The Trump-Vance 25th Amendment switcheroo
Donald Trump’s babysitters are rarely bothering to send him to swing states anymore for fear he’ll say something senile and cost himself votes, and in fact this weekend they parked him at a football game in a red state where he didn’t have to do any speaking. It’s increasingly obvious that Trump is non-viable as a candidate and that his own people don’t know what to do about it.
It’s obvious what’s happening here. Trump is completely washed up. He no longer functions. His people are hoping they can drag Trump’s political carcass across the finish line and then have JD Vance either officially or unofficially calling the shots. But hope is only a strategy when it’s contagious and motivates your supporters to go get you more votes. Sitting there hoping your losing candidate somehow magically wins? Not a strategy.
Still, the more non-viable Trump becomes, the more loudly the internet is insisting that this is all part of the far right’s secret evil genius master plan. “They’re parking Trump at red state football games so that he can win and then they can use the 25th Amendment to replace him with Vance! Voila! It’s a master plan!” Except it’s not.
Such a strategy would still require Trump to win the election. And that’s not going to happen by putting Trump in Alabama. For Trump to win and then be replaced by Vance, Trump would have to be out there campaigning and winning enough additional votes to make up his current deficit. And that’s not happening.
“But they’re parking Trump in Alabama because they know they’ve already got the election rigged for him!” No. That’s not a thing either. First of all, nothing is ever that magically simplistic. If the far right could just decide to successfully rig an election, wouldn’t they have handed it to Trump in 2020? These things are never as kindergarten-level simplistic as the internet always makes them out to be.
Also, even if the far right did already somehow have this election in the bag, they would still have Trump and Vance out there campaigning as strategically as possible, so that when they suspiciously won, they could say “Well look, we had our candidates in all the right places!” Yet they’re not doing that. They’ve got Trump in Alabama. At one point this weekend Vance was wandering a parking lot looking for people to talk to after a sandwich shop turned him away. These aren’t smooth criminals covering for a secret evil genius master plan. They’re bumbling morons who have no plan.
“But this is all a distraction!” Again, no. How would willful incompetence on the campaign trail distract anyone from some secret evil genius master plan to rig the election? That doesn’t even make sense.
Yet there are tons of political analysts on TV and Twitter who have built their entire careers around trying to look smart by claiming to see a secret evil genius master plan in action when in reality there obviously, obviously, obviously, obviously, obviously is no plan. We hear this kind of contrarian nonsense all day every day, from so many talking heads, that it starts to “sound true” even though it’s complete nonsense.
In the real world, things are what they obviously are. Trump, Vance, and their entire operation are a bunch of inept bumbling morons who have no idea what they’re doing and are losing because they’re terrible at this. These are not the kind of people who have a secret evil genius master plan, or any sort of plan. They just suck at this. All of it. There is no plan. They’re just losing.
As I’m fond of pointing out, presidential elections have a way of remaining semi-competitive even when they’re not competitive. So we have to keep working at this right up until the final day. But “working at this” doesn’t mean sitting around trying to decipher some kind of nonexistent secret evil genius master plan that the other side is supposedly cooking up. Working at this means volunteering, donating, knocking on doors, phone banking, sending postcards, and registering people to vote – the things that always make the difference in an election. So let’s go win this!
