@lawrence  not any more he's not : https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/26/trump-mugshot-fundraising-00113118
At some point he's gotta be stopped by something... maybe the 14th Ammendment.
May I suggest we all get busy emailing/writing our state election officials?
I did some quick scans and got the following.
What will Florida look like after DeSantis is gone? I saw the color purple.
@journeywithme2 Lots of discussion on the media lately about whether the 14 amendment, section 3 will work to bar Trump from the Presidency. Seems like an elegant solution to all this hyperbole and hysteria. The rub is that timing is key. Can't pursue it until there is a conviction on the Jan 6 trial, and even if the trial resolves before Nov/24, can an appeal of any possible conviction delay the ability to implement and test the amendment before the election? And given that there will inevitably be questions about the legal application of this never-tested amendment, is there enough time to slog through the appeal and apply the amendment in order to prevent Trump's candidacy? High hopes, but timing is everything.
The media is reporting yet another trial for the orange pretender in March of 2024... does anyone recall our "Beware the Ides of March" predictions?
@kathleen This is a recent video interview of two well-known and very highly-respected constitutional scholars, Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig (both of whom are conservatives) in an appearance on MSNBC with Ali Velshi. Both of them are of the considered opinion that it is not in fact necessary to wait for a conviction. They have also done a lot of writing about the subject in the last few weeks, and their arguments are logical and both legally and constitutionally sound. There would, of course, be appeals if it were to be implemented, but even the most extreme right justices on the bench at SCOTUS would be hard pressed to argue that the 14th Amendment is unconstitutional: it's an actual part of the document. ;-)
Also, the amendment has been tested and succeeded, not at this level of course, but in New Mexico in the case of Couy Griffin, and the evidence in the case of TFG is much more voluminous of higher quality.
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@tgraf66 I'm going to disagree on one point. I've read Tribe's twitter feed for years. Tribe is liberal. He founded the American Constitution Society to counter the conservative Federalist Society. So basically with the two of them there is bipartisan agreement on the 14th amendment use.Â
I've long felt that Heat Miser's (see Jeanne's pic above-The Year Without A Santa Claus will never be viewed the same way again) participation in the election cycle would spell chaos for the Rs. It's like I feel he will take the lead, and then poof, be gone leaving the nomination vacated, shattered, or hard to piece back together again in time for the actual election. I don't know if this means he gets the nomination, and then he's gone, or just before the primaries and convention he's out of the running, leaving no clear successor, and too many clamoring for the spot. I've just felt for a while that there is chaos in the party/election surrounding his exit.
@tgraf66 Thanks for that feedback on Tribe and Luttig's perspective that the 14th amendment section 3 could be enacted before a conviction -- I missed it. But,in order for the amendment to be implemented, it would appear that Trump would need to be convicted of violating it in order to force him to vacate his candidacy. What am I missing?
@kathleen There a lot of situations in which a judge might make findings of criminality that do not require or amount to a criminal conviction. You don't need a criminal conviction to get a judge to apply the crime/fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, for instance. You also don't need a criminal conviction to obtain a civil judgment for the exact same conduct. It's all a question of what standards are going to be applied to the conduct, and that's a complicated question of constitutional law.
@jampa Right, also making the application of Amendment 14 Section 3 difficult, conviction or no conviction. As you said, it's a "complicated question of constitutional law"
Plenty of stuff may yet hit the fan, and he may vacate for other reasons leaving the GOP is disarray. What a great mob kiss goodbye!
Two of my favorite lawyers, Chuck Rosenberg and Preet Baharra say realistically there is no way the idea about the 14th amendment will come to pass. It was a podcast of Preet’s. I think they are being realistic. It’s too bad it won’t be used especially on members of CongressÂ
@cindy My apologies on the mischaracterization of Mr. Tribe. Some of his politics seemed pretty conservative to me, so I put him in that category, although I suppose that says more about me than about him.😂 In any case, I agree with your assessment of the R ticket this time around. TFG will dominate all of them until he can't for whatever reason, and by then it will be too late for the R's.
@tybin I don't necessarily agree with that assessment. I think part of their argument is based solely on the fact that it hasn't been tried at this level since the Civil War coupled with the fear of a long, drawn out appeals procedure, which I don't actually think would happen. There is already one complaint filed by Dean Obeidallah with his state's Secretary of State (he provides a template for such in this blog post), and with enough such complaints, it could work. It would also require similar actions in only five or six large electoral college states (like CA, NY, MI, PA, and a few others) to make it a moot point whether he's on the ballot elsewhere or not. Mr. Obeidallah also includes a link to this Congressional Research Service report that contains strong evidence that a conviction is not, in fact, necessary.
@tgraf66 I researched what happens if one of the nominees suddenly has to absent his/her candidacy for the Presidency, and it's not unprecedented. The party affected can put forth the VP candidate instead, which hasn't yet been picked of course, or they have other options. Basically, the party makes the decisions.
@kathleen I think the problem for the party will be that since they have failed to support any of the challengers in any meaningful way - and those same challengers have already expressed their overt support for TFG to the point that none of them really has a chance to do anything but compete for a possible VP pick - there's really not much the party can do to be competitive in the next 14 months. Even the uber-right Federalist Society and the Koch brothers appear to have given up on him and have expressed only tepid support at best to any of the rest of the contenders.
This discussion seems more like a legal and political one rather than random predictions. Am I missing something?