Election 2020: Day 64, 10pm

Security forces regained control of the Capitol around the time that the 6pm curfew in D.C. was going into effect… Boy, that sounds like a line of dialogue from a dystopian movie, doesn’t it?

About three hours ago Congress resumed where it had left off several hours earlier, in the middle of a debate on whether to object to Arizona’s electoral college votes. In the end only 6 Senators voted in favor of the objection, with several apparently changing their mind in light of today’s insurrection. For the record, the six remaining members of the Senate’s “sedition caucus” are: three relatively prominent members in Cruz, Hawley, and Louisiana’s John Kennedy; two who just joined the Senate this week, namely Tuberville from Alabama and Marshall from Kansas; and Mississippi’s Hyde-Smith. The House is voting on the objection as I write this.

It is unclear whether or not there will be any further objections. The original gameplan for the day supposedly involved objections to as many as six states. I’ve heard suggestions that either Arizona will be it, or there will be an objection to Pennsylvania but then no more. Either way, it would appear that before Congress heads home for the night the electoral college votes will be formally counted.

The open question on everybody’s minds is, what happens tomorrow? There have been a wide variety of people arguing today that Pence and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment, and/or Congress should impeach and remove Trump, as soon as possible. David Frum’s piece today in The Atlantic was entitled “Remove Trump Tonight;” there’s a piece in The Bulwark today by Rob Tracinski entitled “Impeach. Convict. Indict;” and Bill Kristol and George Conway have been on Twitter advocating for immediate impeachment. And these four individuals are, or more properly were, Republican thought leaders.