In 2020, the total Democratic Party House vote margin of victory was 3.1 percent. Joe Biden’s popular vote margin of victory was 4.5 percent.
Sources:
Of course, this could be due to Biden being strong in 2020 or Trump being weak, or due to some systematic difference in congressional candidate quality. I think it is going to come down to opinion as to which of those it is, mine being Trump weak. Or am I missing some better metric?
The problem with a direct comparison is that Democratic congressmembers are mostly running in districts that lean Democratic, but Presidents are running everywhere.
My statistic included all the Democrats and Republicans, even when running in districts where they had no chance of victory.
Now, this, from ChatGPT, but with links, is relevant:
Maybe I’m not thinking this through correctly, but I think the above information actually supports my claim. If the Democrats had 11 more districts where they could not get any votes (except for a few write-ins), then Biden’s overperformance relative to Democratic House members would have been greater, and therefore Trump’s underperformance would have been greater. Right?
Let me just acknowledge that there are other factors that would have to be considered if I was writing, say, a Political Science masters thesis on this, such as how the two parties allocated campaign spending between presidential and house races. I don’t claim to prove stuff here. The best I can do is to provide actual, if incomplete, evidence. My feeling, not universally shared, is that weak evidence beats no evidence.
Ah, I misunderstood, I thought it was just comparing to the winners.
I wasn’t planning to respond to this, but after thinking about it I realized that the actual “historical framework” involved some interesting points about little-known American history, unappreciated given the attention that is paid to battles rather than niggling legalities. That invited me to research the history more deeply. I succumbed to temptation. Forgive its length; a lot of territory is being covered.
The real history
Seven southern states had formally seceded through votes of their legislatures before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. A new federal government, the CSA, voted for Jefferson Davis as president and wrote a new constitution. The question became whether this was an independent country that the rules of war could be applied to or a mere rebellion of Americans who had never left the Union and were merely spouting words. No precedents or answers were available to determine this.
Lincoln had any number of problems in March. One major one that is almost forgotten is that he had no Congress. At the time, the Congress elected in November 1860 was not scheduled to convene until December 1861. Congress was very much a part-time activity that allowed members to pursue paying careers elsewhere. Even odder from today’s viewpoint, this time-lapse meant that some states didn’t bother having their House elections in November. Seven states waited until March to June of 1861 for House elections.
Lincoln called the Senate into special session on March 4. The Republicans (along with smaller pro-Union parties that I’ll subsume under them) had won control in the November election. More than control: they had 30 votes out of the 52 senators remaining, with 14 seats empty because of seceded states refusing to send senators, meaning that they had a two-thirds majority if they stayed unanimous. Some of the seven seceded states refused to send senators. On March 14, the Senate voted to declare six seats empty. Four more would follow. The Confederates destroyed their own position. Had their representatives in the Senate and the House continued to attend Congress, none of the following actions could have occurred.
After the attack on Fort Sumter Lincoln called for another special session of both houses to begin, symbolically, on July 4. The delay was both to allow travel and wait until all state elections to concluded. In the meantime he had a huge problem. The House controlled all spending bills. No money for a war had been put into the military budget by the previous Congress. He ordered the Treasury to advance $2 million – a huge sum – for arms. In his July 4th address to Congress he said he had no choice “but to call out the war power of the government,” apparently the first use of the term by a president. Congress retroactively approved this in July, effectively authorizing the war although never declaring it one.
President Lincoln took the initiative by issuing a set of proclamations in spring 1861 calling forth the militia, instituting a naval blockade of ports in states that had seceded from the Union, and calling for volunteers and enlistment in the military. When Congress returned in session later that summer, it passed legislation authorizing the President to declare the inhabitants of rebelling states to be in a “state of insurrection” and stating that Congress “approved and in all respects legalized” the President’s earlier proclamations.
Later in 1863 “the Supreme Court ruled that a state of war can exist without a formal declaration,” according to James M. McPherson in Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief, an excellent guide to Washington during the war.
The Republicans had 130 out of 239 seats in the House. That would give only a majority but 62 seats, mostly Democratic, were vacant from the beginning. They only had a two-thirds majority if those seats weren’t counted. Only three House members were formally expelled, all in 1862, but they already left Congress and joined the Confederate side.
West Virginia became a state in 1863. While new states had been made out of old colonial claims of territory before the revolution, it remains the only state to be formed from another state. That section of Virginia held a minority who wanted to secede. They formed a rebel legislature that voted to remove those counties from Virginia and petitioned Lincoln to recognize them as the true legislature of Virginia, which he did. Almost certainly, every step of this process was illegal and plenty of people said so at the time, but after the war, both Congress and the Supreme Court authorized the state retroactively.
