Donald Trump's pre-acquittal in the Senate

 Donald Trump was pre-acquitted in the Senate yesterday.  He was impeached by the House, for the second time for inciting riot and insurrection, and yesterday, he was pre-acquitted, which is a demonstration of the fact that this isn't really anything like a criminal trial.  As you have no doubt read, the Senate held a vote on the constitutionality of trying an ex-president.  The Senate voted, by a majority, that it is constitutional, but only five Republicans voted that it is constitutional to hold the trial.  Therefore, we know with absolute, 100% certainty that Donald Trump will be acquitted again, and that he is still firmly in charge of the Republican Party.  They are completely under his control.  Even Rob Portman.

What happened?

Funny thing, but I wrote a book about this!  Kinda.  Incremental Polarization: A Unified Spatial Theory of Legislative Elections, Parties & Roll Call Voting.

Here's the basic premise.  Roll call votes are a collective action problem.  There are a lot of times when legislators have preferences over an outcome that conflict with their electoral incentives.  In other words, I want X to happen, but my voters will punish me if I vote for X, so if I'm trying to position myself electorally, I vote Y.  When there are a bunch of legislators in this position, you need party leadership to solve what we, social scientists call, "the collective action problem."  Otherwise, everyone votes Y, and nobody is happy with the outcome.  Well, the constituents may be, but the "constituents" are what I call, "the unwashed masses."  Also known as, "imbeciles."

In this situation, we have a bunch of Senate Republicans who want to convict Trump and bar him from running again.  They hate that guy, they are sick of him, and they want him gone.  See, for example, McConnell, who was pretty clear on what he thought.

And then suddenly... he votes that it isn't constitutional to hold the trial?!  Huh?!

Here's what happened.  He counted the votes.  That's what he does.  There are a bunch of problems for McConnell here.  Let's say he counts up the votes of Republicans who want to convict, and that only brings the Senate up to 65.  In that case, there's no point in any cross-pressured senators voting against Trump.  They'll just revert to their natural state of cowardice, shamefully abasing themselves before their lord and master, their living god of lies, Donald J. Trump.  Otherwise, well... he can't even tweet about them anymore, but he might do... something, and these are the most cowardly, spineless, worthless wastes of carbon in the history or organic chemistry.

Or really, Marjorie Taylor Greene will call for their executions, and Dayenu, that'd be enough.

These people suck at adulthood.

If McConnell had counted the votes and it had been 67, then everyone is "pivotal."  Here's the deal.  Each individual senator faces a dilemma.  Your vote determines Trump's fate.  Do you care more about banishing the demon from electoral politics, or the possibility of a vicarious tweet?  The direct electoral threat versus the right thing:  which do you weigh more heavily?  If there had been 17 Republicans who a) believed that Trump should be convicted, and b) weighed "the right thing" more heavily than their fear of Trump, McConnell would have had no job to do.  Trump would just have been a goner.

At more than 67, McConnell could let some Republicans free-ride by letting them vote to acquit Trump, with the question being whom.  Or, if there is variation in the balance, it's about who casts which vote.

The twist, of course, is that at precisely 67 votes, when everyone is pivotal, if Trump comes after you with the unthinkable horror of a mean tweet sent through someone else's account, you probably get it worse, because "it's your fault."

But... everyone just cowering?  That's easy, and it's the default when there aren't enough, either who prefer to convict Trump, or whose preference to do so would have outweighed the electoral damage.

Hence, we have the observation that McConnell clearly signaled that he wanted Trump's impeachment, but he couldn't get there, and in the end, voted against the constitutionality of the trial, and he will vote to acquit.  This is about outcome preferences conflicting with electoral preferences.

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