Let's hope that window is slammed shut and locked with 3 different keys very soon.
Politics: 2020 General Election thread
- Thread starter Bamaro
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You've identified the only thing he can do in your first sentence but that's something he's constitutionally incapable of. The other thing is Biden can stumble badly, which can happen...
Obviously he isn’t quitting now, but I wouldn’t bet against the possibility of him resigning prior to January 20 if he loses so he won’t have to go to Biden’s inauguration. (Or at least just skip it).
Him resigning also gives Pence a chance to pardon him.
Yes and it costed him any chance of an unlikely general election win.
Guess so. A blanket get out of jail free card.
ETA. Nixon was pardoned for any crimes he committed as president. So wouldn't apply to anything before trump was president.
Reagan primaried him and that probably cost him the general.
beg to disagree but i pardon myself daily before i'm convicted... blue font. you are correct about not being pardoned before being convicted and at one time i had hope/faith/ trust in pence but not now. if it was an option for him to pardon trump he would probably do it. this is why i think biden's choice for vp is important. our country needs a vp who can get the job done just in case something happens to the president. i'm not sure pence could do that. you made a good point.
I was nine in 1976 so I really don’t have direct memories of it. But he did have a blunder in the debate about Poland not being under Soviet influence.
But even without the pardon I think Ford had an uphill battle with being tied to Nixon.
Of course, if Trump does resign in a snit, he will cost the taxpayers big time as Pence would reap the rewards of being a former president, such as a nice pension and lifetime secret service protection.
Technically, you can.
Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he MAY have committed so.....I'm not a lawyer (but I play one on Facebook), but I'd guess probably "yes"
Yeah, my direct memories are vague. But I think people sell Ford short, too.
1) Bamaro is right, he DID have a primary with Reagan (which he damn near lost), and four years later when the Reagan group called the Ford group in for advice on winning, they told them the roughest thing was the primary challenge.
2) Ford DID make a dumb comment on Soviet domination of Poland - but what probably cost him more was the fact it took him six days to admit he was wrong.
What's funny is the immediate post-debate polling of that debate shows Ford beating Carter by 11 points. As the news trickled out that Ford was a dumb, the later polling showed him getting creamed a la Bentsen over Quayle. But what did him in was his stubborn refusal to simply say, "I misspoke." He let Kissinger and Dick Cheney take the arrows for him until they finally told him he was going to lose bad if he didn't correct it.
3) Carter did not - except for one case - directly tie Ford to Nixon, and he was warned by his advisers that the public (in general) saw Ford as a decent guy who wasn't up to being President, but if he tried this "Nixon/Ford" nonsense, he'd sacrifice his credibility, particularly since Ford was not on the ticket in 1972.
4) But the one exception was a MASTERPIECE. Even the GOP strategists admitted it was perfect.
It ran in one market in Indiana as a "local buy." It began with a slogan that said, "Nixon Checkers Speech 1952" and had a quote in there from when he said that Truman had picked Stevenson to be the new President and had Nixon saying something like, "You wouldn't let the guy who caused all the problems pick the guy to fix them" or something like that. At which point the voice over said, "We couldn't have said it better ourselves!"
5) Ford had an uphill battle for several reasons unrelated to Nixon at all - including the economy, the perception our national stature had fallen because of the Vietnam War loss, and even a racist joke told by his Agriculture Secretary on a flight where Ford refused to repudiate him for a week.
The encapsulated version (which is pretty much always wrong) is that Ford lost because of the Nixon pardon just like Carter lost because of the hostages (both men believed that by the way). I think that's way too simplistic. Narrowing down "he won/lost the election" because of ONE REASON is virtually always wrong simply because real life elections aren't like the movies where the cheerleader scandal is revealed two days before the election.
His phrasing on Poland was all wrong, was the problem. He knew perfectly well where the Iron Curtain lay. He just meant the Poles were indomitable, which they are. He paid them a compliment and got skewered...
Exactly - and that's why he wouldn't admit he misspoke.
You're certainly better informed on this than I am (I was six), but the story as I read it is that Ford was basically parroting a Kissinger briefing paper summarizing the 1975 Helsinki Accords. He got everything else right - but he bumbled the response because of that one line about "not under Soviet domination." He even said later that he was thinking of the refusal of the Poles to just roll over, but that MILITARILY the Soviets DID "dominate" Poland. He said he was thinking of it in one sense, but everyone thought he meant another.
Btw - yeah, Ford messed up, but once again, I just don't buy this whole "one bad moment" idea that costs anyone a Presidential election. That might work in a mayor's race in a small town, but the idea that millions of people committed to one candidate just rush over the side to the other is another one of those cherished myths that never really happens, but it makes a good story so the press repeats it.
On August 20, 1976, Ford was thirty-three points behind in a country where 54% of voters called themselves Democrats, and the Ds held large majorities in both Houses. He lost the election by 2 points - and if only 23,000 votes in Wisconsin and Ohio had switched sides, he would have won the "Dubya Landslide" as I call it.
Ford narrowed it to 15 points nationally almost immediately - and outside of the South, Ford was actually tied with Carter just before Labor Day. On the day of the third debate - after Ford had been battered for two weeks over the Polish thing - Ford was only 6 points behind nationally with 10 percent undecided. The Ford team's final poll on the morning before the election had him in the lead nationally for the only time they ever polled.
My point is this: everyone wants to latch onto "Ford pardoned Nixon" or "Ford didn't know about Poland" to say that's why he lost. But he damn near won despite the fact he was never elected in the first place and despite those things being known at the time. Yes, I'll grant that the Poland notion might have cost him in terms of upward polling momentum, but the idea he lost because of A or B is to my mind ludicrous. One could argue he was never going to be able to win a race on "integrity in government" against Carter given he was in charge.
The other thing that's kinda forgotten - and Carter admitted this - was the worst thing Carter did was try to butcher him on Poland. He even said later if he'd have just kept his own mouth shut, it would have hurt Ford more than it did, but his willingness to insult Ford ("he went to Poland, did he not see those tanks? If we wanted experience, we would have kept Nixon, at least he knew there were Soviet troops there") actually caused a modicum of sympathy in Ford's direction once he admitted he messed up.
Anyone actually watching that debate - without the post-debate commentary - would wonder how Ford lost because he actually did quite well other than that one comment.
Jerry made a number of other verbal gaffes as well. Poland was just the most obvious. In fact, the running joke was that he played center for UM before the helmet era. Sometimes, though, I think that one picture = 1K words. Ford fell - a lot. That was a running joke too. In fact, it was a miracle it made it to the post war era. He was almost washed overboard, but his foot caught in a drain, saving him. This is immortalized in a statue in the USS Gerald Ford, when ashore. They remove it underway. I think that Trump's ancient-looking descent down the ramp at West Point will come back to haunt, that and the two-fisted drinking. the Lincoln boys are working the hell out of it...
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The First "America First" Movement should tell you all you need to know about the Second one
- Started by 81usaf92
- Replies: 17