Scary Thought: Could We See a Biden-Obama Ticket in 2024? The President of the D.C. Bar Thinks It’s Possible
While the Mockingbird Media continues to gaslight the American public about the merits of Biden’s presidency, his chances of re-election would then seem to hinge on two key issues: Biden’s age and his wildly unpopular Vice President.
The post Scary Thought: Could We See a Biden-Obama Ticket in 2024? The President of the D.C. Bar Thinks It’s Possible appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
While the Mockingbird Media continues to gaslight the American public about the merits of Biden’s presidency, his chances of re-election would then seem to hinge on two key issues: Biden’s age and his wildly unpopular Vice President.
Joe Biden’s poll numbers moving into 2024 election season are bad. Really bad. But even worse than his are those of his Vice President, Kamala Harris. The first well-known Democrat to drop out of the 2020 primaries after an atrocious reception in 2020, Harris is consistently polling below Biden, despite his constant hiccups reading a teleprompter, his fascination with “MAGA extremists”, and his recent snafu at the US Air Force Academy commencement. No, the “trip and fall” at the ceremony was not the worst part, as can be seen here in this comically-dubbed over clip:
In all seriousness…
An interesting, and terrifying, legal theory has been proposed by Philip Allen Lacovara, a former Deputy Solicitor General of the US, counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor, and the president of the D.C. Bar. The theory revolves around former two-term president Barack Obama being eligible to serve Vice President to Joe Biden in a 2024 term.
Writing for the centrist online publication The Messenger, Lacovara wrote the following:
At first blush, the 22nd Amendment might be thought to preclude Obama from being on the 2024 ticket. That amendment provides: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice …” (emphasis added). While Obama is precluded from ever running again for election as president, the amendment does not prohibit him from running for any other office, including vice-president.
Nor does the last sentence of the 12th Amendment disqualify him. It stipulates that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States” (emphasis added). For several reasons, this requirement does not expand Obama’s inability under the 22nd Amendment to run for election as president.
The 12th Amendment regulates the Electoral College and defines the requirements to be eligible to run for the Presidency. It defines the required nationality (being a natural born citizen), the age (at least 35), and requires at least 14 years of residency within the United States. Lacovara opines that the 22nd Amendment only stops a President from being “elected” to a third term.
If such a Democratic pipe dream were to come to fruition, it would certainly require the US Supreme Court to interpret the 22nd Amendment and whether it was meant to stop someone from holding the Office for more than two terms, or to, quite literally, stop them from running for, and being “elected” to, the Office directly.
Lacovara cites John Quincy Adams serving in Congress in 1830, after he left the White House, saying “Nothing in the Constitution would prevent such a senior statesman from being selected as Speaker of the House (alluding to his eligibility as 2nd in line to the succession to the Presidency behind the Vice President). The problem with this reference is that in 1830, the 22nd Amendment didn’t exist and the “two term limit” was just an unwritten precedent set by George Washington who vacated the Presidency after his second term.
Lacovara also cites another example:
In the most apt precedent, involving the attempt by the House of Representatives to refuse to seat a controversial New York congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, the Supreme Court ruled that “the House could exclude him only if it found he failed to meet the standing requirements of age, citizenship, and residence contained in Art. I, § 2, of the Constitution.” As discussed above, those are precisely the only three types of qualification that the Constitution establishes for the presidency and vice presidency.
The issue here would be the implied term limits set for the President, while no term limits, unfortunately, exist for Congress.
While this seems like a long-shot, to see Obama step up to try and carry the Biden administration to a 2024 win, the decision would ultimately reside in the conservative-leaning US Supreme Court to interpret whether or not the 22nd Amendment implies that a person can only hold the Office of the President for two terms. And the fact the president of the D.C. Bar is opining about this in an online publication suggests others may be thinking it as well. It’s also worth mentioning the Washington Post wrote about this very situation in 2015.
Whether or not the Biden administration would be willing to rest it’s fate squarely on a conservative Supreme Court will need thorough consideration, because failing at the Court with such a desperate move would suggest turmoil and a lack of confidence in the administration as it sits and all but ensure utter defeat in 2024.
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