Cite for which specific Constitutional provision(s) you think it violates?
For the reasons they clearly stated in the source cited by the link you provided:
My guess is what’s up with that is they were scared shitless that the former guy had those codes.
There’s no way it’s going to get passed if there’s a Republican president, at least unless the party somehow actually gets its sense back (or, I suppose, unless there’s a Republican president but a veto-proof Democratic supermajority in both houses, which seems a really unlikely combination.) So it has to be passed when there’s a Democratic president.
Do you seriously think Biden wants to start a nuclear war against the advice of everybody who could reasonably be put into a position for their advice to be required? They’re not going to be taking anything away from Biden that Biden wants to have.
ETA: and the Constitution puts the power to declare war in the Congress. Not with the President. They’ve abdicated that a lot lately, but it’s their power even if they haven’t been choosing to use it.
This. And it makes a lot of sense considering the four years we’ve just been through.
And personally, speaking as a Democrat, I say the hell with whether Biden does or doesn’t want to have the power to start a nuclear war entirely unsupervised and unchecked and single-handed, I don’t think he should be able to. Nor should any other President, Republican or Democrat.
I get that a President may sometimes need to react very quickly to an immediate threat, but that’s why you have the other launch-approving officials on speed dial.
Still waiting for eenerms to tell us exactly what Constitutional provision(s) he thinks would be violated by requiring that the POTUS can’t be the sole decision-maker on a nuclear launch, btw.
Agreeing with that, too.
What do we do if we find out Trump’s friend Putin has his finger on his button? We don’t always have time to get a consensus from multiple remotely located people. If we can’t keep another Trump from being elected a change like this will be of no use.
I don’t think anybody’s claiming that requiring multiple-party concurrence with a nuclear launch order will automatically eliminate all risk of an erroneous launch.
It’s just that it would eliminate some of the severe risks associated with letting a decision like that rest in the hands of one individual.
And also eliminate the possibility of acting in a short amount of time. All the people necessary to order a launch would have to remain in constant contact and receive all incoming intelligence in real time. This is not a practical way to defend the country.
AFAICT, the current protocol already invokes an emergency meeting between the President and designated advisors if there is early-warning notification of a serious threat and possible initiation of a nuclear strike by the US. Requiring one or more of those advisors to formally consent to the nuclear launch decision before authorizing the launch would not necessarily add significant time to this procedure.
There would surely be no delay in deploying any purely defensive capability against a Russian attack. So I don’t see what difference a slight delay would make for a responsive counterstrike. Even if Russia launched everything they have, they no longer have the capability to degrade our capacity to respond in any significant way. If they attack us, they know for sure an overwhelming response is coming back at them, a slight potential delay makes no difference in the deterrent effect.
I just don’t see under what circumstances if would ever be necessary or desirable to act quickly in dropping nukes on anyone (where quickly means minutes rather than hours). Nobody remotely has the capability to stop us nuking them if we don’t act quickly.
The language could be written to allow for exceptions if an actual attack had made it impossible for the people named to contact each other.
And in any case, between the two options of our setting off a nuclear war by accident or by whim, or our not being able to continue a nuclear war and being prevented from causing further massive destruction most of which would fall on people who had no say in the matter: if those are the choices, I’ll take #2, thanks.
MAD works if there’s a significant chance of retaliation in kind. Despite the name, it doesn’t require absolute certainty.
I think we have no choice but to have some sort of way of keeping a member or two on one of the intel committees (or some other official) in the loop somehow. I know a president can’t just wake up one morning and push a button; there’s a command and launch sequence. But Nixon was a madman. Trump was a madman. We can’t have all of that power in the hands of one person.
https://www.axios.com/bidens-thin-short-path-83bc7818-2963-42c3-8f87-6eff7bd7b2dd.html
President Biden has a thin, short path to success in his first six to nine months, top advisers tell Axios. His success, or failure, will dictate whether he can hold off both Republican critics — and activist Democrats who want him to go bigger, faster.
The big picture: Biden has to get vaccinations moving and the stimulus bill pumping, so the economy will start rocking, advisers said. That’s why he loaded his White House with veteran loyalists focused almost exclusively on these two topics.
- Success would put him in a maximalist position with the public — and Congress. Behind the scenes, top advisers worry that even with maximalist power, the reality of what awaits him will leave little room for celebration.
