I don't want Mike Pence as President!

[Chasstev365]

But there would be a HUGE upside!

Pence will not have the looney cult worship that the Deplorables have for Trump and I don't think Pence has the unstable, irrational, implusive, anger of Donald Trump. No one is safe with Benedict Donald as the Commander in Chief, or in charge of the CIA and FBI.

I loathe Mike Pence and his ilk, but we are simply in deep peril with Trump as president.

[elleng]

1. Yes but

You're right, no looney tunes. But with Pence's credibility with repug ptb, and radical right wing points of view, likelihood for success, policy-wise, increases significantly. However, no nuclear war!

[drmeow]

7. My concerns exactly

Trump has people paying attention and fighting. I'm worried that people will think "well, we got rid of Trump" and back off whereupon McConnell and Pence will screw us silly. Part of me feels like we need to hold out until the midterms and fight like hell to take back Congress. Then Pence doesn't have as much power.

[kcr]

15. I hear you. It's like we've been put in this crazy place where we have to gamble our future.

I think Trump is too dangerous, honestly, but ungh, Pence.

[pnwmom]

2. The upside for me is that Pence has no national following. DT's people

will be furious as hell if something happens to him; and they won't feel compensated by Pence.

[2naSalit]

3. Well here's the thing...

if these recent claims are true (and the guy who put it together is now on the run) regarding the collusion, they indicate that the higher ups in the campaign KNEW about it, including some FBI HRC haters. That means they are all guilty of collusion, sedition and treason... all the way down through Pence, Ryan, Priebus... none of them should escape the long arm of the law on this if all these. or even some, are true. We are in uncharted waters and I think we need to find a course which will bring us to safe harbor politically (I mean we the people) and thta may be demanding a new election with a short campaign. Our democracy will depend on it and it will end up being the only fair solution.

[Chasstev365]

5. VERY good points!

[Jim Lane]

11. There is ZERO chance of a new election

There's no mechanism for a new election. Under the Constitution, if Trump leaves office, then Pence becomes President. That's why we have a Vice President (well, along with breaking ties in the Senate).

Consider the analogy of Watergate. The President had been caught dead to rights committing a felony. His impeachment and conviction were inevitable; he forestalled that outcome only by resigning. Was there a new election? No, there was not. The Vice President became President. And that was a Vice President (Ford) who, because of Agnew's criminality, had been a replacement. At least Pence has faced the national electorate, even if only in the second slot.

[2naSalit]

16. There is no mechanism in the Constitution

and I agree with that, however I think you missed the point in my comment where I am saying that there also is no mechanism in the Constitution for what I think we are bout to face. This will be a Constitutional crisis in that I think the level of complicity among the Republicans is rather vast... Here's the list of characters whom I think probably knew enough about the criminal activity and should be criminally charged:

PE, VPE, Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the US Senate, several other Senators and House members along with the RNC chair and folks over at the Heritage Foundation. I am pretty sure some of these characters even helped promote this opportunity when the idea was being formulated. And then there is the money thing too so.


Should this dearth of information indicating collusion and sedition, most likely treason turn out to be true and provable beyond a reasonable doubt, what then?

We as a nation have to face this new thing and do the best we can to take legal and remedial action which is not outlined or specific in our Constitution. And as has been done in the past, we will have to decide what the path to restoring our democracy will be. I think the founding fathers knew they were not prophets and they gave us enough parameters to work within in order to figure it out for ourselves, and the Constitution is not the eternally final word on how to go forward, it does tell us how to go about it with the intent of retaining a democracy.

This is uncharted territory that we find ourselves in this day, it requires a lot of contemplation and soul-searching as a nation, a culture and as a species and we had better get it right and act swiftly with determination because this will be our last chance at long term survival on this planet in physical form.

[JI7]

4. the one thing people thought was better with Trump was he would be better on social issues

but i don't see any indication of this. and he needs to keep them happy to continue to get some support .

this is why i would prefer pence be president. we could actually debate the issues from there.

[TygrBright]

6. Pence has an older, loonier, creepier cult behind him.

Millenialist "Christians" who are hoping for the nuclear war that will usher in the "End Times" when they'll be magically raptured up to heaven where they can watch us sinners left on earth die in many varieties of horrible agony.

NO THANKS.

shudderingly,
Bright

[doc03]

8. As much as I don't like him I would rather have him in the Whitehouse than

than a psychopath.

[jg10003]

9. I agree, Pence is a right-wing religious ideologue, but at least he is not a wannabe strongman.

Trump is an existential threat to the republic. Pence merely has bad policy ideas. Trump wants to be the American version of Putin. Pence is just very conservative. The Republic can survive a President Pence. If Pence is president then we can elect Elizabeth Warren in 4 years and get the country back on track. But the constitutional republic that has endured for 228 years may not survive President Trump.

[Meldread]

10. I disagree. I want Donald Trump politically crippled, so he is unable to do anything.

The best outcome that we can hope for is that Donald Trump is completely politically crippled and becomes toxic for Republicans. However, they would be afraid to impeach him, and he would refuse to step down. At the same time, it becomes impossible for them to politically work with him. Trump may have some degree of scandal resistance, but the other Republicans do not. This was one of the weaknesses of Democrats during the campaign--they tried to paint Donald Trump as an anomaly. Instead, we should be trying to tie Trump around the neck of every Republican, and strangle them to death with their association with him.

Pence is more dangerous in the sense that he is likely to be much more successful in getting what he wants done through the Republican House and Senate. He is much more difficult to hate because he has that deceptive "aw-shucks" Mid-western false personality. This helps conceal his utter vile nature as a human being. Also, as a gay man, we would immediately become one of his first targets. Donald Trump is erratic and unpredictable, even for his allies and subserviates. This can work to our advantage. Mike Pence is the polar opposite.

The big fear dealing with Donald Trump isn't so much the domestic side of things, as he is likely to do a lot in self-sabotage, it's his foreign policy. ...and the fear that this crazy fucker might actually use nukes at some point. After all, according to him, why do we have them, if we can't use them?

[StubbornThings]

12. Trump needs to stay President.

He will be much easier to beat in 2 and 4 years than Pence.

And, I think we are in deep peril with either of them. I really don't think one will be better than the other.

[dembotoz]

13. perhaps the only one in the swamp worse than traitor trump

[hollowdweller]

14. Pence would be worse

Trump has at least talked about the pharmaceutical companies ripping people off.

He's said the working class has been falling behind.

He's came out against US workers getting screwed by bad trade deals.

These are all things I'd like to see something done about.

Pence is pretty much a straight up business suck up republican.

I think Trump is bad due to his temper and lack of experience.

However Pence would be much worse for US working class and more effective at passing truly conservative stuff.

[ProfessorGAC]

17. As An Appointed President?

He would be more effective when the entire administration would be in disarray in the event of impeachment or resignation?

Why do you think an honorable guy like Gerald Ford was such a laughingstock? Nobody took his presidency seriously because he inherited the job from a crook.

Same thing here.

[MoonRiver]

18. Hard to rec, cause I really don't know which one is worse. But I definitely hear you.