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:45 UTC

Basically, the D apparatus is mostly on board with /both/ "we are freaking out" /and/ "fuck NYT, they are self-interested here and not helping in either direction"

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:43 UTC

The polls show the people who are most concerned are the ones who watched the debate, not the ones who read about it, so I don't think it's accurate

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:36 UTC

You actually get the dynamic in lots of parliamentary systems where a leader will call a VONC /in themselves/ to force closed these types of questions.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:35 UTC

well, so long as they win it. But yes

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:34 UTC

Not really, but the reason the party is freaking out post-debate and not pre-debate is because of the debate, not because of the coverage. And they need to resolve it among themselves quickly

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:30 UTC

and that's where all the leaks and all the angst comes from: it's folks trying to probe for confidence in that number, when no confidence about it is available from public statements. It's a coordination problem

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:29 UTC

the basic problem is nobody in those group chats knows if the real number who would call for him to quit if they all were honest about it is 5% or 80% of the party, because they can't go public if it's 5%, and they can't tolerate the status quo if it's 80%.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:26 UTC

If the number is big, then they can coordinate to remove him; if the number is small, they can stop bitching and coordinate to elect him. That's all it is.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:25 UTC

because it forces them to confront the real number of people calling for him to quit instead of people in group chats thinking the number is large or small but not knowing.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:24 UTC

the baseline for the campaign really should be higher than "today he did not fire a gun into his foot, please clap". This is really just table stakes.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:22 UTC

Well, yes, if he fucks up again that's going to be a whole new problem, and really the thing there is he needs to not do that rather than for everyone to be ok with it

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:15 UTC

And FWIW, in case this isn't entirely clear from the above, the point of an anonymous VONC isn't to force him out. It's to force the issue to a conclusion. Because it hurts /him/ for it to remain a live issue for several more weeks.

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:14 UTC

Can he purposely throw the election? Sure. Would he? I don't think so. Should he? I think every reasonable person plainly thinks "no".

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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 10, 2024 at 22:13 UTC

I think all of this is presupposing that Biden would say "no" if literally half his party, in public, called on him to leave. Which, idk, maybe he would. But that's literally just him throwing the election, and I'm pretty sceptical that's how it'd play out.

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