We're Going to Need a New Amendment

AP featured image
Jill Biden, wife of Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden introduces him during a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Saturday, Nov. 30, 2019. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Advertisement

As everyone has heard by now, Joe Biden — the fellow who is a week away from being named the Democratic nominee for President — has selected Senator Kamala Harris to be the person who is a week away from being named the Democratic nominee for Vice President. We know this because the Biden campaign released a picture showing that Mr. Biden had called Senator Harris while holding his iPhone upside-down.

Our managing editor, Streiff, covered The Left’s generally favorable reaction here.

There is of course unusual interest in the Vice Presidential nomination this year, because most people figure that Joe Biden will not make it to the end of a four-year term, should he be elected. Beyond increased interest in Senator Harris, this need not concern us because we now have the 25th Amendment which spells out in exacting detail how to handle any eventuality concerning Mr. Biden’s fitness for office.

But that only applies if Mr. Biden is elected President. Left unhandled is what the procedure is if Joe Biden escapes from the basement and they have to issue a Silver Alert on him before the election. Does the Vice Presidential nominee become the Presidential nominee if Joe Biden forgets who he is before November? What if he gets up there and says something like, “I’m Joe Biden and I’m running for United States Senate?” How do we handle that? The obvious answer might be that we name Kamala Harris the Presidential nominee and keep going. But there are more than a few people who might not go along with that, including all the Democratic hopefuls who won more delegates than she did. Not to belabor the point, this could be messy, especially for the Democrats.

Advertisement

However they solve that one, that was the easy case. Remember, neither one of these people is officially the Democratic nominee for anything. Yet. It may well happen that Joe Biden is determined to have crossed over into the Vegetable Kingdom by this time Friday. Now what? We’ve never had a vegetable run for President before, and it’s probably not a precedent we would want to set. But in such a case, why would Senator Harris necessarily become the Presidential nominee? And if she wouldn’t, why would whoever did get the nod be stuck with her as the Vice President? What if the Democrats wanted to stick Gavin Newsom in there? They couldn’t, because both he and Harris are from California (the founders wisely made it part of the Constitution that our top executive officers cannot both be Californians). You see how quickly this degrades into one of those “cluster” things.

Obviously what we need is another Amendment, modeled on the 25th, that spells out what to do if a major political party tries to slip a senile geezer into the White House with the aid of their friends in the press… and they get caught before he can win. We have to handle the case where the geezer has been named the official nominee of the party, and the case where the geezer [see what happens when you try too hard to avoid sex-designating pronouns? — ed.] is merely waiting to be anointed. We might also want to address the issues raised by having Geezers of Color, who may require special handling lest mobs of White college students smash and burn things on their behalf, because Justice.

Advertisement

I propose that we call this new thing The Biden Amendment. It wouldn’t actually be a Constitutional Amendment; the Constitution doesn’t get into political parties and how they choose nominees. No, this would just be an Amendment. The way I figure it, anything can be an Amendment if we say it is. If the concept works out, we could draft other Amendments to handle things like Mask Karens and people who drive around with their turn signals on, and other annoyances that our lawmakers have chosen to ignore. But we have to start somewhere, and senile geezers trying to sneak into the White House is as good a place as any.

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos