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Unless it works. If it's crazy and it works, it's not crazy.
How can it work? It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot, so electorally it wouldn’t work, and any loss from being arrested and being unable to campaign would likely be made up by the zealotry of his supporters and any number of GOP politicians (including the VP pick) being invited to campaign on his behalf.
Why not? If some set of states indeed use it as an excuse to remove him from the ballot, "allowed" or not, what recourse is available? Particularly if it gets dragged out in the courts until after the election is held? (Again, I look at Ted Stevens.)
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How is that clear? The recently rejected suits were about a pre-conviction determination.
I’m going by the New York Times from last month:
Is the New York Times wrong?
Ah, yes: the newspaper that had its baby journalists twittering about being in an unsafe space for BIPOC people because of an opinion piece published by the paper.
They considered that piece a "call for state violence", so I guess the same attitudes are behind "January 6th was an insurrection".
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And one or more states doesn't bother "passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record… on legally shaky ground," but just says "Trump's been convicted, so we're not putting him on the ballot; the Republican party can either submit a different name to go in their 'guaranteed spot' or else we leave it blank"? Sure, a court will probably rule that this is illegal and unconstitutional… eventually.(And who enforces that ruling, anyway?) But if you time it right, you can probably have that decision only come after the election, and then what? (Or, failing that, come well after ballots are printed and too close to election day to print new ones.)
The electors can elect whomever they want though, right -- so just throw a placeholder in there, mobilize the base (have rallys with him & Trump, etc to make the situation clear) and then the (Republican) electors throw their votes to Trump.
Calls for faithless electors to save democracy didn't work so well the last time, though. Hillary lost five of them, which she didn't need.
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No, the faithless elector laws are enforceable.
Out of curiosity: in what manner? Are the votes valid, but you go to prison? Might still be worth it.
In 14 states, the votes are void.
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I'm not sure. The rule that states may not add additional qualifiers for federal office has some loopholes but some well-established precedent.
However, there's also been serious sets of legal challenges and a well-promoted campaign to argue that the 14th Amendment automatically disqualifies from the ballot anyone who 'participated in insurrection', by a vague and broad definition that includes whatever they think Trump has done.
I'd argue that they're wrong to do so, but I'm not sure what I think matters.
The 14th Amendment is rather quiet about how it's insurrection rule is to be enforced: it's not clear who actually gets the power to decide "insurrection" occurred. The federal courts? The states? Local officials setting up ballots?
Some of those options are better than others, but if you choose poorly I think you'll find "was overruled once by SCOTUS" to be grounds for finding "insurrection against the Constitution" in any case where unfriendly partisan officials are empowered to so decide. Obviously Obama's fake "recess appointments" in Noel Canning were a deliberate attempt (from a famed Constitutional Scholar!) to subvert the Constitution if you let Ken Paxton decide.
To be fair, it's not clear how the Constitution's eligibility rules would be enforced generally if someone nominated, say, a child who was obviously under 35. Birtherism runs a bit more into the Full Faith and Credit Clause, though.
All the amendments are similarly quiet. The idea that it is specifically the courts that are responsible for enforcing (say) the 1st amendment is quite recent. At the time of the founding, the dominant view was that all political actors were obliged by their oaths of office to act constitutionally - that legislators should not pass unconstitutional laws, presidents should veto them if they do pass, etc.
The same approach to section 3 of the 14th is that it is incumbent on everyone not to allow insurrectionists into office. Parties should not nominate insurrectionists, secretaries of state should not put them on the ballot, voters should not vote for them, presidential electors for insurrectionists should go faithless (the Constitution overrides faithless elector laws) and the joint session of Congress should object to the electoral votes if they don't. The job of the courts is then to handle the inevitable litigation when people disagree about whether Trump really is an insurrectionist. Obviously, this is bad and puts you straight in a constitutional crisis.
But America is already in a constitutional crisis. Either Trump is right and you are a country where elections are routinely rigged, or Trump is lying and you are a country where there are no electoral consequences for spamming false allegations of vote-rigging the way most politicians spam promises of other people's money and demanding criminal investigations of local election officials for doing their jobs, or Trump is delusional and you are a country which is about to elect a madman as chief executive.
This is scary, man. And I don't even live in America.
Even if this was a trilemma, it would not constitute a Constitutional crisis.