The 13th Amendment was easily passed by the Senate in 1864 but had problems in the House and was not voted on until January 1865. That Congress had 111 members voting with the Republicans, but out of only 183 members, the seceding states not bothering to send anyone. A two-thirds vote needed 122, but several Democrats abstained, lowering the number needed, and some voted for it – they were from mostly northern states after all – and it passed with 119.
Getting the 27 of the then 36 states to pass was even more difficult. No thought was given to not counting the seceded states. By then, however, rival Union governments had been set up in some states and those states were counted as ratifying the Amendment to much controversy. The 27th state did not ratify until December 1865 so that’s when the Amendment was deemed part of the Constitution. More states ratified it in January, though, giving it more than enough legitimate votes.
My thoughts on history as precedent
My interpretation of these historical events necessarily includes opinion. The standard joke is that the legality of war was settled in Grant v. Lee. As the winners, the Union could declare that everything done was completely legal to put down an armed rebellion and all the courts followed. Much the same happened in WWI and WWII, although those wars declared by Congress. A true state of war allows the government and the President to take extraordinary measures, which Lincoln certainly did. He had no precedents for his actions and it’s not clear whether his measures set precedents since nothing since has remotely resembled the particulars of the Civil War.
Here’s what I think. Secession from the Union has effectively been banned forever. No President nor any Congressional action can declare a state to have seceded. They can take action when a state declares itself to have seceded, but they can’t initiate it. However, the Act that Congress passed on July 13, 1865, makes it clear that the militia can only act as long as the claim of secession “is not disclaimed or repudiated by persons exercising the functions of government in such State or States.” The states Trump would declare not part of the Union would repudiate this claim instantly.
Nor would the states’ legislatures voluntarily and legally declare themselves to be the legitimate representatives of their states as West Virginia did.
They would also continue to send their representatives to Congress and not leave any empty seats for a Republican supermajority. No formal expulsion would meet the two-thirds standard. Nor would a two-thirds majority approve any Amendments, nor would there be three-quarters of the states to ratify them.
In short, Trump could not base any of the actions proposed on a supposed “historical framework”. The actual history contradicts all of these.
Of course, Trump could do all these things and make speeches and social media posts justifying them all. Maybe in some real world outside of fantasy the Congress and the Supreme Court and the military would back him and retroactively legalize the actions. Nobody doubts that. At the moment, in our real world with its real history, all these actions would be, as I keep saying, illegal and violent.
Nutty, to coin a phrase.
Cite?
Yep.
Wikipedia has a article on “Impacts on Cases”
None IIRC actually granted trump absolution, altho a number were held up for review.
That was a well researched and presented post, thank you.
I still disagree, though I’ll concede the extra details move it closer to the nutty side of the spectrum!
My first quibble is tied to your earlier point - Lincoln, as well as most war-time presidents (your examples from both WW1) have vastly changed what was considered acceptable in a time of emergency. And in most of the cases, the surviving government made that the new normal. Trump has spend both of his terms breaking precedent by fiat and/or force, and while that has sometimes been countered by the courts, it’s far from universal, and much depends on the SCOTUS final say - likely to be extended past his current term between appeals and cases being sent back to lower courts first. In fact, the vast majority of his actions have been manufactured “emergencies” and if his popularity and pawns fail, I expect that to become more common.
The second, is your research on the creation of Virginia as a new state. As we’ve pointed out in many a thread, Blue vs. Red states is something of a misnomer in many cases. The bluest states absolutely have a number of deep red areas, and the reverse is true as well, often based on a metro v. urban mix, but not universally.
Considering such schemes as the false electors plan, that red areas of blue states wouldn’t instantly claim they represented the “true” government of the state, and Trump would be happy to push that through? Similar to the situation with the breakaway areas in Russia?
Now, back to me conceding “nuttiness” in my extreme hypothetical. Do I think, given everything, that it’s at all likely that Trump could force these steps through in a time frame sufficient to get the 22nd repealed before his second term officially ends? Almost certainly not absent a major incident that he can ride on. It brings back memories of 9/11 where between emotional and political intimidation, many otherwise reasonable politicians gave away yet more power to the executive as well as compromising their voters rights. And of course, far too much of the post 9/11 legislation remains with us, and not for the better.
Could Trump given his skills manufacture such a pretext, either by provocation or by employing individuals to fake it on his behalf… again, I say it’s very unlikely, Trump isn’t that smart. Are some of the people benefiting from his erratic rule that smart? Oh hell yes, but I still think/hope they’d rather keep everyone very unhappy rather than risk an actual Civil War.
(FSM make it so!)
