Seeing the extreme negative reaction of many people to Trump’s election, I’m curious to know if anybody here would support a third Obama term, by whatever means such a thing would be accomplished.
Are there any Dopers who think ending the tradition of the peaceful, Constitutional transfer of power would be preferable to turning the WH over to Trump?
No.
Barack Obama is a scholar of constitutional law, and despite a few questionable extensions of executive authority in extrajudicial action, a respector of law and order. There is exactly zero chance that he’ll attempt to invoke some kind of executive power grab. Please stop imaging some fantasy scenerio in which Donald Trump does not legitimately assume executive authority, and instead focus on actionable measures to mitigate the damage done by a Trump presidency and resume responsible authority over the executive office.
Stranger
I never said Obama would, I asked if anybody would support him if he did.
I almost put such a caveat in my OP but assumed it would be insulting since it was clear that the focus is on what some think should happen, not what will happen. Should have been insulting.
Hell no.
If he did WHAT? Are you talking about defying the Constitution? Are you talking about staging a coup? In spite of the military being mostly pro-Trump? What exactly are you talking about?
Would Obama have won a third term against Trump? It seems to me that so many people voted for Trump because they disagreed with the ACA, among other things and felt they were worse off under Obama. To them, Hillary just represented four more years of the same. Obama would have won the popular vote, but states like Pennsylvania and Michigan turned too far to the red to guarantee him an electoral victory.
Good grief no. (Isn’t that what the pubbies predicted back on '08? Along with taking our guns and turning us Muslim.)
As I stated in the OP, would you support a third Obama term over allowing Trump to take office, regardless of the means of procuring that third term? Is it better, in your opinion, to end the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power than to allow Trump to take power?
No means no.
Thanks for the update Betty Freidan.
Maybe we could hold a constitutional convention in the next two months, and insert a “No Trump” clause in there. But be careful, a “No Trumps” clause would mean we could have one Trump, but not two. So we don’t want that.
I personally am in favor of a third Obama term.
Michelle in 2020!
Yes!
Why?
Nnnooooooooo!!!
If you’re asking whether I’d be happy with a third obama term were there no such prohibition, hells yeah. I think he’s been a superb leader and given more time he might have turned further attention towards things like income inequality (which is something important to him, but always politically risky because of the “class warfare” rhetoric), police procedures, going further with ACA etc, as well as continue to reap the rewards of sensible economic policy.
I think he would have done better than clinton in inspiring voters, but with the benefit of hindsight, trump was not as easy to beat as it seemed ;), and there’s enough obama hate out there that I’m not convinced he would have won.
You don’t seem to get it. It’s not about a “tradition”. It’s enshrined into the Constitution. To do otherwise would be illegal.
No. There’s no legal authority for him to do so; it would essentially be a coup d’etat. But the military has the democratic tradition deeply ingrained and would not support him. Neither would anyone in congress, or in his own executive branch. If the tried to stay after January 20, he’d be stopped by January 21.
This.
Pretty much every survey of ACA reveals the following: if you ask the public whether they like ACA feature X they overwhelmingly approve of it. Ditto for features Y, or Z. This holds pretty much down the entire list of changes wrought by ACA.
OTOH, if you ask them “Do you like Obamacare?” a sizeable majority hates it.
In other words, they’ve been trained *a la *Pavlov’s dog to hate the word, despite preferring the deed.
Which demonstrates how much 21st Century politics is the art of selling sound bites, not reality.
If the Constitution permitted Obama to run for a third term, and he chose to do so, then I would have been happy to see him win the election. But one of the few things I think would be worse for our country than a Trump presidency would be someone else seizing power illegally.