Herman Cain is not on the short list of potential Republican vice Presidential candidates. Cain had run as a Tea Party candidate for president in 2012. He was an accomplished guy, CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and a strong backer of Trump in 2016 and as a Black man he might help create inroads for the Trump campaign among Black voters. The biggest problem for Cain is that he’s dead. But as far as I know that isn’t a disqualifier for the role of vice President who, according to the Constitution, must be at least 35 years old and a natural citizen of the US. I haven’t checked the Constitution but it may not actually exclude a dead person from running high federal office so it is probable Trump could name him and then get SCOTUS to verify that being dead is Constitutional.
The fact is that Cain is dead and that makes it hard for him to go to Mar a Lago to ingratiate himself with the guy who got him killed. I mean, sure, he needs to take some personal responsibility for his own death first.
Maybe you don’t remember but on June 20, 2020 President Trump held an election rally in Tulsa Oklahoma. At the time most of us thought it was a very bad idea to hold a massive in-person rally during what turns out to be still the early days of the pandemic. A president who was responsible and fit for office would have thought twice about something like that but we know Trump is and was always unfit for office.
On June 15, 2020 Trump said, “At some point this stuff [Covid] goes away, and it’s going away.”
On the 17th he said, “It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
And then on the 20th he said that the problem with testing for the virus was that doing more testing found more cases. “Slow the testing down, please.”
That was at a time when in 6 months 120,000 Americans had died and there wasn’t a vaccine available to prevent new cases. So Trump went ahead with his Tulsa rally where Herman Cain joined other Trump supporters like Elise Stefanik at an indoor rally where organizers removed stickers on seating that were intended to provide “social distance” between attendees.
Trump was thrilled, in fact, that there was a huge run on tickets for the rally. He gloated that a million people were planning to attend the event judging from on-line ticket reservations. Luckily those reservations were mostly Tik Tok-ers having a bit of fun and never intending to actually show up. Still, maybe as many as 19,000 people showed up and many, including Stefanik were shown indoors without a mask.
Stefanik scoffed that Joe Biden was running for office from his basement.
Herman Cain scoffed as well. Then he coughed. By June 30th Cain had a very bad case of Covid. By that time the US, with 4% of global population, had 25% of all cases and the 2nd highest death rate in the world. In a wealthy country with vast resources those statistics are an indication of appallingly incompetent leadership.
Not surprisingly there was a spike in Covid cases related to the Tulsa rally and by July 30 Herman Cain was dead.
But that is not disqualifying. In fact it might be an advantage. If elected it would offer an opportunity for Trump to name a replacement. I have a suggestion: Donald J Trump!
Again, I’m going to have to check the Constitution on this one but I suspect the Constitution doesn’t forbid a President from being his own vice president.
Think of the advantages. If Trump were impeached he would be in position to replace himself and issue a himself a pardon.
I’m pretty sure at least 5 members of the current Supreme Court would shrug their collective shoulders and issue a decision indicating the legislative branch needs to write legislation denying such a gambit if they want it to be disallowed.