“when”
A reasonable and necessary point, but one that Pence just had to tag with a partisan chaser.
“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Pence said in Florida.
I guess it is needed for any Trump adjacent Republicans in the base to swallow — that one word “when” — appropriate in electioneering and campaign circumstances, stated by many a political loser (You could hear the guffows when McGovern started using it). In this setting where the very question of democratic legitimacy is being threatened — a little less appropriate. What happens when (if) the opposite happens?
This gets slippery and a little quarrelsome:
Did former President Donald Trump really clog White House toilets by flushing official documents? His aides certainly thought so, journalist Maggie Haberman reports in her forthcoming book. Trump denies the story. But the anecdote rings true — if only as a metaphor for his misbegotten presidency.
Metaphor Smetaphor. And, yes, I do recall commentary after an obnoxious act by President Trump that “this is the first time I thought the pee tape might just be true.”. Or it might not. But I do not want to deal with it as a symbol. So as so goes the flushing of records in the toilet — if he did it, great — throw it in the record of Trump misdeeds. If he did not or nothing provable, great — there is enough ” tearing of the records” to charge him in whatever venue we charge him. But we can not throw it on the pile and say “but it’s the perfect metaphor”.