For the Record: Fan Fiction

 Relief crew here, hi folks!

Illustration via Haley Zapal.

Weird debate on the platform formerly known as Twitter, now going by the glyph I pronounce as "My X" ("I'm still living with my X..."), taking off from Steve's post and comments yesterday on the issue of whether to use the 14th Amendment's Disqualification of Public Office provision to knock Trump's name off the ballot:

Not nationally. Maybe a swing state or two with a slim Democratic majority in the state congress and governor can prevent a possible electoral college majority.

— Bill Hearn (@time_loves) August 4, 2023

Looked to me like he hadn't bothered to read the post, which wasn't about the procedural details. But for some reason he had read a sentence from my comment ("Unless he's actually been convicted it isn't even constitutional"):

He denies that he's participated in insurrection, and indeed he hasn't been charged with it. Who gets to decide whether he's done it or not? Can't be done without a trial. pic.twitter.com/1s4Yhxg4Xb

— Yas We Can (@Yastreblyansky) August 4, 2023

You don't seem to understand that people in 1866 knew that a civil war had taken place, and who had worn which uniforms.

That's why the text doesn't tell us how to handle an ambiguous insurrection like that of 2021, because they had no idea such a thing could happen.

— Yas We Can (@Yastreblyansky) August 4, 2023

I never anticipated that state election authorities would intervene. I envision an effort by state congress and then state courts as a possible path.

— Bill Hearn (@time_loves) August 4, 2023

BTW states don't have "congresses".

State authorities are where the decision is taken whether the candidate is qualified or not. There's no precedent where the lege adds previously untried qualifications in the middle of a campaign. Also banning a candidate by name would be an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

— Yas We Can (@Yastreblyansky) August 4, 2023

I imagine a resolution keeping his name off the ballot. I do understand it stands a snowball chance in hell of being upheld. It would be more chaff thrown up taking up lawyers time and trumps money which isn't a bad thing in my thinking.

— Bill Hearn (@time_loves) August 4, 2023

At this point I finally realized what I was dealing with was fan fiction. He wasn't actually interested in the question of how the 14th Amendment works, he was interested in pushing the story around into alternative realities. But I think the argument itself is kind of interesting, as clarifying how the amendment was intended in the first place and how weird it would be to try applying it now, and I didn't want it to go to waste.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.