(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Glaring Ignorance of Vivek Ramaswamy [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-30 If I was going into the hospital for brain surgery, I wouldn’t want a “career” doctor to do it. I’d much prefer a surgeon who was only dabbling in craniotomy, and spent most of her time either writing code for video games like “Anthrax Revenge”, or coming up with salad recipes to make kale edible. This is obviously an idiotic statement, and may explain why I need brain surgery in the first place. Training and experience are plainly prerequisites for competence. And we all know that, except in the one context of running a government, where knowing nothing and having no relevant experience are often considered bonuses. Whenever I see someone running for US Congress or governor a state, I think “why not first run for local Borough Council or State Rep and learn something?” This is particularly true in the context of running for President of the United States. Maybe at least watch the “I’m just a bill” episode of SchoolHouse Rock before we hand you the nuclear codes. Perhaps help resolve a dispute about where a slip-ramp should be built before we sit you down with Putin. In our entire history, we have only elected one person to the presidency who had absolutely no prior government experience, and that was, it should go without saying, Donald J Trump. And that worked out really well. Trump’s utter lack of experience, or interest for that matter, resulted in some…I’m going to say “interesting” takes on how government works. For example, on the powers of the office he held, he taught us “Article 2. It’s tremendous. Nobody likes to talk about Article 2. But it lets me, as president, do anything I want”. And we learned that if a president doesn’t like losing his reelection bid, “We can suspend the Constitution’’ to adjust the results to be more to his liking. This year, we have a man running to be our second Commander-in-Chief with no governmental experience. And that is 38 year old tech-bro Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek has, in his short incarnation as a presidential candidate, repeatedly demonstrated that he knows as much about how government works as I do about string theory, or how to put a wardrobe together, or basic table manners, or…look, this isn’t about me, OK? There are many examples of Vivek’s glaring ignorance I could give, but I am going to share one that one is so comprehensive, so stunning, so gobsmackingly callow that it makes all other uninformed statements ever uttered by anybody seem brilliantly insightful by comparison. To set the stage, Vivek was being interviewed by Chuck Todd on Meet this Press this past Sunday. He was asked if he agreed that Mike Pence did the right thing in certifying the results of the election as he presided over the counting of the electoral votes in 2021. Vivek didn’t enthusiastically say yes, which is the only patriotically acceptable answer. He didn’t even say parrot Ron DeSantis’ “I have no beef with Mike”, which is the only acceptable answer by a weasel. No, he went off on his own, with insane results. After saying that he thinks Pence “missed a historic opportunity” and assuring us that he would have “done things much differently”, he said, the following (I promise): (I omitted Chuck’s attempts to interrupt) “Here’s what I would have said, “We need single-day voting on Election Day. We need paper ballots, and we need government-issued ID matching the voter file. And if we achieve that, then we have achieved victory, and we should not have any further complaint about election integrity. “I would have driven it through the Senate. In — in my capacity as president of the Senate, I would have led through that level of reform, then, on that condition, certified the election results, served it up to the president, President Trump then, to sign that into law, and on January 7th, declared the reelection campaign pursuant to a free and fair election. I think that was a missed opportunity.” How is this statement insane? Let me count the ways. 1. Apparently Vivek feels that as Vice President he would have the power to unilaterally refuse to certify an election in which 154 million people voted unless he got a bill he liked passed first. 2. He thinks that the President of the Senate, whose only constitutional task is to cast tie-breaking votes, can just decide to “drive things through” the Senate. 3. Once things are “driven through the senate”, they are law. Apparently, the House doesn’t get a vote, and if it did, a Democratic controlled house would just pass through a right-wing wet dream to eliminate all early voting, presumably because that’s because what Vice President Ramaswamy wanted. 4. It seems that when the President of the Senate is on the case, bills, which always take months to pass, can be fully passed in a couple of hours. 5. Once Vivek’s personal “conditions” are met, he would then be sweet enough to certify the results and send them up to President Trump to “sign that into law”. Even if Presidents had to sign election certifications, which even a kangaroo knows they don’t (and they’re from Australia!), there is zero chance that Trump would have signed anything that meant he wouldn’t be president anymore. 6, After all of that, Vivek then thinks he, as Vice President, had the power to reconvene the Senate the next day. This would come as a shock to the majority leader, who is the only one who actually has the power to call the Senate into session. But more than that, once the election is certified, the Senate’s job is done. The Constitution provides for no thing to do the next day. Except… 7. Vivek wants to “declare” things! Evidently, The VEEP has the power to just “declare” stuff. “I do hereby declare that from heretofore, Mushroom shall rhyme with Motorcycle!”. And what does Vivek wish to declare? Well, he wants to declare a “reelection campaign”!! What this means is unclear. The way I read it, he could mean one of two things: Either he would be declaring that a new, do-over election be held under the new rules he magically passed, or that Trump would just be declared re-elected, because his rules would have, among other things, rendered void all early votes. So, under either interpretation, Mr. Ramaswamy would be in essence cancelling the recent presidential election, which is quite a thing to declare. This is a lot of bat-shittery to pack into one short answer to a very simple question. And of course, there is a delicious irony which serves as the maraschino cherry on this sundae with extra nuts. Vivek has proposed that everyone under 25 should have to pass a “civics test” in order to earn the right to vote. Clearly, this civics test is not something that Vivek Ramaswamy himself would have a prayer of passing. This is just one of a hundred reasons we don’t give someone with no experience and no demonstrated knowledge of how the government works the most powerful position in our government. We did it once, we should never do it again. In fact, I feel so strongly about this, that I am going to go ahead and DECLARE it [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/30/2190463/-The-Glaring-Ignorance-of-Vivek-Ramaswamy Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/