A great deal of things took place. Here are a few of the important things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Registerfor the e-mail variation
Is West Virginia Gon na Secede If Kamala Harris Wins?
It’s been our editorial policy for a long time not to overstate legislation at the state level that has actually simply been presented. Lots if not numerous whacky and severe things are proposed each year in state legislatures however have no genuine possibility of ever passing. Often they total up to little bit more than gussied up news release. Every when in a while something comes along that is so representative of the political minute that it’s relevant in its own right, even if it never ever goes anywhere.
Take, for example, the resolution that 4 GOP legislators presented Sunday in the unique session in West Virginia. It’s as severe as anything I’ve seen in the last couple of years. The proposed resolution, inter aliacontacts West Virginia not to “acknowledge” the outcomes of the 2024 governmental election if “election scams in any state was a significant factor that led to a prospect for President getting a bulk in the Electoral College.”
“Election scams” is specified in the text really broadly to consist of a shopping list of fake conservative claims varying from non-citizen ballot to “prosecutions for obvious political intentions.” By this meaning, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s continuous prosecution of Donald Trump might be adequate premises by itself for West Virginia to decline to acknowledge a triumphant Kamala Harris as the genuine president.
One Democratic legislator in West Virginia called the proposed resolution “WILD.”
As secessionist as it would be for a state to decline to acknowledge the legally chosen president (a legendary paradox thinking about West Virginia’s own history of breaking away from Virginia instead of withdraw from the Union and sign up with the Confederacy), it’s another area of the proposed resolution that takes it an entire brand-new level of twisted conspiracizing.
After stating that “the present Democrat-led program, has actually entirely stopped working, and continues to stop working, in a suspicious way, in its outright task to properly secure the Republican candidate for president,” the draft resolution states:
That, the State of West Virginia will not acknowledge any election of the Democrat prospect for President throughout the 2024 election cycle if the Republican governmental or vice-presidential prospect is assassinated, seriously hurt throughout an assassination effort, put behind bars, de facto gotten rid of or disallowed from the tally in any states, or is the topic of legal actions that prevent their efficient marketing …
In addition to appearing to consider a do-over election if a single hair of Donald Trump’s hair is awry, the proposed resolution once again recommends that the prosecution of Donald Trump– even at the state level– would be premises to disregard Harris’ election success due to the fact that those prosecutions make up “legal actions that prevent … reliable marketing.”
I’m being just a little tongue-in-cheek about the secessionist vibes of the resolution.