Thursday, October 16, 2014

posted 10/16/2014 11:40:00 AM by Daniel   0 comments

November Surprise: Obama to issue Emergency Executive Order postponing elections due to Ebola threat!

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste.  And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." -- Rahm Emanuel

Ebola is spreading in the United States, and the Ebola panic is spreading even faster.  The stock market is sinking, ISIL is continuing to chop off heads, Obamacare insurance rates are rising, the economy still sucks, Obama’s poll ratings are at new lows, and Democrats are circling the political firing squad as we approach a mid-term election which will likely turn the Senate over to the Republicans.  If trends continue, the final two years of Obama’s Presidency will be a total shambles, and history will paint him as one of the worst Presidents ever.  What to do?

During the first three days of November, Obama could invoke his power as Commander in Chief to respond to a foreign invasion (the Ebola virus) to prevent its spread among crowds of citizens congregating at polling places.  He’d issue an Emergency Executive Order banning in-person voting until the Ebola plague is contained, and requiring that states postpone their elections until they can institute mail-ballot-only voting procedures (with the exception of Colorado, which already dictates exclusively mail voting).

Even if courts quickly enjoined this action, and many states defied it and tried to proceed with their normal elections on November 4^th, the effect would be to create enormous confusion and discourage millions of people from voting.  Democrats would consequently declare any election results to be illegitimate.  Harry Reid would use his existing majority to refuse to seat newly-elected Republican Senators until their states held “valid” elections under the mail-ballot-only rules.  Deep blue states such as California and Massachusetts would quickly proceed with mail-only elections to demonstrate that they were reasonable and feasible.  The crisis would drag on for months, with the country sharply divided over whether this was an unconstitutional coup or a necessary and appropriate action by a decisive Commander in Chief.

The House could try impeaching Obama but there’d be insufficient Senate votes to remove him from office.  He could then ignore Congress and its supposedly non-elected members and issue whatever executive decrees to run the country that he desired, pending new elections.  The final resolution of this Constitutional crisis would be unpredictable, but from Obama’s viewpoint it would at least have a chance of altering the anticipated Republican takeover of the Senate and their trashing of his agenda.  It would accelerate the adoption of mail-ballot-only voting, which might benefit Democrats in the future.  And it would transform Obama’s legacy, turning him into a historically-pivotal President.