11 Wild Things? He Missed One!

Over at The Daily Beast, David Rothkopf speculates on "11 Wild Things" that could happen in the 2024 election.

His list:

1. Trump is disqualified.
2. There is a candidate health scare.
3. Trump is convicted of one or more crimes.
4. Trump could melt down and make his legal peril even greater.
5. A new candidate could enter the GOP race and catch fire.
6. Trump flees the country.
7. An extremist act of violence.
8. Intensified foreign election interference.
9. A sudden major turn in the war in Ukraine or in Russia's leadership.
10. A natural disaster.
11. The usual disruptive suspects.

As might one expect from someone who says, "Americans will continue not to fully appreciate all the good Biden has done," (!) the piece reads a little like a left wing fantasy in places, but I think it gets most of the possibilities.

Three, one of them not even on the list, bear comment.

Regarding Trump being disqualified, about which I have already commented, we are now seeing leftists argue, for all practical purposes, that there isn't even a legal need to establish that Trump aided or abetted an insurrection:

So far, I'm answering none of the above. (Image by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu, via Unsplash, license.)

The new twist is the idea that none of that is necessary. Trump is already disqualified, and all state election officials have to do is remove him from ballots on their own initiative. And then he is gone. Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment], in this way of thinking, is "self-enacting." It is "constitutionally automatic," in the words of law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, writing in a new law review article that is making the rounds. "Section 3 requires no legislation or adjudication to be legally effective. It is enacted by the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment [in 1868]. Its disqualification, where triggered, just is." All a state election official has to do is pick it up and use it.

That's nuts, and as much as I would love to see Trump disqualified, doing so without legally establishing why would set a legal precedent dangerous in the same way that reelecting a Chief Executive who has no respect for the law would be.

What would happen next election? Some climate catastrophist polling official decides that anyone who won't "leave it in the ground" is abetting an "insurrection?" Anyone who won't protect a fertilized egg as if it's a human life is an insurrectionist? It's a non-starter, if anyone at all still has his marbles.

The other item on the list deserving of comment is the one regarding a candidate catching fire. That's the best normal possibility. I read a few leftist reviews of the Republican debate and found them worthless -- as one might expect from quarters where even lip-service to capitalism gets equated with Trumpist populism. Leftists are almost uniformly unable to tell the difference -- or admit that there is one -- between, say, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley.

While even the "good" candidates leave lots to be desired, any would be better than Trump, and a few in the race now could attract enough reasonable voters to win over Trump. I'd even go so far as to say I could see casting a vote for Haley with a clear conscience.

As I said earlier, much of this piece is heavily slanted left and reads like a protracted wish/projection of non-leftists as bomb-toting nuts. Perhaps that explains the following blind spot or deliberate omission:

• 12. No Labels gets ballot access in enough states for a run to become feasible.

As far as I can tell, each party fears No Labels because they imagine it will tip the election over to the other's candidate. Let them worry: If we do end up with Trump vs. Biden, it's the least they deserve for presenting us with such a dire "choice."

That organization will be holding a nominating convention in April:

"Our plan is to only run if we think we have a chance to win realistically," he said. "And look, we just finished a poll of 10,000 voters in the eight battleground states. And we give them a choice of Trump, Biden and a moderate independent third choice, and 63 percent say that they're open to a moderate Independent third choice."

This independent voter would have been among that 63 percent.

-- CAV