I'm opposed to the idea that being charged with a crime should disqualify someone from office. Simply put, it incentivises putting people in jail for political reasons.

No, Trump should be disqualified for treason and insurrection. Of course, that's not happening either.

Being a convicted felon, can he even vote for himself now? I'm pretty sure Florida doesn't allow felons to vote.

Generally, because of his criminal conviction and his intention to run for office, there's a lot of interesting legal questions that will make for new law when we litigate them.

I do like your argument, unfortunately I'm pretty sure most courts will disagree. It's two fold: first of all if you make felons unable to run, you incentivize people to prosecute someone when they wanna run for office. Secondly, this form is pretty straightforward with what possession or acquisition of firearms means. There is not enough wiggle room to stretch that definition to fit the a guy in his role as president being commander in chief over the military. I think no reasonable court would greenlight that argument.

But in general there's gonna be very interesting implications.

Republican congressmen and women and Republican Senators will just say it's a hoax trial and a corrupt justice system. It's not a sane world right now.

Calvinist Predestination stans when something they don't like happens.

If he were a traditional candidate, the answer is that the party needs to have a candidate who not only can win, but also supports candidates for lower level elections. A traditional candidate would step aside and nominate someone to take their place. Not sure if the GOP convention rules allow it, but they could possibly even direct their delegates to go towards someone else.

Since Trump is a narcissist who doesn't even get why downstream elections are important for building a political base of support, he'll of course ignore this.

He can’t pardon himself if he wins

Hey now, there's a 5% section of people who just don't give a shit (yet still answer polls for some reason).

They’d pick someone else, probably whoever was the #2 candidate or the VP pick (with them choosing a new VP, since the election hasn’t happened yet). The electoral college can pick whoever it wants, so as long as the party has consensus I don’t see it being a huge deal.

Nikki Haley stood down her campaign but didn't actually conceed. she's still technically in the running for president. so i imagine it would default to her

A lot of it depends on timing.

There's a really good fictional take from before Bush/Gore, called "The People's Choice" by Jeff Greenfield of all people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Choice_(novel)

Candidate wins the election, but dies before the electoral college votes.

So... the VP guy wins? Yeah, no. He wasn't the candidate and can't assume the role of President because he was never affirmed as Vice President.

So... the other candidate wins? Yeah, no. They didn't get enough electoral college votes to be President.

So it all comes down to faithful and faithless electors.

Independents will be so important

Yeah that would be weird to see Trump forced into awkward rambling doublespeak that doesn’t make sense if you listen to the words.

XD

Man, you’re right. And here I was thinking “wow, 15% is more than I expected.” What a sad realization that is.

When your famous, they just let you do it

I'm more obsessed with the idea of being a republican this long, and only now changing your mind about 45. The list of things about him which are twice as bad alone is stultifying.

Independents are people who don’t identify as democrats or republicans.

Many independents are more progressive than mainstream dems. Some aren’t. But we’re a spectrum and it’s stupid to treat us as cohesive.

Oh, all the time when it involves things that aren't centered around him. In those cases he will usually take on the opinion of the last person that he spoke to (that knew how to butter him up first)..