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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of July 6
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So mostly it's a cynical assumption that he's brain dead and being kept "alive" to avoid a special election. It's mostly memeing about how it would just track given his record of obstruction and treatment of RBG in particular. "It's how he'd want to go" has been a common joke. But also, I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised. The fake sounding "I had a 20 minute phone call..." was unconvincing especially since no one has seemed to actually hear from him. So personally, I wouldn't be shocked if he's in fact fully physically incapacitated as well as mentally.
If he dies on or after August 3rd, the seat remains vacant until the November election. Thomas Massie is an anti-trump Republican and he would likely do very well in a special election due to name recognition and the GOP doesn't want him in office. So it's in the Maga interest for him not to be dead yet.
There's no mechanism for "declaring" the seat vacant prior to his death. Which is sort of the issue really, in that the governor can't press the issue particularly.
Did I answer everything?
Incapacitate but doesn't resign? The Constitution didn't actually provide for it. They could be removed by a 2/3 Senate vote (regardless of capacity)
The specifics of replacement whether by death, resignation or expulsion are state by state for the Senate- some the governor appoints a replacement, some have a special election, some let both happen and 100% by election for the House (because that's in the constitution)
Filling vacancies in the U.S. Senate - Ballotpedia
Filling vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives - Ballotpedia
I don't think they did think about people in long term comas, while I suspect they would have resigned via family or something, things also moved slower (especially travel) and it wouldn't have been as uncommon to be out of touch for longer times back in the late 1700s. So maybe they also thought it would work itself out (or they could be expelled if needed ). But idk if this was touched on by the FF at all in historical documents.
And please, dunk away ( I know you're not). It's a big fucking mess and the system is no longer functioning well - though it's grinding to a halt the way that I think they would have intended rather than collapsing entirely. Idk we were supposed to update this stupid constitution more often than we did and here we are.
The U.S. constitution is pretty early as far as written constitutions and democracy go. The founders didn’t have a 100% idea of where things would go. One thing they did believe was that Congress would be far more insular and combative toward the president. They didn’t anticipate the widespread rise of political parties and factionalization of Congress such that they and the president could be in alignment.
Other folks have answered but it's just also worth noting that Senators were not originally elected by the people but selected by the state legislature, so there was I think also the intent that the states wouldn't allow such a thing and that the Senate, being the "grown ups" who had to appease their state, and who weren't elected by the common folk, wouldn't allow the current state of affairs to occur.
And maybe they were right, but we changed that over the years so here we are.
It's actually pretty uncommon for the current situation, where both parties really cap out at ~52-53% of congressional control, and swap places every other cycle, to occur in US politics.
As Samuel Lubell stated, the US traditionally has a sun party and a moon party - it was very common for one political party to dominate decades at a time.
Democrats, for example, held power from 1955 all the way to 1981. The Republicans did not have control of the senate that ENTIRE time. 26 years of a Democrat majority in senate, half of which was a supermajority.
Seriously, take a look at Congressional control by year.
The fact that a supermajority is unthinkable is really only something that happened after ~2010 or so. So pretty recent. Obama had a supermajority trifecta on his first election victory!
There was a Representative a few years ago whose family put into a memory care home. No announcement, but after a few months a reporter tracked her down. She kept pulling her paycheck while missing all the remaining votes in her term.
I think the most common outcome of disability is they don't run for reelection, so all their votes are just missed for however much is left of their term. But if they have an established staff and the party considers the seat important, even clearly mentally toast reps or senators will have basically shadow campaigns run for them, keep winning elections purely off name recognition, and staff coach them how to vote whatever is the party line. From the Wikipedia article on Strom Thurmand (senator 1954-2003) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond#Health :
Probably because it's an outrage that we don't expect more from our representatives, who really represent powerful lobbyists and donors instead of the people who elect them.
Here's a humor post from The Atlantic that points out the situation:
If Other Jobs Were Like a U.S. Senator’s - The Atlantic
New York Times reporters are subpoenaed after Air Force One stories, raising press freedom concerns