The VP is the one person in his cabinet that he can’t fire, barring extra-legal options open to a dictator.
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Except SCOTUS declined to define, at all, what is and isn’t an official duty. And this has to do with filing criminal charges against him. Do you think his own Justice Department will file charges against him for dismissing his VP?
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That was my 1st, 2nd, 3rd thought.
But he didn’t gain votes. I think there were a lot of people who wouldn’t vote for a woman.
I don’t know if human character is inherently flawed. I do know that everything else is far more diverse, and gender and sexuality are always going to include aspects the far right cannot accept.
And in Florida, especially, they keep escalating their censorship.
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On paper, he can’t.
In practice it’s another story. If Nixon was able to jettison Agnew then Trump has more than enough pull in his own party to oust Vance if he really wants to do so even if he decides to stay within the letter of the law (which is a big “if”).
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Me, I went to Detroit Public Schools from 1969 - 1982.
i feel your pain as well.
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No, just the ones who bullied me.
Imagine my shock when I got voted “Wittiest Girl” of the class of '82l Four years earlier, I got the “Class Party-Pooper” award in middle school. And most of the people I went to middle school with also attended the same high school that I did.
I’ve got a friend from back then who is a city councilman in a suburb that my city borders, to the north. Him, I’d def trust to run the country. He’s an elder in his church, but I know he follows the separation of church and state. And he’s Black - his city is/was notoriously racist, so that was a great thing.
ADDENDUM: Both Dem-backed MI State SupCourt candidates won! Both women! YAY!
and fucking John James one the US Congress seat in my district; he’s a fucking trump bootlicker.
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I wouldn’t be so sure. I really do think Vance and the billionaires backing him hope Trump will die or have to retire soon, leaving them in charge. And if he gets troublesome, I imagine they will oust him.
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That was a popular theory the first time around too. If getting Mike Pence in charge was the goal then the evangelical masterminds left disappointed.
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That’s always easier said than done. He’s been troublesome since he came down that escalator in 2015. They could have been done with him in 2020, and again in 2021. For them to invoke the 25th Amendment, they would need the support of the majority of the cabinet or a majority of Congress. That seems unlikely, assuming Trump installs only loyalists in his cabinet.
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Seems like every few months another group of power players put all their chips on Trump under the delusion that he is a force they will be able to control just because he’s so profoundly stupid.
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He is much more vulnerable now to a 25th amendment challenge on the grounds of mental capability. If Drumph has enough supporters in the cabinet, he’s ok. But if not, he could easily be declared incompetent.
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He’s only truly vulnerable if his base turns on him. Barring that the rest of his cabinet will be too cowardly to act.
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BUT first, get rid of Johnson, the dark bizarro of Stephen Colbert; if trump somehow isn’t POTUS, and if Vance is microdosed and realizes he’s been living a lie so he refuses to accept the post or he resigns out of fear, then Johnson takes the wheel.
I don’t want to live in a theocracy. Not because it sucks, but because I’m an atheist, and I feel like that could be a target on my back.
Sheezus pleezus, it’s like we all could have 'em on our backs.
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I’m sure this did a little to suppress votes in MI, but the numbers writ large are just too high to really blame this issue as being a deciding factor.
I think in the end for all the hope many of us had that Americans would reject Trump’s fascist and hateful message and embrace Harris’ message of joy and hope was misplaced. The fact that Trump not only won, but it wasn’t even fucking close, along with the fact that Republicans will control the Senate and most likely the House as well has made me lose any hope for the next decade at the very least just like in 1980 when Reagan was elected.
An R Senate will breeze through all of Trump’s confirmations including SCOTUS judges. An R House will pass the worst of the worst laws that will breeze through the Senate and Trump will sign them. There are no more “reasonable” Republicans – they have all been kicked out of the party. It’s all hardline MAGAts. The people Trump wants to appoint to office in conjunction with an R House will cause extreme austerity that will destroy everything the New Deal helped to create. Trump will fill the DOJ with hardline loyalists that will be used as a tool against anybody he feels has wronged him.
This all still hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m incredibly depressed and disraught today. I’m just sitting here at work in a daze not even sure how to process what’s going on. I’m wearing all black in mourning for the country and what it has shown itself to be. That Trump not only won but with a mandate is just so utterly incomprehensible to me especially since he’s such a known quantity at this point. I really thought Harris had a chance – there was so much energy, so much positivity, so much promise in her message. Alas this country is filled with fucking bigots, racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and transphobes and clearly they got behind Trump’s message of hate, fear, and greed.
