DEMOCRATS SHOULD TRY TO FORCE A FLOOR VOTE ON THAT "THREE TERMS FOR TRUMP" CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

Should we be alarmed at this?

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would allow President Trump to serve a third term in the White House....

Ogles proposed an amendment Thursday that says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

(This would allow a president to run for a third term after winning two non-consecutive terms, but not allow a president to run for a third term who won two consecutive terms, a provision clearly added in order to prevent Barack Obama from taking advantage of it.)

Molly Jong-Fast is alarmed:

You guys, this is not great

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— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 6:55 PM

I'm not alarmed. I think Democrats should troll Ogles and the GOP right back, by demanding a floor vote on the bill.

Why? Because it can't pass:

It would need a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress and be ratified by 38 states to be added to the Constitution.

That's 290 votes in the House. There are 218 Republicans in the House right now. So it will fail miserably. And if it somehow went to the Senate, it would need 67 votes. There are only 53 Republicans in the Senate. Not even a defection by John Fetterman could put this over the top.

And if it were somehow to pass both houses of Congress, the number of states whose legislatures would reject it is much greater than 12. Democrats control the legislatures of 18 states: five of the six New England states (not New Hampshire), as well as New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Illinois, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, the three West Coast states, and Hawaii.

The Ogles bill was referred to the House Judiciary Committee. I propose that Democrats start planning now to circulate a discharge petition to force a floor vote:

After a bill has been introduced and referred to a standing committee for 30 days, a member of the House can file a motion to have the bill discharged, or released, from consideration by the committee. In order to do this, a majority of the House (218 voting members, not delegates) must sign the petition. Once a discharge petition reaches 218 members, after several legislative days, the House considers the motion to discharge the legislation and takes a vote after 20 minutes of debate. If the vote passes (by all those who signed the petition in the first place), then the House will take up the measure.

Democrats should have some discipline: all 215 of them should sign the petition. Maybe Ogles and two other Trump-crazed Republicans (Greene? Boebert?) will sign it too.

It's more likely that they won't, and then Democrats can troll them: Hey, we thought you Republicans loved Trump! This is a bill making it possible for him to run for a third term! Why don't you want to bring it to the floor?

They won't because they don't want it to fail -- and it will fail unless 72 Democrats vote for it. (To state the obvious, Democrats should support the discharge petition but oppose the bill.)

It's a small thing, and it might not have any impact, but why not try it? At least try to have some fun reminding Republicans that the rest of America doesn't love their orange god as much as they do, and therefore no one outside their party wants Trump to be eligible to run again.