Republicans Will Vote For a Convicted trump

One of the oddities of the American electoral system is that our Constitution barely spelled out any requirements for the office the Presidency.

All that's needed are that the candidate be of 35 years of age, a natural-born citizen of the United States, and having lived in the United States for 14 years.

There are no other qualifications, like say the candidate having previous elected experience (as a Governor or Senator or Congresscritter), or that the candidate has a college degree of some kind, or that the candidate pass some kind of intellectual competency test.

This becomes an oddity because it leaves open the possibility of some monstrously unqualified person running for - and winning - the office of the President. You could have someone who didn't even finish getting a high school education and shows a decided inability to write and read or even perform basic math. You could have someone who displays open psychological disorders like extreme sociopathy and narcissism (oh wait, we already had...). You could have someone getting elected President while sitting in a jail cell as a convicted felon.

Don't laugh, that almost happened. Sort of.

We've had people putting their name in for the highest office in the land while sitting with their homies in Cell Block D. Victoria Woodhull did it in 1872, running as a protest candidate at a time women weren't allowed to vote or hold office. Eugene V. Debs ran on the Socialist Party ticket in 1920 while sitting in jail for violation of the Espionage Act. Lyndon LaRouche ran for President in 1992 while in jail for tax and mail fraud.

It should be noted none of those examples even had a snowball's chance in hell. Woodhull wasn't taken seriously by the (mostly male) voters and none of them were ready for women to have such basic rights until the 1900s when the 19th Amendment finally passed. Debs - who had the best success among these examples with about a million votes - was running as a Socialist in a place - the United States - that never embraced socialism as a political philosophy even during the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century (much to the dismay of the Bernie Bros to this day). LaRouche was a verifiable conspiracy nut spouting racist and incoherent thoughts, and never garnered any major support even when he tried running on a Democratic Party label.

So why should this even be a problem for us?

Because donald trump, currently facing at least THREE criminal investigations and several civil court trials (one of which - the New York inquiry into tax fraud - could involve jail time), could well be a convicted felon by the time the 2024 election cycle rolls around... and the goddamned Republican Party - with enough base voters to give trump at least 62 million votes and at most 74 million - will likely have trump at the top of their ticket for another shot at the Presidency.

We're going to have a future 2024 campaign where one of the candidates - trump - will be forced to wear an orange jumpsuit while Zooming his debate performance from the Florence SuperMax prison.

I'm not the only one looking at this train wreck happen (again). David Frum is documenting the horror over at the Atlantic (paywall):

...Big-money Republicans hoped that 2022 would be the year the GOP quietly sidelined Trump. Those hopes have been fading all year, as extreme and unstable pro-Trump candidates have triumphed in primary after primary. Their last best hope was that the reelection of Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida would painlessly shoulder Trump out of contention for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Now that hope, too, is dying.

DeSantis ran in 2018 as a craven Trump sycophant. He had four years to become his own man. He battled culture wars—even turning against his former backers at Disney—all to prove himself the snarling alpha-male bully that Republican primary voters reward. But since the Mar-a-Lago search, DeSantis has dropped back into the beta-male role, sidekick and cheering section for Trump.

Trump has reasserted dominance. DeSantis has submitted. And if Republican presidential politics in the Trump era has one rule, it’s that there’s no recovery from submission. Roll over once, and you cannot get back on your feet again...

Or as I like to say it "Once you become trump's bitch you will ALWAYS be trump's bitch." Back to Frum:

Historically, conservatives spoke the language of stability; progressives, the language of change. This summer, however, the Trump Republicans are speaking the language of confrontation, of threat, of violence. Five days ago, Peter Wehner described here at The Atlantic the angry shouts on right-wing message boards and websites. That language of menace is now being used by the former president himself. Allow me impunity or else face more armed violence from my supporters is the implicit Trump warning...

I've mentioned before how terrifying trump is as a political figure: In nearly every situation where a political scandal would bring down an elected official, for some godforsaken reason trump defies gravity and becomes even more entrenched as the standard-bearer for the twisted and broken GOP. In my own words back in 2016:

Here's where my hope turns to despair. For more than a year we've seen Trump campaign exactly in this manner: Shameless, reckless, lying, self-serving, arrogant, noisy, inhuman, insane. Everything he did last night was a greatest hits version of every horror Trump displayed on the campaign trail... and in all those previous disasters, Trump's numbers went up. He kept moving, he kept lying, he kept winning in the worst ways. That shamelessness is key: Most other politicians would never sink to the levels Trump does, because they are actually concerned about their reputation and their futures. Trump doesn't care: He believes his reputation is flawless - hint: it's not - and his soul unblemished, so he continues to behave this way because nobody stops him and because too many people buy into his con game.

The normal dynamics of an election cycle tells us that what happened to Trump tonight would sink any campaign. The law of gravity regarding any single gaffe requires that Trump sinks below his support and fades into zero. But that has not happened to him yet: And after all of the failures and insults and chaos, Trump keeps gaining ground he should not gain. I've seriously begun worrying that either the polls are rigged or that there really are that many clueless voters buying into Trump's scam...

Well, the elections in 2016 and 2020 proved to me there were a lot of voters buying into trump's scam (you may notice I hadn't developed the habit of insulting him by typing his name in lower caps), but it turned out they weren't clueless. Those voters were mostly as spiteful and hateful as he is, and as he granted them license to be that hateful to the world they have sworn him undying loyalty.

It is that shared spite that drives trump's support. To the MAGA voters out there, all of these criminal investigations are not honest efforts to protect our Constitution and our national security: They eagerly accept trump's deflections of them as shams and witch hunts by craven bureaucrats and liberals afraid of trump's "true" popularity and greatness. To these voters, they don't care if trump exposed classified information or violated the Espionage Act, they don't care if trump evaded paying taxes, they don't care if trump has been flushing documents down toilets like he had everything to hide, they don't care if trump has been lying to them for decades. Because to them trump is TRUMP (God/Savior/Emperor) and he can do whatever he likes.

This view among the MAGA crowd is, by the way, open hypocrisy considering how these same wingnuts were screaming - STILL screaming - "But Her Emails" with regards to Hillary Clinton's private server and email scandals... both of which were heavily investigated by Republican-led Congresses and Justice Departments and nothing found criminal. Hillary doesn't break the law and yet the Far Right still screams "Lock Her Up".

For all the fears that when - not if - donald trump finds himself in handcuffs facing criminal charges - be it in Georgia for election law violations, be it in South Florida for espionage, be it in Washington DC for ignoring the Presidential Records Act - that trump's followers will erupt into violence; the equally shocking thing is that even with trump in handcuffs by 2022 and in jail by 2024, the vast majority of Republican voters will still vote for a felon convicted by a jury of his peers.

If there's any good news, it's that trump may appeal to his rabid base but he's not that popular to the general voting public. He lost the popular vote in 2016 when he got 62 million to Hillary by 3 million voters, he only won the Presidency through a broken Electoral College system that favored smaller states. He lost the popular vote in 2020 when he got 74 million to Biden by 7 million voters, which was enough to give Biden the Electoral count as well.

With varying demographic realities - the slow shift to younger Millennial and Gen Z voters who are more liberal as aging conservative Boomers die off - and with the likelihood that enough Independent voters in 2024 will recoil from the reality that the Republican candidate is in jail, it seems unlikely trump can reclaim those 74 million he got in 2020. As long as Biden and the Democrats retain the 81 million who voted for him, trump can't win.

Then again: motherfucking trump defies political gravity (and the Republicans may try to cheat with election results in their GOP-controlled Red states).

Gods help us.

Elections matter, America. If trump does indeed meet justice and is found guilty of his crimes, for the LOVE OF GOD DO NOT ELECT AN HONEST-TO-GOD CROOK TO THE WHITE HOUSE.