I don’t believe there was a conspiracy, I don’t believe there was foreign meddling in any way that would have altered the outcome. Occam’s razor says that too many Americans are just that awful.
If these people think Trump will do anything to improve their lives in any meaningful way, they are in for a rude awakening. If they think the economy is bad now, wait until they see what mass deportations will do. Wait until they understand how tarriffs will make everything more expensive because of how intertwined the world economy is. Say Trump cuts taxes, that few extra dollars in their paycheck won’t do them much good when they are having to hold Go Fund Mes to pay for their medical bills, when their family gets sick and dies from polluted air and water, when their roads fall apart and bridges collapse, or they get sick and die from eating unsafe food.
To all my friends who are LGBTQ, women, Ukrainian, Palestinian, black, brown, or any other vulnerable populations, I’m truly sorry this has come to pass. I will support you in any way I can. I am sorry so many people here are so awful whether they realize it or not.
As an aside, I woke up in the middle of the night with the most horrifying thought: I have no doubt Biden will pardon Hunter at the end of his term and I’m fine with that. What I’m not fine with is the thought that he could also pardon Trump as a symbolic unifying gesture. Biden seems like the kind of institutionalist and principled guy that would actually go forward with such a thing. I really hope he doesn’t. Let Trump show his corruption by essentially pardoning himself. I really hope this doesn’t actually happen but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it did.
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@mindysan33 posted this somewhere, and I can’t find it, so I am posting it again. With all apologies, Mindy.
This is a good reality check for the oncoming freight train that is the next few years.
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I know we need not despair and, indeed, we need to not despair. But I need a break from thinking about politics. It just never ends. And I say this as someone who expressed anxiety at the path the dems were taking at TOP: I wish I had been wrong.
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In the end, this is all that mattered. The margins were thin enough in 2016 to rage against third party spoiler candidates, October surprises, Russian interferrence, the Electoral College, and other factors. This time around we just need to face facts that a majority of Americans saw who Trump was, knew what he was about, and were perfectly fine with that.
I’m guessing probation of some sort, likely deferred until he’s out of office since the logistics of such a thing would be too difficult to deal with.
I really don’t know what’s worse. Another Trump term, or Trump being 25th’ed and us having JD Vance take the reigns. My hope is Trump is too distracted by whatever the next shiny thing is to govern effectively. I also hold a tiny sliver of hope that since he’s a lame duck President and doesn’t really have anything to “fight” given the mandate he was handed that it may temper some of his worst instincts. (I doubt it, but this hope is about all I have right now.) JD Vance on the other hand? That guy scares the shit out of me in a way that Trump doesn’t. Trump is dangerous but incompetent. JD Vance is dangerous and competent. That’s a really bad combination.
I’ve been trying very hard these past few years to avoid meat but this morning I just had to go out to breakfast and get corn beef hash. I desperately needed some comfort food. It was tasty, but I don’t feel any better in the end. I don’t know if time and processing will help either, and that makes me really depressed in a way I haven’t felt in a really long time.
to everything you’ve said. I can almost excuse some of the people who voted for him in 2016 thinking he’d be a change agent for better. At this point if you’re voting for this guy you have no excuse. You’re the fucking enemy. Full stop. There’s no middle ground to be had here.
Part of Trump’s problem was he tried to hire people who “looked” the part versus loyalists – and back in 2016-2020 there was still a diminishing but existing pool of reasonable or principled Republicans who were still awful but at least had enough sense to say “no” when he went off the rails. He won’t make that mistake again. He has no intention of hiring anybody who he thinks would ever say “no” to him. JD Vance is the kind of slimy sycophant who will take any abuse Trump heaps on him and ask for more on the not at all unlikely chance that he gets to be next up for the hot seat some time within the next 4 years.
Again, this. Did minorities stay home or vote for Trump in significant numbers? I don’t know the answer to this as I haven’t looked that closely into the data. I can pretty much guarantee that these numbers wouldn’t have been enough to have altered the outcome so let’s not blame them. Instead of placing blame on those who are the most vulnerable we need to face the fact that a majority of Americans are just awful people who fell for Trump’s marketing blitz.
I so want to be positive and upbeat, but I just can’t right now. The only positive I can find right now is we’ll never have to hear about another Trump rally. Beyond that, I simply can’t not despair.
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