Exactly, and so getting him on a Trump ballot is also out of the question, or removing Vance.
I’ll admit it’s a bit tangential to the topic of this thread, except that the question of whether or not Vance will even be on the ballot is very relevant to his chances of becoming POTUS eventually.
This is a corollary to the also ill-conceived “Adult In The Room” theory, i.e. that if Trump gets too out of control, some hypothetical responsible party will step up and take charge. If neither of these things happened after Trump got caught trying to influence election officials or incite an election, what is the boiling point at which the Cabinet collectively decides to engage in a legal coup? A few Cabinet-level officials “quiet quit” after the 06 January 2021 festivities, but the only one who even tacitly spoke to why was Elaine Chao, and Mike Pence couldn’t even bring himself to condemn Trump despite the fact that insurrectionists were threatening to hang him.
Trump has no loyalty to anyone, but he oddly inspires loyalty in his devoted followers even when he treats them terribly. The likelihood that a handpicked group of supplicants are going to vote him to the curb is basically nil even if he turned into a drooling moron flinging his own shit around the Oval Office.
Stranger
Okay, so we actually have two main categories of questions.
What are the chances that JD Vance will ever serve as President serving part of Trump’s hypothetical elected term?
What are the changes that JD Vance will ever serve as President for his own (elected?) term?
First point, I’m still going to say that the election is too close to call, no matter how much I want to believe that there will be a non-nailbiter Harris win. IF Trump wins the election (sheer votes, voter suppression, some legal or extra legal chicanery are all possibilities) then, like others, I suspect that he’ll stumble through his term growing more addled and in poorer health, but not passing the scepter until he is dead and decaying.
So 50-50 win, but with the medical care and coverups by those who have no power but through Trump, say a 80-20 chance in Trump’s favor of staying the course.
The second question is much, much murkier though. Honestly, there’s far too great odds of Trump making his threats of “you won’t have to vote again” a reality, and us descending into a cold-to-warm civil war. Of course, if that happens, then the odds of some sort of assassination goes up, which brings us back to the first question again. But no, I think what will happen is various Democratic states going their own ways and ignoring what happens on the Federal level, kind of like how Texas and other Red states are just choosing to not comply in many cases, and waiting for 2028. Again, coldish de facto civil war, and one that could be quite extended.
A much more pleasant answer for the second question becomes if HARRIS wins: will JD Vance ever be a viable candidate on his own? I don’t think so, because if Trump doesn’t win, Trump will blame everyone else for causing a loss, and with Vance’s limited popularity, “non-white” wife, and other baggage, he’s a perfect scapegoat. Which will largely tank his chances, although with his financial supporters, I shouldn’t say he has a zero chance of at least running for the position in the future.
Who knows? What if we were predicting the odds of Nixon ever becoming president in 1952? He was an enormously unpopular VP candidate who Ike was keeping a further distance from than Trump is from Vance. I guess it depends on how cute Atlas is and how willing President Walz is to embroil us in an unwinnable war.
1952? Hell, what if we were predicting the odds of Nixon ever becoming President in 1962? https://youtube.com/JA1edgj1U5E?t=73
(Fun fact: In 1964 my father was in the St. Louis airport when he saw a middle-aged man in a suit and raincoat carrying his own suitcase and briefcase. My father said, “Excuse me, are you. . .” and before he could finish the man turned on a big smile, grabbed my father’s hand to shake and said, “Hi, Dick Nixon. Great to meet you!” When my father got home he said, “That son of a bitch is going to run for President again.”
I do not have the mathmatical will or ability to calculate the odds etc. However, I fervently hope that he never ever becomes president. He’s a sniveling, lying, nasty, misogynist, with a weird creepy obsession, with other people’s personal family choices. Partcularly the family choices of women of course. So hopefully … 0
This table gives the probability of death by age: adding up the death rates of 78-82 year olds gives you a 25% death rate. (No conditional probability calculated.) Boost that to 30% to reflect poor health and assassination risks. 45%*30% = about a 14% chance of Vance becoming President, which is better than most people’s chances.
“What are the chances that J.D. Vance will ever serve as POTUS?”
Regardless of the numerical value, the real answer is “Disturbingly higher than it ever should have been.”
It kills me that this human-suit wearing weirdo may end up within a heartbeat of the Presidency just because he somehow managed to glom onto another weirdo who should never have been president in the first place, and yet somehow still has about a 50% shot at becoming president again.
After the creation of the specific electoral vote for VP (*) 46 people have served in the post and 13 have become President, 9 by succession (8 deaths, one resignation), 4 by election. So if we exclude the incumbent to make it 13/45 that means 29% of those who served as VP have become POTUS. Of the 8 deaths half were assasinations, half natural causes.
If Trump dies in office, then of course the chances are 100%. Otherwise, I think he’s unelectable.
which kind of comports with my 3-1 odds against, except Vance hasn’t actually begun to serve as VP–and I hope devoutly he will never do so.
Well, it’s about 50% that Trump will win the election, and he’s old and unhealthy, so I’ll say that if elected he only has an 80% chance of finishing his term. So that gives Vance a ten percent shot of being President in the next term. Additionally, it is unlikely but not impossible Vance could, in some future term, be elected President, so I’ll say… 12 percent.
Any number is terrifying. We’re talking about Sarah Palin levels of unqualified here. Maybe a hair higher.
Well, in fairness, in almost any scenario where Vance becomes President, at the point he takes the oath of office, he will have rather substantially more experience than he currently does, seeing as how he’ll have been Vice President.
Let’s try a statistical approach.
Vance is the vice presidential candidate in one of the two major parties.
Between 1876 and 2016, fifty-eight people have been vice presidential candidates in one of the two major parties. Of these fifty-eight people, nine have later become president.
This would suggest that Vance has approximately a sixteen percent chance of becoming president.
Perhaps, but would you have said this about Palin, too?
Aside from the small sample size and actuarial changes in lifespan and medical treatment, there are a wide variety of external factors and biases that are being ignored to reach that conclusion based upon a single parameter.
Stranger
Everyone else is making guesses based on their gut feelings. I actually found some evidence to form a prediction with. And my post is the one you’re going to single out?
Well… yes, because it’s objective fact. She cannot have become LESS experienced.
I don’t think any of these guesses have a lot of credence, but the attempt to make a “statistical” prediction just based upon the incidence prior VP promotions or being subsequently elected while ignoring the confounding conditions carries an entire host of statistical fallacies. I wasn’t trying to pick on you specifically, but I deal with people trying to make these kinds of predictions via a simplified induction frequently in my professional capacity, and I feel compelled to point out that this kind of analysis is basically meaningless when it comes to estimating the likelihood of a particular outcome, and the sample may not even be representative of the larger hypothetical population of future possibilities.
Stranger