There is a real problem in even trying to guess at the nominee. The normal primary process is already well and truly screwed. Bloomberg’s late entry already has him off the ballots in all four Feb primary states. Early voting in Minnesota starts in mid Jan possibly before any likely removal would have happened.
States dont have to have primaries for both parties on the same day. Current “oh shit what now” laws may be sufficient or state election laws may need to be changed. Swapping in cheaper and later caucuses might be an option. Some states might switch to a good old fashioned state party convention to select their delegates. Any state where there is not change from current plans probably is Bill Weld’s to lose. He is the most experienced of Trump’s primary challengers.
Without even knowing what the nomination process would look like it is hard to predict who gets nominated. Big chunks of the Republican electorate might literally not get a vote.
Trump is responsible for his own impeachment. After all the negative comments from their fellow GOPers all these years on Trump, they are only sticking with him out of purely selfish reason. Their own arguments in attempts to defend Trump are completely without merit and sound foolish. There is only wrong in what the GOP is doing and they know it.
As for Trump resigning, ain’t going to happen. That would be an admission of wrongdoing on his part, and he doesn’t believe he ever does anything wrong.
For the Democrats, the worst thing would be for Trump to be impeached but then allowed to hold a future office. His base would be really revved up to avenge his “martyrship” and he’d likely be reelected easily.
You forget that when Trump chose Pence as his running mate, there weren’t any better choices available because most mainstream Republicans were still leery of being too closely associated with him.
Pence was available and willing because he was a political dead duck in deep-red Indiana. He’s that bad a politician.
The quantity of fallout would of course depend on how many nukes Trump has the military launch on his way out the door.
The GOP will go into a state of utter turmoil about What Now but they’ll recover relatively quickly and pretend that whatever they reconfigure as was what DJT stood for anyway.
I foresee much screaming and yelling and online bluster about how…
(Hmm… I might have to finally buy myself some hardware, before the new Virginia gun laws take effect, just to give them the surprise when they come for me. Nice strategy to drive up gun sales to Libs!) But they mostly will stay in Big Talk, maybe some tighter security checkpoints around Capitol Hill.
The automated algorithms that now run our financial markets, which keep giving huge boosts every time he tweets some unfounded allegation that he has reached a deal that never hapens, will probably tank because of having been default-programmed to do that if a president falls, so a whole lot of people will have “proof” that removing him was the wrong thing to do.
I agree, but would only note that the Archbald trial also set the precedent that the separate future disqualification vote only required a simple majority of the Senate, unlike conviction/removal requiring 2/3’s. So it seems pretty likely that a president convicted after impeachment would be disqualified from future office since numerous Senators voting to convict/remove could decide disqualification from future office was ‘piling on’, but the future disqualification vote still pass.
But any of the discussion of fallout in this particular case, including both the disqualification vote, who Trump or other would be nominee, what the GOP’s chances would be, assumes a degree of GOP elected official and GOP/GOP-leaning voter appetite for removing Trump which does not as of now exist whatsoever. I doubt any GOP Senator will end up voting to remove Trump. I believe media teases about Cory Gardner (R-CO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Romney etc are just that. They aren’t going to end up voting for conviction, and 2/3’s vote is a similar likelihood to you get on a commercial airliner and it crashes. I mean that also could happen, so could major new evidence or sudden change in GOP support for Trump absent big new evidence, but practically speaking, not gonna happen. So the ‘fallout’ discussion is hypothetical on a completely different level than it would be if the predicate event, conviction, had any real chance of happening.
Trump has done most of the things the Founding Fathers were thinking about when they put the impeachment clause into the Constitution. Just because Trump hasn’t read the Constitution doesn’t mean we can ignore those things.
Okay, but that’s not what I said. I didn’t say imagine he were disbarred and tried to run. I said imagine he were disbarred, but ran and won anyway. Imagine the fallout of that.
That would mean over 60 million people decided the Constitution isn’t really that important after all. Now imagine 9 judges tell them otherwise. Imagine what would happen to this country were that come to pass.
I don’t see it happening. There are two groups of people who support Trump; those who are Trump followers and those who don’t like Trump being President but accept that he was legally elected and support him because they believe in the law.
So let’s say Trump tries to either seize power or hold on to power in some obviously illegal way. By doing so, he will lose the support of all of the people who are only following him because he’s the legal president.
You might say that doesn’t matter; Trump will still have his base of loyal followers, who will support him regardless of whether he’s obeying the law or breaking it. I concede those people exist. But if they form a majority of the population, then they’ll just vote for Trump and he’ll be elected legally.
Sixty million people sounds like a lot. But they’re outnumbered by the other two hundred and seventy million. They’ll either back down or they’ll lose the civil war.
Here is what I predict. He is not convicted. In June, SCOTUS opens up Trump’s tax returns. There is something really damning there (else why is he fighting so damned hard to keep them secret). Maybe he is in massive debt to Russia; I don’t know what, but something. The party decides he is toxic and has to quick find another nominee. Who is interested and not tainted by Trump? Mitt Romney, that’s who. And I do expect him to vote for conviction, although he is the only likely one.
If I am right, I accept all your accolades. If I am wrong, well nobody’s perfect.
Of course, and some Republicans voted “not guilty,” too.
It doesn’t matter how clearly and undeniably Trump’s corruption is exposed–he’s going to be re-elected, because so many American’s are so easily and stupidly manipulated by social media, and Russia is going to exploit that to the max. Trump has never had to explicitly conspire with Russia. Russia does all the work. Trump just needs to continue being a corrupt jackass who parrots what Putin tells him.
