That would be his preference, if he had his druthers.
Excepting the legal issues, he just wants to be a candidate, holding rallies, grifting the rubes, etc. That’s the fun stuff to him. And the most lucrative.
Actually holding office doesn’t hold much meaning to him, except the legal immunities it provides.
And that’s what happened 4 years ago. After leaving office, he almost immediately started a series of rallies.
Should he lose again, I imagine he’ll try to do the same again - continue holding his rallies - subject only to the constraints his legal difficulties would force.
ETA: But by the time 2028 rolls around and assuming he loses, I don’t know how much appetite even his crowd will have for him. He’ll be north of 80 by that point, and he’s already looking and acting like he’s lost a few steps. That’s beyond the various court cases against him, of course.
Wasn’t the Electoral College instituted by the Founding Fathers as a fail-safe against a populist candidate who runs away with the popular vote but is dangerous and unqualified to lead? How did it become the opposite of that?
Yeah, when Chris Wallace interviewed trump in July 2020 he said he was going to have a new healthcare plan not only created, but signed, in two weeks. What happened? trump promised us.
We got a lot bigger (population and area) as a country.
The franchise eventually got extended well beyond the primarily white, male landowners that were voting citizens at the time the Constitution was ratified to nearly all over-18s, meaning a much more diverse population (you may notice a trend in the demographics of supporters of the various American demagogues through history)
The assumption was that the state legislatures, worthy white gentlemen all, would select their slate of electors to choose an equally worthy white gentlemen to be the president.
Once the unwashed masses were electing the state legislatures, it was just a matter of time before those legislatures became as unwashed as the populace. And once those unwashed legislatures became rubber-stamps for their elector slates, simply bowing to the unwashed vote of the unwashed masses, well, the rest is history.
It’s unwashed all the way down. And up.
The actual problem nowadays of course is the way the unanimizing nature of state-by-state EC votes serves to amplify the stupid, not damp it down.
A fail-safe doesn’t work when political leaders and voters abandon values and norms we in the United States have taken for granted. I never fully appreciated how vulnerable our democracy was until Trump came along and the Republicans demonstrated their eagerness to abandon democratic norms and flat out undermine US interests by working with our enemies just so they could stay in power. I expected howls of rage from both Republicans and Democrats on January 6th, 2021, but I was flabbergasted as the days passed and Republicans pretended it was Antifa and not an attempt by Trump to stay in power.
To his (temporary) credit, Mitch McConnell directly accused Trump of inciting the capitol riot. Of course, two weeks later, he voted against impeaching the then-president. Once he figured out that he was a lone voice in his party, he quickly changed his tune.
I know. Immediately afterward, some pretty powerful establishment Repubs at the time (Kevin McCarthy, Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell) were speaking pretty strongly against trump, and I thought, “finally, trump’s McCarthy moment has arrived. Only took an attempted coup”.
Flabbergasted is a good word to describe how I felt when the condemnation didn’t last, and Repubs reversed themselves and became lickspittle trump apologists (that’s ‘apologist’ in the sense of “someone who speaks or writes in defense of someone or something that is typically controversial, unpopular, or subject to criticism”, not that they were apologizing for trump’s actions).
I don’t expect Republicans to sing and dance “Ding dong the witch is dead” when DJT gets creamed on election day or even when Kamala is sworn in on Jan 20. They all know on Jan 21, he will announce his candidacy for 2028, if for no other reason than to (in his mind) immunize him from prosecution by virtue of being a candidate.
The beauty of that? The electrocuting may not kill him, just leave him paralyzed and in control of his senses, just in time for the shark.
The EC has never worked for that when needed.
But the biggest issue with the EC now is in the selection of electors. They are chosen by the political party of the winning candidate. That’s why they aren’t empaneled until after the vote is certified.
So the party picks whatever loyal party participants they want, so the electors chosen are dedicated servants to the party. The party candidate is that populist. So they vote for the candidate, regardless of how unfit.
For the EC to work, they would have to coordinate their vote for a different candidate from their own party, as to keep their party the winner. And doing so would be subverting the will of the people.
For the EC to have the ability to do that role, the electors would need to be selected in some nonpartisan process from a pool of ethical, impartial people chosen for integrity. They would be expected to vote for the chosen candidate of their state, with a strong culture of protecting democracy, but an understanding of when it would be ethical to overrule the vote outcome for the good of the country.
Forgot to add - no, this wasn’t a fail-safe for such a purpose, though it could be argued that it was intended as such.
The elector system was not intended to work all that well by many of the people who approved it. It was a compromise between groups wanting a direct popular vote (direct democracy!) and groups wanting Congress to decide (no unwashed masses!).
Those wanting Congress to decide didn’t really think anybody save a George Washington would get a majority of electors (a New England man approving of a Carolinian? Preposterous!) and the decision would get kicked over to Congress more often than not.
They ended up being wrong about that. Worse, the expectation that we could course-adjust via Constiutional amendments after a few cycles ended up also being too optimistic.
I actually think you’re both right. Trump won’t go away no badly how badly he loses in November, and he’ll continue to suck up all the attention as the face of the GOP. He may not have the good fortune (with regard to legal challenges) or health to make it to the 2028 election cycle, but his lingering stench will make it that much harder for the GOP to mount a credible challenge to Harris.
Well, the obvious way, if we’re changing the rules but keeping the EC, is to not have human electors at all. Just have electoral votes; if you win North Carolina, you get 16 points.
Kinda reminds me of the guys from the 1990’s - 2000’s, screaming on Saturday morning TV that they have the “100 STAR Lock of the Century pick in today’s Michigan / Ohio State Game!”. More often than not, the degree of their “confidence” was inversely proportionate to their success rate.
I pray like hell that he’s right this time around, but posts like this (and some of the ones way back at the beginning of this thread) give me pause and feed the anxiety.
There is no McCarthy moment, absolutely NOTHING Trump could possibly ever do would be a McCarthy moment. Trump is going to unfailingly get about 46% of the vote, just like he did in 2016 and 2020. Whether that is enough to win is literally a coin flip, a little more stacked in our favor with Kamala rather than Biden, but it is far from a sure thing and frankly even if she does as best as she can we could still easily lose.
I’d posit that he loves the prestige of being “the most powerful person on the planet,” even if he’s disinterested in actually doing the job itself.
And, this time around, I also believe that he is looking forward to having the ability to use the government (particularly the Justice Department) to gain revenge against those he feels have wronged him or opposed him.
We already de facto have the system you describe. Faithless, or if you prefer, discerning, electors aren’t a thing. Whoever of trump or Harris wins the popular vote in NC will get 16 points.
That’s assuming the law is followed, since once it’s not, we’re playing Calvinball. About which no useful predictions can be made.
@Irishman’s thesis is each state appointing [somehow] a group of worthies selected [somehow] who would take their state’s popular vote result as a suggestion, not a mandate. They would [somehow] choose somebody other than the top vote getter if they had a darn good reason. And the public would [somehow] be OK with that.
She’s doing better in the polls than Donnie. She just got an up 5% national poll. It’s not a coin flip. That’s a bad analogy anyway, since it’s not a matter of random chance whether an election goes one way or another.
