Re: Can Trump Really Win the Presidency?
Mrs. Tidewater asked a question last night that got me a-pondering.
What happens if a presidential candidate suddenly passes on the week before the presidential election, dies unexpectedly, for example, of a stroke or a heart attack?
I asked this question in 2008 (on another now defunct board) and folks had a HISSY fit.....yet I was primarily asking because McCain was 72 years old and had picked Palin, had nothing to do with Obama at all.
I'm GUESSING that the VP becomes President if he wins.
A few years back, Mel Carnahan (D, Mo.) died in a tragic plane crash a week before an election for Senator from Missouri. The Governor, also a Democrat, told people, if Mel won the election, he would name his wife to take his place in the Senate, so a man everyone knew was dead won the election.
OK, my Dad is from Mizzou so I do have some familiarity with that situation. Carnahan died on October 16. The rules in Missouri stated that you cannot change the ballot less than 30 days before an election. The Democrats all got together and figured they had one shot at beating Ashcroft.......sympathy vote, so they grabbed Carnahan's widow and while Ashcroft couldn't say anything, the Democrats buried him campaigning against him while he was morose.
I would also point out - though you already know this better than I - that that election of Carnahan was AGAINST the Constitution, that very explicitly states one must INHABIT the state where he or she is elected. Ashcroft could probably have had it overturned if he had wanted to do so (we won't even delve into the Democratic judge who kept the polling places open four extra hours in St Louis). I knew a guy who knew Ashcroft and asked him - after he'd lost but before he was named AG - why Ashcroft didn't contest it. He said that Ashcroft's response (and the GOP wanted him to because the Senate was at 50-50) was to say, "The people spoke." I thought that was pretty cool.
In the Presidential race, nobody votes for president. You vote for your state's electors for that presidential candidate, and, in my hypothetical case, the electors are not dead, just the candidate they were going to vote for.
So, what happens Trump or H (God forbid) passes on the week before the election?
If I'm not mistaken, each party has their own electors. In other words, they have folks who are predetermined to vote the way their state determines. Of course, we get faithless electors all the time, but normally they do what is expected.
My guess is that like the Crimson Tide it's a case of 'next person up.' If one or the other dies, the one behind them is the one elected.
Btw - the reason almost nobody thinks of that is because:
a) the last President to die in office was Kennedy in 1963; a person has to be about 61 years old to have a vague recollection of what it's like to have the President suddenly gone and about 67 or older to REALLY remember it - older than that to have minimal comprehension.
b) the last President to leave office before his term was up was Nixon in 1974. I was four years old and have no recollection AT ALL about that (I DO remember seeing what were the Watergate hearings and my Mom getting upset her soaps weren't on). So one has to be about 56 years old to have a VAGUE recollection and even older to 'really remember' what it's like to have that sudden and shocking change.
Nobody takes the VP choice seriously because they've never seen it really matter. The last real close call I remember is when President Bush (Dad) had some trouble jogging in 1991 (and later threw up on the Japanese PM's lap).....and we had to contemplate the idea of President Quayle.
Proof it doesn't matter? By 4-1, folks said Bentsen beat Quayle in the debate. Nearly 70% of folks said Quayle was not qualified to hold office.
Quayle got elected on the ticket with Bush in a landslide - because not enough people considered seriously the idea that Quayle might become President.
then, there's Senator Wellstone, and I have to say the Republicans learned their lessons well from 2000. That time, they not only killed the Senator but to prevent that wife thing from happening like in Missouri, they killed her, too. Yes, folks, I'm being black helicopter/tin foil hat here.