Could there be a 75-day presidency?
My friend asked me a question. Did I think the Democrats will remove Biden if Harris loses the election? Yes.
Do I think the leading Democrats would jump at the chance to score so many firsts, even if it means depriving some future woman, Asian, Indian, or female of African descent who campaigned for and won the presidency? These grasping, corrupt, lying leftists? Yes.
November 5, 2024, through January 1, 2025, is 75 days. What might “President Harris” accomplish? First and most obviously, moving the Bidens out and her family in. There’s no time to redecorate as she did as Vice President, although there might be time to change the stationery.
The first order of real business would be for Harris to nominate her Vice President. Would it be Tim Walz? Would she opt out of that awkward relationship with a man about whom questions regarding his eligibility for a security clearance have been raised? Her VP pick would need a majority vote from both the House and the Senate. Would Speaker Johnson require hearings if the nominee was one of today’s skeezy Dem leaders?
Image by AI.
The Senate is in session for nine days in November and 15 days in December; the House for eight and 12, respectively. Not a whole lot of time. If the Vice President’s position is vacant, the President Pro Tempore, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), takes over, but without the power to break a tie. Replacing the VP could get really spicy, especially if the conservatives find their spines and gonads. The 119th Congress takes office on January 3, 2025.
Would Harris keep Biden’s Cabinet and other appointees on board? Whether they would agree to work for her might be a more pertinent question. Most of the highest-level appointees require Senate confirmation, except for the Chief of Staff.
Would Harris keep on the current White House staff? She has churned through multiple versions of campaign staff and office staff over the past 5 years. During her campaign, it’s rumored that she may not have managed to retain the respect and loyalty of Joe Biden’s people. Would she hang on to anyone?
What about Harris’s truncated first hundred days? At the legislative level, she’s promised that, regarding the economy, she’ll make tax cuts and add child tax credits, along with stopping price gouging for the cost of groceries. On immigration, she promises to increase the number of border patrol agents, get a border security act passed, and pave a pathway to citizenship for all these illegal aliens. She says she’ll sign a bill that would restore the provisions of Roe v. Wade. She wants to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, though she has defined neither. She wants to require a universal background check for all gun purchases.
Without Congress’s cooperation, Kamala will accomplish nothing on her list. The Senate is divided, and I would expect every Republican to show up every day to ensure that the travesty of Harris becoming 47 for 75 days is as insignificant as possible. Nothing they propose would benefit America or Americans.
Harris would be left to issue executive orders, which would be challenged immediately in court. Conservatives continue to try to quash the Chevron Doctrine, and we’re slowly getting there. That’s the legal fiction that agencies know best how to interpret and augment the work of Congress, something Congress needs to address with finality. She knows that any of her E.O.s would be undone on January 20.
What Harris would have is a little leftover spending authority that’s been granted to the president in some of these omnibus national security bills, mostly discretionary funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. She would have a few weeks to direct the remaining FY-2024 appropriations and the limited FY-2025 funding available under the Continuing Resolution that expires on December 20, 2024.
Do you think the 118th is going to pass anything on her behalf? Don’t spend all of your Christmas money just yet.
Harris certainly won’t bother to work on the FY-2025 or FY-2026 budgets, as the House will ignore whatever she does. She’ll be dismissed by the larger international community.
She could make her case, speak to the masses...no, what am I thinking? Without a functioning teleprompter, the connection between her brain and her speech and gestures breaks down in seconds. In effect, she would be the lamest of lame ducks ever to occupy the First Residence. But we and our children would pay for such narcissism. A former President Harris would receive a pension, an office and staff, and Secret Service protection for the rest of her life.
Kamala Harris would go down in history with inconsequential firsts. Historians would fuss over whether she or William Harrison (31 days in 1841) was the least effective U.S. president in history. What a legacy!
Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant who X-tweets at oh_yeahMee.