So I’ll grant my hypothetical is extremely unlikely, but not completely nutty. I’ll say it’s not a Mounds Bar, but an Almond Joy. Some nuttiness, but not a nutbar through and through.
The Republicans need to worry that the January 6, 2029 insurrection will have more success than the 2021 version had.
The part where the GOP is still in Trump’s thrall in 2028, considering that they aren’t even in his thrall now.
So many of these scenarios are predicated on the Trump of three years from now being the same as the Trump of 2017, when it’s clear at this point that Congress is doing its best to ignore his demands and he spends his days sitting there struggling to stay awake while people tell him to sign things he hasn’t read.
Good points.
The thing is the current President doesn’t just get to stay in power until another person is elected to replace him. The Constitution is very explicit on this point: The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January.
So if Trump cancelled the 2028 elections, the follow-up would be that on January 20, 2029, he would stop being President and Vance would stop being Vice President.
At that point, with no designated replacement having been elected, the offices of President and Vice President would be vacant.
The Constitution goes on to say “If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.”
So Trump’s and Vance’s term of office ends on January 20. There is no President elect or Vice President elect because Trump cancelled the election. Congress (which takes office on January 3) now has the power to declare who will act as President.
My guess is they would fall back on the established line of succession and declare the Speaker of the House is now the President.
But what if there is not Speaker of the House? What if Trump cancels congressional elections along with the presidential election?
In that case the terms of members of the House of Representatives will have expired and that half of Congress will be vacant. And the terms of thirty-four Senators will have also ended. So the other sixty-six Senators, who were not scheduled to end their six year terms in 2028, will be the whole of Congress that is legally in office on January 20, 2029. They will choose a President Pro Tempore of the Senate and that person will be next in line for the Presidency.
This same section of the Constitution covers what will happen if Trump holds an election but declares that he is going to run again. And let’s say he wins. Then on January 20, 2029 his term automatically ends. And at that point, as somebody who ran for an illegal third presidential term, it will be noted that “the President elect shall have failed to qualify” and the Vice President elect will step in and be inaugurated as President.
Can you rephrase that without use of the passive voice? Who will note that? And will the military take orders from the person who notes that, or from Trump?
The President is not the person whom the law says is President. The President is the person whose orders the military heeds. In sane times, those are the same person. We do not live in sane times.
I’ve always been a Mounds guy.
Back in 1870, there were two people saying they were the head of state; Ulysses Grant, who was the recently elected President, and Joshua Norton, who was the self-proclaimed Emperor. The difference between their conflicting claims was who else recognized their authority and followed their orders. As you put it, the person whose orders the military heeds.
Donald Trump, as a person, has no more power than I do. He only has power because he exists in an established political system that gives him power.
Kamala Harris could declare that she won the election and she’s actually the President and start giving orders. Would people follow her orders? No.
So we can’t just say that Donald Trump cancels elections and declares himself President for life and people just shake their heads and say “He’s got us. If a person says he’s President, there’s nothing you can do. You have to obey him.”
I will grant that the Republicans have given Trump far more leeway than any person deserves. But Trump and the Republicans have to maintain some resemblance of acting within the law in order to get everyone else to go along with them.
As a libertarian, I hate coconut.
you’re right, of course. Our fear is that enough people will go along with it.
Trump tried to become President illegally on January 6, 2021. He failed. Most people aren’t willing to accept Trump just declaring himself President.
I’m still uncertain as to what extent Trump “tried”. The way I read it, Trump sort of hoped a groundswell of popular support would rescue him from the election results and carry him into the White House (or at least throw the election to the House); and when it didn’t happen he chickened out. Trump was very much leading from the rear that day. Let me put it this way: if it was an attempted coup, it was the most incompetent and timid coup ever attempted.
He absolutely fomented a lot of what happened, by continually insisting that the results were fraudulent, and refusing to accept them for weeks after the election. But, more importantly, he caused January 6th to happen, because he encouraged his followers to come to DC, attend his rally, and then go to the Capitol. As he tweeted prior to it: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
And, many of those who were criminally charged for what they did on 1/6 specifically said that they did so because Trump had “told” them to do so.
But, yes, you’re right that, when it failed to prevent the Electoral College tabulation, he did chicken out.
It was a very Trump typical operation. There was minimal planning or no clear understanding of what was supposed to happen. Trump made a public appearance to hear people cheer for him and then walked away in the expectation that other people would do all the work and hand him the reward.
This is the best effort Trump and his followers are capable of. Or should I say this was the best effort; Trump has declined in abilities since 2021.
So the big question is whether there are competent people who are capable of overthrowing the government and are willing to do it on Trump’s behalf? And I doubt this. I believe the Republicans are working on eliminating democracy in America. But not with Trump.