Looking Ahead To 2028

What happens if J.D. Vance is in the position to enforce his 2020 thinking in 2028?
The post Looking Ahead To 2028 appeared first on Above the Law.

J.D. Vance has said that, if he had been vice president in 2020, he would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives. Vance would have requested multiple slates of electors from the states and had Congress decide which slates were legitimate. Congress would thus have chosen the president.

Fair enough.

Now get out your crystal ball.

Donald Trump and Vance win the election in 2024.

They enact their promised policies: Ukraine falls because Trump has said that he’d quickly strike a deal with Putin, and Vance has said he doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine. The United States withdraws from NATO because Trump has believed for years that the United States shouldn’t have to pay for the defense of Europe. Trump enacts the 10% across-the-board tariffs that he’s promised, dramatically increasing inflation. Trump renews the corporate tax cuts, worsening the deficit.

People, of course, hate each other because that’s Trump stock in trade.  Remember: The Black Lives Matter riots and the January 6 riot all happened on Trump’s watch. Trump hasn’t exactly proven himself to be a unifier, and Vance is Trump’s rottweiler.

It’s 2028, and we’ve reached a point of American carnage.

The Republicans naturally choose J.D. Vance, the sitting vice president, to be their presidential nominee in 2028. Vance selects, say, Marco Rubio as his running mate.

There’s a predictable anti-incumbent emotion in 2028, so the Vance/Rubio ticket suffers a resounding defeat in the general election.

The electoral votes are presented to Congress. It’s Vance’s job, as the sitting vice president, to present those votes and to ask if there are any objections to those votes.

As the Republican nominee for president, Vance is the leader of the Republican Party. Plenty of folks in Congress are happy to assist him in his quest for the presidency. As the past few years — and, indeed, Vance himself — have proven, sycophancy has no limits.

Vance does what he thought would have been right in 2020 and throws the election into the hands of Congress.

Congress elects J.D. Vance as the president, to serve from 2028 to 2032.

What then?

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].