Cedric Richmond, White House senior adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement, told “Axios on HBO” that the White House feels “an extreme sense of urgency.”
- “We’re not passing the buck,” Richmond said. “It all falls on our doorstep. But President Biden ran for president knowing those things, and he’s going to address them.”
- "It’s going to be hard — very hard. But we’re going to give it all of our attention, all of our might, and we’re going to try to our damndest."
Richmond said the White House will continue to make overtures to Republicans, but made it clear Biden is prepared to push through his $1.9 trillion rescue plan with just a couple or even zero GOP votes.
- "I can tell you on the American Rescue Plan," Richmond said, “if our choice is to wait and go bipartisan with an insufficient package, we’re not gonna do that.”
What’s next: There’s not a lot of joy in store for this presidency.
…
My bold in first paragraph. All other formatting present in original.
These “activist Democrats who want him to go bigger, faster” seriously piss me off. I want all Democrats to get behind him NOW and get some successes under his belt. I expect the Republicans to sabotage him, undermine him, and stand in his way. It infuriates me that his own party members are doing the same thing. 
The Democratic party never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. One would hope they would make the exception in this particular time and use the next two years with a hair-thin majority to get behind Biden and show that they can actually improve things for the electorate even if it isn’t everything that each of them individually wants but infighting and competition are so ingrained at this point that the Republicans barely have to do anything but stand back and watch.
Stranger
You know what pisses me off? The Left always has to appeal to the middle/right, and ends up conceding the lion’s share of their agenda in compromise. The Right, on the other hand, seems to always be “fuck you, get outta the way!” No one ever speaks of giving any ground up to the Left – they have to fight like badgers for every inch.
At this point, it isn’t about the political left conceding to the middle/right; it is about Biden et al showing some kind of win as well as doing the best to avert the coming economic depression when temporary loans come due and banks start foreclosing on businesses and homeowners who can’t pay while millions of jobs that disappeared en masse at the start of the pandemic only come trickling back. As much as the country needs radical, transformative change (and has since long before this particular crisis, and will with the progressive automation of intellectual labor and obsolescence of entire vocations), what it needs most is any kind of movement that convinces the electorate that the path toward recovery does not involve voting demagogues and radical conservative nationalists into office.
Biden has less than two years, and a dangerously slim majority in Congress along with a court system which is predisposed to rule against his administration, to demonstrate that the Democratic party can collectively get its shit together sufficient to effect a very difficult economic recovery as well as deal with festering social issues. Infighting and finger-pointing is only going to solidify support for the GOP despite the fact that the Republican party as a whole has done more economic damange to this country in the last thirty-five years than anything China has been able to accomplish through currency manipulation or that Russia could do through cyberwarfare.
In short, you’re not wrong, but you don’t want to be on the right side of catastrophe. Saying, “I told you so,” is slim solace as you’re barreling over a cliff
Stranger
Not me. I promised myself when I was about 11 that I would never use that most worthless statement, and I have held to that with no fudging. Blame and remonstration are for if you have the time after dealing with the situation at hand.
If the pressure from the left doesn’t end up resulting in killing the stimulus package or a gap in unemployment due to a delay is it still a problem? I of course don’t want to see the infighting result in losing this win, but I don’t see how it hurts as long as everyone is able to work out a deal in the end. I think if the progressives are able to push Biden to at least give some incentive towards a liveable wage, that will wind up being good for democrats electorally.
The problem in this particular issue isn’t Biden, who has evidenced support for a federal $15/hr minimum wage; it is that in order to get a stimulus package passed, he is going to need the vote of every Democratic senator (as there is virtually zero support for an expansive plan among Republicans), and that include Joe Manchin who has observed (reasonably enough) that such a measure is outside of the scope of what can be passed through reconciliation, and who is also in firm opposition to raising the minimum wage due to business pressure in West Virginia (which doesn’t have the lowest minimum wage among states but would present an over 70% increase).
At the end of the day, Biden can’t force Congress to pass legislation; he has to cajole and massage people into compromise. Progressives holding a gun to our collective head and saying, “If we don’t get this, nobody gets anything,” is counterproductive and short-sighted. And I get the sense that if they don’t push for it now they won’t have the opportunity later, but if there is no ‘later’ there will be no future opportunity. Biden is not a progressive by any measure, but he is fungible and has made it clear that he will entertain proposals from all comers which is far more than anyone can expect from the opposition.
Stranger