Trego's Mountain Ear

Years ago, I heard how Florida’s election count kept Al Gore from the presidency by 537 votes.  When your paycheck comes from a university, you have a lot of born again Democrats sharing that sort of information with you.  So I figured out a reply – “Yeah, and did you know that in 1998 seventeen Democrat Senators kept Al Gore from becoming President?”  That one usually confused my colleagues – and the statement that Clinton paid a $25,000 fine and had his Arkansas law license suspended to head off charges of lying under oath in the Lewinski affair kind of showed that there was solid justification for a guilty vote in the impeachment.

At any rate, it was fun to watch my liberal colleagues wriggle – and now I can see where a handful or two of Democrats kept Kamala Harris from the presidency.  The 25th Amendment covers it in Section 4: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”  Since there are 15 Cabinet Secretaries, Kamala is still only 8 votes away from being declared Acting President. 

I suspect that, had Al Gore been running from the White House, he would have beaten George Bush in 2000, and gone on to beat him again in 2004.  And given the reports of how long they’ve covered up for Biden’s senility, Kamala could still get a turn at the presidency if 8 out of 15 Democrat Cabinet Secretaries chose to admit that Slow Joe just can’t handle the job. 

I’m not sure if invoking the 25th amendment in time for Christmas would make Kamala the 47th President or not – but I think it’s reasonable to infer that, had 17 Democrat senators chosen to vote guilty on Bill Clinton and remove him from office, we wouldn’t have had 8 years of George Bush.  Likewise, had 8 Cabinet Secretaries chose to vote Biden out last Summer, Harris might have had a better chance against Trump.  I suspect that the blind loyalty that accompanies the big D may be more weakness than strength.