Although in past years handicapping the Veepstakes has been one of my favorite pastimes, I find that this year I don’t much care who Trump’s running mate might turn out to be. I suppose it’s because they vary from quite bad to horrible, or because I think that, barring one of the candidates having a medical crisis, the election will be decided either in court or via Trump’s self-destruction as he says increasingly bizarre things and people start to focus on them.
But that doesn’t stop other people, and Trump added fuel to the flames today by naming six people he thought might be potential running mates. The list included Sen. Tim Scott, who seems like the obvious choice to me, as it offers the tantalizing prospect of peeling off just enough Black votes to move a few swing states.
More bizarrely the list also included Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. That’s bizarre not only because Trump spent so much time belittling him, but because they’re both residents of the State of Florida, and the US Constitution prohibits electors from a state from choosing both a president and a vice president from that same state. (Art II, Cl. 3: “The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves”.) Weirdly, nobody writing about Trump’s statement seems to be mentioning this. But then I think the entire press has pretty much given up on fact checking him anyway.
DeSantis, who attended Harvard Law School and presumably knows much more about the Constitution than Trump does — although probably that’s true of almost everyone — was quick to say he would never be Trump’s Vice President. He made it sound as if this was something of a principled choice, but I think he just knows it could never be, as the risk of a squeaker in which Vice President Harris is reelected when you don’t count Florida’s electoral votes is just too great.
Much more hypothetical, but maybe more fun…what if Biden drops out? He’s 81 years old. Anything can happen in the next 8 months.
Trump is no spring chicken either, but presumably that’s why Nikki Haley is still running.
I’ll try again. Thought I posted this yesterday.
This is way more hypothetical, but probably more fun to speculate about. What about if Biden ends up not running? He’s 81, after all. Anything can happen in the next 8 months.
Trump is no spring chicken either, but that’s probably why Nikki Haley keeps plugging away with seemingly no chance to win.
Well, look at that. Now my post from yesterday is showing up. Sorry for the double comment.
Prediction 2: Barring some serious medical issue like a stroke, Biden will ignore the chatter and run again. (Very high confidence.)
Prediction 3: Barring some serious medical issue like a stroke, Biden will be re-elected if the Republicans nominate Trump (Medium confidence)
The tough question is how much unrest is likely to follow…
It used to be the law that the second place finisher in the electoral college was awarded the VP as a consolation prize. But then, that was mostly people who could argue reasonably, and the VP could provide useful input–think Adams/Jefferson as the archetype. Still an amusing possibility, but not going to happen.
Nothing amusing about Trump as veep in a Biden administration!