![]() ![]() And it was only, what, eight years ago that Mitt Romney was the standard-bearer of the party in the national election. We saw that in the impeachment proceeding, where it was really astonishing that you have Mitt Romney as the only Republican voting in the Senate to remove the president. And we’ve seen that Republican lawmakers simply are not prepared to hold this guy to account. What worries me is that if there are going to be any guardrails protecting us from his attacks on the electoral process, it would have to come from the Republican Party. We’re pretty used to Trump making statements that leave us all gobsmacked at this point. What makes our situation particularly dangerous is it’s not simply the statements that come out of Trump. What does that mean, exactly? Are we racing toward a constitutional crisis? Lawrence Douglas That’s what led me to start asking, what types of federal laws do we have in place? What kind of constitutional procedures do we have in place to right the ship?Īnd what I found is that they just don’t exist. ![]() Gore, then we could really see a meltdown because our contemporary political climate is so polarized. The other concern is that if we do fall into an electoral crisis and we start seeing the kinds of challenges to the results that we saw back in year 2000, during Bush v. In all likelihood, the 2020 election is going to turn on the results in probably the three swing states that determined the results in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And it looks like it probably will be a narrow margin. To say that we’re facing a perfect storm is clichéd, but it does strike me that there are a lot of things coming together that could spell a chaotic election.įoremost among them is the fact that we have a president of the United States who has pretty consistently and aggressively telegraphed his intention not to concede in the face of an electoral defeat, especially if that electoral defeat is of a very narrow margin. What worries you most about the November election? Lawrence Douglas “If things go a certain way,” he told me, “there’s a Chernobyl-like defect built into our system of presidential elections that really could lead to a meltdown.”Ī lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows. I spoke to Douglas by phone about why he thinks our constitutional system isn’t prepared for what might happen in November, and why he’s not worried about a stolen election so much as an election without an accepted result. Trump’s push for “law and order” only led to more chaos in DC Monday night Douglas’s book is an attempt to think through how we might deal with the constitutional chaos of an undecided - and perhaps undecidable - presidential election. And if nothing else, we’ve learned in the Trump era that we have to take the tail risks seriously. According to Douglas, a scenario like the one above is entirely possible, maybe even probable. ![]() This is the starting point of a new book by Amherst College law professor Lawrence Douglas called Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. From that point forward, we’re officially in a constitutional crisis. ![]() Republicans, for the most part, are falling in line behind Trump. One day goes by, then a few more, and a month later Trump is still contesting the outcome, calling it “rigged” or a “Deep State plot” or whatever. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.- Donald J. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. ![]()
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