Theoretically, if Trump is actually removed from office, how bad do you think the fallout would be?
How would it effect the next 11 months to election day?
How would it effect the elections?
It would, I think, be one of the most open elections we have had in some time. Pence would, of course, run, but he is such a non-entity that he wouldn’t get the nomination. The Republican scramble would be even more chaotic and unseemly than the Democratic one. Result: President Biden. Or possibly President Bloomberg.
Maybe a lot of current supporters of 45 would sit on their hands and not vote, which would be a good thing. Maybe there would be protests, but not many, and not very big, and not for very long.
I think it’s dangerous to dream along these lines, it will make us complacent. Better to stick to the hard realities of fractional factional politics.
It’s not going to happen but if it did I expect trump would run and win again.
He would not be allowed to. The articles of impeachment include disqualification from public office. Now you wanna talk about Constitutional crises, imagine he ran anyway and the states elected him. Now the only thing keeping him from the presidency is the House and Senate. And I don’t need to tell you about separation of powers. I can’t imagine SCOTUS would permit disbarring someone from being duly elected chief executive.
Even then, suppose they did block him from office on the grounds that the bar is constitutional. Now how big are the riots? The last civil war started over a presidential election.
I disagree. Pence would be the incumbent President and as such I think he would be the default Republican nominee. Like Ford was, even though Ford was unelected.
And like Ford, I think Pence would lose. A party that just had a President impeached or resigned less than a year before the election is unlikely to recover and win. So I doubt many Republicans would be looking to jump in on what’s most likely a lost race. (And I’m aware Reagan challenged Ford in 1976 but he did that mostly to set himself up for 1980.)
I can’t imagine how the Supreme Court would not bar him. As you note the Constitution clearly says that an impeached President is not eligible to run again. If any state was foolish enough to try to put him on the ballot, it would be quickly ruled invalid just as if a state tried to put a naturalized citizen or a thirty year old on the ballot.
Concur with all of this. Pence would run as the incumbent, and the shame on the party from the impeachment would doom him. He’s described as a “non-entity” upthread, but he’s far from that. He’s just been keeping his head down for the whole Trump administration so people have forgotten that he’s a demagogue in the Indiana mold, a self-righteous evangelical scold.
Of course, that isn’t the world we live in, and none of this will come to pass.
And that was after he pardoned Nixon, support for whose removal was a lot closer to bipartisan, the economy was doing much worse, and after a near-disastrous performance by Ford in the debates.
Regards,
Shodan
For this to happen, I’d have to assume that the news got so bad for Trump that at least 20 Republican Senators turned against him. If that happened, I think the GOP might split, since the ~25-30% of voters who seem to be hardcore Trumpers (but not necessarily hardcore conservatives or hardcore Republicans) would be utterly furious at the GOP.
Just shy of fantasy territory, obviously.
To be honest, I don’t think it matters. We can’t get any more divided than we are; everyone has made up their minds. Whatever comes after the 2020 election, the government will not have legitimacy for about half the nations, we simply aren’t countrymen anymore.
I view impeachment as an attempt to establish an historical record of what happened. It’s an autopsy report for the republic.
Or he might resign before actually getting removed, and then continue running. Pence would be president for that time, but that probably wouldn’t matter. Trump himself doesn’t really do much as president, except shoot off his mouth.
Note that the Senate can choose to include barring from future office as a penalty in impeachment cases, but does not have to. There’s little precedent for Presidents, but I’m pretty sure that there have been lesser officials who have been impeached, removed, and then re-elected.
It would essentially guarantee a landslide defeat for Republicans in 2020, due to national fallout and infighting with the GOP.
Which is the main reason why Republican senators are never going to dump Trump. To do so would lead to an even worse electoral defeat than keeping Trump. You may not like riding the tiger, to paraphrase Truman, but getting off the tiger gets you eaten, which is worse.
Unless Bernie decides to pull a Trump and switch sides and actually gets nominated. I had a dream about that last night. It wasn’t pretty.
(Won’t happen though – Sanders is just too loyal. Don’t get me wrong – him in the WH is my biggest wish. But not that way.)
Haven’t you looked at your Facebook lately? The MAGAs are are gonna get their guns and shoot the “Libruls”.
We’re all as good as dead I tells ya!
Right or Wrong, many people would consider removing Trump from office as a Coup by the Democrats. They’re even talking about criminal indictments after Trump leaves office.
The Nixon and Clinton impeachments were bipartisan. The Democrats are responsible for Trump’s impeachment.
I’m curious to see how this effects state and Fed elections.
Such people don’t know what the word “coup” means, as in “coup d’etat,” which is an overthrow of a legitimate government by non-democratic means. There is nothing in this process that is non-democratic (small “d”) and everything is following the rules as laid down in the constitution.
Your second paragraph implies that the lack of bipartisan support for impeachment means that the charges are without merit. Is that your view?
I feel Trump will lose reelection. He’s been a terrible President.
I haven’t seen offenses bad enough for impeachment. (Yet) He may still tip that scale.
My greatest fear is that Pence would be the incumbent and nominee. Without all of Trump’s negatives, he’d stand a better chance of defeating the Democrats. Forget that he’s such a non-entity. As the incumbent, the Republicans would see that he’d rise to the occasion. In some respects he’d be a worse president than Trump.
It does not say that. What it says is:
“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
It literally says that disqualification is a possible punishment - not an automatic one.
The precedent here is VERY clear, because past impeachments have clearly considered removal and disqualification as separate things. In the 1913 impeachment of Robert Archbald, the vote to convict was then followed by a separate vote to determine if Archbald should be disqualified from future office.