Talking About Politics: Will Americans ask Trump to be a candidate for a third mandate even if it violates the Constitution?

-
Photo Credit: NBC
Will Americans ask Trump to be a candidate for a third mandate even if it violates the constitution?
Seriously?
If by “Americans” you mean all U.S. citizens of legal age to vote and who actually participate in local, state, and nation-wide elections, of course not.
If by “Americans” you mean Trump supporters, it greatly depends on how educated, ethical, and well-informed they are.
I’m pretty sure that many Republicans would not violate the 22nd Amendment, the Constitutionally mandated two-term limit on Presidents that their own party introduced in Congress in 1947 and became the law of the land on February 27, 1951. After all, one of the alleged values that conservatives hold dear is the constitutionality of laws and upholding them, so it would be hypocritical (to say the least) if all of a sudden the vast majority of the GOP were to tear up the Constitution in order to, in effect, make Donald J. Trump President-for-life.
I’m also certain that there is a fanatical, almost cult-like subgroup of self-labeled conservatives who are, at their core, believers in authoritarianism and would love it if the GOP betrayed its own tenets and scrapped the 22nd Amendment. Trumpism is, in essence, a cult of personality that is similar to that of Josef Stalin in the former Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler in Nazi-era Germany. As a result, some of his loudest and less-educated followers probably would not mind if Trump somehow did become President-for-life with extra-constitutional powers, so long as he “sticks it to the libs” and “hurts the right people.”
As for the rest of us, the answer is a resounding “No.” Millions of Americans, including me, did not vote for Trump in 2016, and we will not vote for him again in 2020. So why would we want to vote for him again in 2024, assuming that he wins re-election?
Additionally, the very way that this question is framed is fundamentally flawed. Donald J. Trump did not win by a mandate. He won a very narrow victory, and only because he got more votes via the Electoral College than he did at the voting booth,
As Indigo Montoya says about Vizzini’s overuse of the word “inconceivable” in the movie The Princess Bride:
“You keep using that word. I don’t think you know what it really means.”
Per Merriam-Webster:
mandate
noun
man·​date | \ ˈman-ˌdāt \
Definition of mandate
(Entry 1 of 2)
1: an authoritative command especially : a formal order from a superior courtor official to an inferior one
2: an authorization to act given to a representative: accepted the mandate of the people
3a: an order or commission granted by the League of Nations to a member nation for the establishment of a responsible government over a former German colony or other conquered territory
b: a mandated territory
A narrow victory via the Electoral College does not a mandate make.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's 'It'?

-
Image
How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's It ? It  has been adapted twice for filmed audio-visual media. The first filmed version of  It was a TV limited series; the second was a duology of theatrically-released movies.  The first adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop of a novel was a 1990 adaptation made as a two-part ABC miniseries for television. Among the cast members: Tim Reid, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, John Ritter, and Richard Thomas. The miniseries also featured Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. Adapted for television by director Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen (who also adapted King’s  Carrie  for director Brian De Palma in 1976),  It  was okay but a watered-down take on the scary novel about a group of friends who must face off against a monstrous entity known as “It” twice. Once as kids in 1960, then again as adults in 1990. (Like  11,22.63,  the TV version of It avoids the year ...
Read more

Talking About 'Band of Brothers' (HBO Miniseries): Why were there no black soldiers in the Band of Brothers TV miniseries?

-
Image
Band of Brothers,  sadly, reflects one of the sad realities of American society in the 1940s - racial segregation in the armed forces. Although there  were  a few all-Negro (as blacks were referred to in those days) units in the U.S. Army and the Army Air Forces that served with distinction in the European Theater of Operations, most black servicemen were assigned to non-combat units in Supply of Services and other support forces. Most of these soldiers were truck drivers, anti-aircraft gunners, barrage balloon handlers, engineers, stevedores, clerks, cooks, corpsmen, and so on. Only late in the war (fall of 1944 and winter/spring 1945) did large numbers of black infantrymen see combat against German forces, and even then they served in all-black units commanded by white officers. © 2001 Home Box Office, Dreamworks SKG, and Play-Tone Pictures The 101st Airborne Division was an all-American unit made up of individuals from many different groups - Easy Company’...
Read more

'The Boy in Striped Pajamas' movie review

-
Image
(C) 2008 Miramax, Heyday Films, BBC Films Writer-director Mark Herman’s 2008 film “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” is a faithful but (necessarily) condensed adaptation of John Boyne’s 2007 novel about a German boy, Bruno (Asa Butterfield), who befriends Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), an eight-year-old inmate in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.  Like Boyne’s novel, the film is not a definitive history of the Holocaust. It’s not as graphic or historically accurate as Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic “Schindler’s List,” nor was it intended to be. (Indeed, Herman says in the behind-the-scenes featurette “Friendship Beyond the Fence” that he doesn’t consider “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” to be a “Holocaust film.”) Set in the early 1940s at the height of Nazi Germany’s power, the film follows Bruno on a journey that takes him and his family from Berlin to German-occupied Poland. His father Ralf (David Thewlis) is a newly-promoted SS officer with a new posting: commandant...
Read more