With President Joe Biden today dismissing critics of his poor debate performance with former President Donald Trump, a “Plan C” is being urged to help his wounded reelection effort across the finish line first on Election Day.
Advocates of "Plan C" said the solution to Trump’s surging campaign and Electoral College advantage is a simple one: replace Vice President Kamala Harris with former President Barack Obama.
“A Biden-Obama ticket would have a much better chance of beating Trump,” said legal scholar John Banzhaf , a professor at George Washington University Law School.
“Barack Obama is probably one of the few persons whom a majority of Americans would want and trust as president, so Plan C might be the least objectionable of a number of very unpopular and dubious options now open to Biden and the Democratic Party,” he said on Thursday.
Banzhaf cited analysis by constitutional scholars dismissing concerns that the 12th and 22nd amendments bar a former two-term president from the vice presidency.
“The 22nd Amendment, which is most frequently cited as a bar to Barack Obama ever serving as president again, doesn't — according to its carefully crafted and very narrow exclusionary language,” Banzhaf said.
The key sentence in the amendment says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no person who has held the office of the president, or acted as president, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”
Banzhaf said “while this amendment may bar Obama from ‘being elected’ to the office of president again, it obviously and by its clear language doesn't prohibit him from being elected as vice president, and subsequently becoming president by succession without ever being elected to the office again.”
He used the same argument to challenge the 12th Amendment.
“According to the overly precise language deliberately carefully chosen by the drafters, Obama cannot ‘be elected to the office of the president,’ but there's nothing to say that he cannot be elected to the office of the vice president, and then succeed to the presidency if Biden becomes unable to perform his presidential duties or simply resigns. In other words, Obama is not now ‘ineligible to the office of president’ and therefore ineligible to run for vice-president; rather he is only ineligible to be ‘elected’ to the office of the president, not ineligible to attain the office by succession,” he wrote in an email.
Banzhaf’s email reiterated points he made in a blog post for GWU after the Biden-Trump debate a week ago.
While it is highly doubtful that Obama would want the vice presidency or would take it from Harris, he has been deeply concerned that Biden is blowing his chances of reelection.
Banzhaf said that having Obama as Biden’s backup might give the country renewed confidence in the president. And, alternatively, Biden could run and win with Obama and then resign if he is as ill as some have speculated.
He said that plan would also allow him to break his promise not to pardon his son Hunter Biden from a gun conviction.
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“Rather than simply offering the public the opportunity to have a second-term Biden president supported and backstopped by a very popular and clearly very capable former president Obama, and having someone with experience and a proven record as commander in chief should Biden not be able to continue to serve at anytime during a second four-year term, Biden might even consider announcing before the election that, if elected president, he would resign shortly after his inauguration so that Obama can then become president,” Banzhaf wrote.
He added, “In addition to claiming that stepping down is the statesman-like thing to do, Biden could argue that resigning would be necessary to permit him to break his promise not to pardon his son, Hunter Biden. Indeed, letting Obama take over would also limit the adverse political fallout of going back on his previous commitment.”
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