Elections being routinely rigged are bad, but not a Constitutional crisis. For it to be a Constitutional crisis it would have to set up a situation which at least apparently could not be resolved within the Constitution.
There being no electoral consequences "spamming false allegations of vote-rigging" is also not a Constitutional crisis. Electing liars is something which happens every election day, and claiming something different about this particular lie is blatant special pleading.
Electing a madman as chief executive is very bad but also not a Constitutional crisis.
It is possible for Trump to be wrong but neither lying nor delusional, thus, no trilemma.
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No, but that is a different set of criteria than who will appear on the ballot. For example, there's nothing in those requirements about having to get a certain number of verified signatures of support, which is a near-universal ballot access requirement. The suspicion is that a conviction will be used to prevent Trump from being on the ballot in at least some states despite him being eligible to be President if he was elected anyways.
Sure, but if those states are California, New York, Vermont, and hawaii, that disqualification is irrelevant.
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Dismayingly frequently.
Not about this, I believe, but since the history of the NYT being bafflingly brazenly wrong about things extends from over 90 years ago to under 2 days ago, it still feels weird to cite them as an authoritative source.
Of course, I certainly didn’t mean to imply they’re always right. But they don’t seem to be wrong about this.
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It was a while ago, but there literally was a guy who ran for president from prison.
Debbs against Wilson.
Yup, keep trying to remember him by his convict number, and keep falling flat on my face.
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If Trump loses either because or despite being imprisoned, the Democrats have successfully shown they're the strong ones and the opposition gets out of line they don't just fade into obscurity, they go to prison.
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This doesn't make any sense to me. There are two important groups of people here. People who would vote for Trump if he isn't convicted but wouldn't vote for him if he is convicted and people who wouldn't vote for him if he wasn't convicted but would vote for him if he was convicted. Is it your contention the second group is larger than the first? This strikes me as wildly implausible.
If there are people who feel that an important principle is being violated, they may well vote for Trump in that case as a protest vote. Sometimes you have to go with who you got, even if they're not the perfect subject for a case.
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I think there are quite a few Republicans who find Trump personally distasteful and would not normally vote for him who would feel compelled to send a message to the Democratic establishment that imprisoning their candidates is not an acceptable political tactic, actually -- and the set of "people who will definitely vote for Trump but respect the decisions of a DC court as to his morality" seems really, really small?
Why is agreeing with a DC court as to his morality the relevant criteria? How about "the set of people who wouldn't vote for a convicted felon?" I bet that's a much larger set!
"Wouldn't vote for someone you already support but was convicted by a kangaroo court full of people that you hate" seems pretty small.
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That's true, but what if you think the conviction was unjust? Put him in to get him out was a slogan for an Irish by-election canvassing votes for a political prisoner in 1917.
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I suspect these people are outnumbered by Republicans who find Trump distasteful but would vote for him on the grounds he's a Republican -- except that they're happy to have the excuse not to because voting for a convicted felon is just beyond the pale.
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I don’t think that true blue resistance warriors would vote Trump because he’s convicted, but there’s a certain kind of lower class conspiracy theorist which to be honest mostly doesn’t vote which might decide that him being convicted is a reason to support him.
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I don't think either group is all that clearly outlined, because the world in which Trump is Nominated+Convicted is a different world in more ways than just Trump's location.
Other important groups of people:
-- People who will commit or attempt terroristic violence after Trump is imprisoned.
-- People who won't vote for Trump after the above have committed their terroristic violence on principle. Cops and cop fans, mainly, are likely to fall into this category. While Cops are typically very red tribe, after a MAGA mad hatter kills a cop in cold blood, they will flip.
-- People who won't vote at all if Trump is in prison because they will lose faith in the system.
And the thing is, that upside doesn't just carry across the Presidential race, it carries all the way down ballot in all likelihood, as GOPers will be forced to bend the knee from Senate to City Council.
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Campaigning is about rallying the troops. My contention is that the effect of a Trump conviction wouldn’t substantially reduce the number of would-be Trump voters, but would energize his base tremendously.
Ok, but how does energizing his base going to translate into more votes? Were a bunch of people who make up his base also not going to vote for him until he got convicted?
Yes, all candidates have a portion of the base who is insufficiently motivated to get to the polls but can be convinced to do so.
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