Elizabeth Warren Fixin' To Run Against Mike Pence

She's got yer 25th Amendment right here, pal.

Elizabeth Warren doesn't have a lot of patience for the idea that anonymous hero conservatives are saving the country from Donald Trump, thank you very much. If these responsible heroes of the conservative resistance (who want to pass horrible laws without some shouty man making horrible laws look bad) are so all-fired big on carrying the day, she told CNN yesterday, then why not go ahead and do the hard work of behaving like the Constitution matters, instead of knocking everything off Trump's desk and trying to blame the dog, which in their case they have not got?

If senior administration officials think the President of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should invoke the 25th Amendment [...] The Constitution provides for a procedure whenever the Vice President and senior officials think the President can't do his job. It does not provide that senior officials go around the President -- take documents off his desk, write anonymous op-eds ... Every one of these officials have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It's time for them to do their job.

OK, all fine and well, Ms. Professor of Harvard Law, but haven't you considered that "the Constitution" is something to be kept in reserve? It's there so rightwingers can moan it's being trampled upon when Democrats do things like pass health care laws, or encourage kids to work hard in school, or when a black man is president and arrogantly does anything at all. Look, the Illustrated Constitutional History of the USA is quite clear about this:

Still, Warren continued with her inflammatory trolling, which had less to do with actually getting the 25th Amendment ball rolling than with calling out Republicans who love all the fuckery Trump's up to, but wish it could be done with less unseemly goosestepping:

What kind of a crisis do we have if senior officials believe that the President can't do his job and then refuse to follow the rules that have been laid down in the Constitution? [...]

They can't have it both ways. Either they think that the President is not capable of doing his job in, which case they follow the rules in the Constitution, or they feel that the President is capable of doing his job, in which case they follow what the President tells them to do.

And they deal with the consequences of trying to follow the big idiot's incoherent orders, of course -- which can include being screamed at for making Trump look incompetent.

We don't think Warren has any illusions about the likelihood of a real 25th Amendment challenge to Trump's legitimacy, since it was more designed to deal with a president who's medically incapacitated, not one whose skull cavity is full of rabid voles. With its requirement of a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress, it actually would require more unanimity than impeachment, and as a professor who worked with bankruptcy law, Warren sees the numbers pretty clearly.

Then again, as a lever to call Republicans to account, it's not a bad way of telling them to stop pretending they're anything but craven Trumpflunkies.

[ CNN / Bloomberg ]

You like us! You really LIKE us! Now FUND us!