O.k., so I’m going to engage in some rank fantastical speculation here (by which I am recognizing that it is all fantasy). To start, however, we need to stipulate a few things.
First, the 25th Amendment Commission is possibly the most ridiculous idea to come out of the swampy morass that is Nancy Pelosi’s brain. It does absolutely nothing positive for Democrats, and actually makes them look even more unhinged about Trump (her protestations that it has nothing to do with Trump notwithstanding), if that were even possible. That will only energize Trump’s supporters even more, and do absolutely nothing for Democrat voters.
Second, Trump is losing this election. Badly. There are a ton of polls to support this premise, and I don’t want to waste time listing them all, but as a small sampling: FiveThirtyEight has Biden up 11 among likely voters; RealClearPolitics has Biden up 9.6 in the national average, and reporting Biden up anywhere from 5 to 16 points among 13 various polling organizations. Those are all well outside the margin of error, and in no national poll is Trump leading Biden. In the six top battleground states, Biden is up 1.4 to 7.1 points on average. In no battleground state is Trump leading Biden.
Now, insert all your usual caveats about polls here, but they aren’t worthless. In 2016, the national polls actually that far off, and even the battleground state polls were typically within the margin of error – they were just errors in the wrong direction. And this isn’t 2016; the dynamics were very, very different. Here’s an interesting observation from Jonah Goldberg in his G-File yesterday:
I have a theory about why Trump is tanking. All the punditry about erosion of support among seniors, debate performances, COVID, the economy, etc. has its merits. But I think one missing piece of the puzzle is simply that Trump is the incumbent and, more importantly, he’s making people crazy, pro and con. In 2016, enough people wanted a “disrupter,” but they didn’t really want a feeling of constant disruption. It’s fine to want to shake things up when the economy is doing well (as it was in 2016) and you think the “establishment” is calcified or corrupt. It’s fine to want to keep the shake-up going when things were going good and politics remained a spectator sport. But wanting a shake-up is very different than wanting to constantly be shaken around. With the economy in tatters, COVID being so not under control that the White House is literally a hot spot, and the president spending his last days before the election yammering about miracle cures, his own physical perfection, dropping F-bombs on the radio, and scorning his own Cabinet officials as failures for not indicting his political opponents, people just want to stop the madness.
Or rather, a majority of them do.
There are those who like the madness. Some get to go on TV to defend it or tell people not to believe their lying eyes. Others think this constant insanity is actually the new sanity. Or they still think this reality show they bought a ticket to in 2016 is worth extending for another four seasons. Or they’ve grown addicted to the madness of the crowds. Or they believe, sincerely, that the constant seismic disturbances are a price worth paying to prevent the evil of the other team from running things.
So yeah, these people exist. But the problem for them, and for Trump, is that for all of the boilerplate about the “silent majority,” the Pence-ian treacle about “the American people,” and the constant affirmation of their Facebook friends, there just aren’t enough of them.
So Trump is on the ropes. It doesn’t matter if you love Trump or hate him, if you can’t or refuse to see that, then you are so far in some tank that the daylight you see is actually a train coming at you.
Third, for those Republicans Jonah describes, who are ready to get off the Trump rollercoaster and save whatever power the Republican party still had, they had a binary choice in February (since Trump supporters love to talk about binary choices, even when it doesn’t apply). They could have voted to impeach Trump, thereby raising Pence to the presidency, and giving the Republican Party a fighting chance to keep the White House and probably the Senate. They did not do that. And here we are.
Which brings me to my fantastical “what if”-ing. Nancy Pelosi has insanely given the Republicans a second bite at the apple. Given that the time-line is probably much, much too short, what if House and Senate Republicans actually supported the bill and voted with Democrats to establish such a commission (which, actually is not really such a bad idea, although the details at this point are practically non-existent — it’s the timing that’s insane). And then, what if the commission immediately determined that President Trump is not competent to conduct the duties of his office (they could blame COVID, or his hair, or his “orangeness”). Mike Pence would immediately rise to the top of the Republican ticket (figuratively, not literally — many ballots are already printed). All or nearly all current Trump voters would almost certainly stick around to vote for Pence. But — and here’s the point — most, if not all, of that cadre of Republicans who can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump would be able to vote in good conscience for Pence. Same for independents, and the suburban women who voted for Trump the first time but can’t bring themselves to do so again. That is a sizable number of people, mostly in battleground states. I think we would see a massive net gain in voters for the Republican column, and minor net loss in the Democrat column, resulting in a much, much tighter race. Republicans could have a fighting chance to keep the White House, but also (and possibly more importantly) I think Republican’s could feel a good bit less stress about keeping the Senate.
Now, of course, this isn’t going to happen. There are too many Republican Congressmen who have so closely hitched their wagon to Trump that they could never see their way clear to sign on to his removal under the 25th Amendment. For many, the personal trumps the party, which trumps the nation. So this is all just so much daydreaming.
But it’s fun to daydream.