Apologies if I misunderstood, but it read to me that you are saying the new mainstream parties started as third parties. That is not what has happened historically. The Republicans were never a third party. The first general election they contested they were already the second party. And likewise for their…

That was under a different electoral system, before it was fixed by the Twelfth Amendment. Prior to the ratification of the 12th amendment all electors cast two ballots for President; there was no separate VP ballot. The top vote-getter in the Electoral College became President (assuming he had a majority) and the…

Lincoln won over 50% of the vote in enough states to carry the Electoral College regardless of how the votes were apportioned among the other parties, including if you give all non-Lincoln votes to one candidate.

It has not really worked that way historically. Generally, one of the existing parties needs to collapse in order for a new one to arise. The National Republicans did not run against the Federalists, the Whigs did not run against the National Republicans, and the Republicans did not run against the Whigs. Each of…

The Federalists were supplanted by… nobody. Instead of an era of glorious multi-party competition their demise led to one-party control with James Monroe being re-elected unopposed in 1820. Then there was a no-party race in 1824 where the second place finisher was chosen as president by the House. Few at the time…

Perot is a strange hybrid of a regional candidate and a national candidate. National (often ideological) third party candidates like Gary Johnson, Ralph Nader, John Anderson, Henry Wallace, or Eugene Debs never come close to winning electoral votes even when they do relatively well nationally, while regional…

Yeah, it sounds like something from a movie. A popular former president challenges his hand-picked successor for the nomination and is defeated under somewhat questionable circumstances. He then runs a third party bid which consigns the sitting president to third place and allows the out-party to win with 42% of the…

It has happened a number of times. Strom Thurmond in 1948 and George Wallace in 1968 won several Southern states rebelling against the Democrats on civil rights. 1960 featured Southern defections from the Democrats without actually having a declared candidate. Going further back, in the Progressive era you had former…

What's the legal basis for that? I don't think the Senate has the authority to fill a mid-term vacancy in the presidency.

The show's basic premise that anyone would want Kirkman to resign and sow further chaos is ridiculous. He's literally the only person with any valid claim on the position. If he resigns there is an unresolvable constitutional crisis. As you suggest, Congresswoman Hookstraten is not in the line of succession at all,…

"President Kirkman's Capitol Visit, in nine cat gifs" from Buzzfeed

I was amused when the Congresswoman Googled "Tom Kirkman" and it was all results from when he was introduced as HUD secretary. Like there wouldn't be a Vox Explainer on "Who is Tom Kirkman?" up within twenty minutes of the attack.

Yeah, it has always been done by order of creation of the department, with the exception of the Department of Defense getting to keep the Department of War's old spot in 1947. And I suppose that was as good a default rule as any until 2003 or so. We probably shouldn't have Members o the House or Senators in there at…

Yeah, I think the Gates thing was a mixture of his being the only one not resigning his position and being a reasonable choice as emergency president. It's easy to forget eight years later how many people were concerned at the time about a serious assassination attempt against the first black president.

For Bush's big post 9/11 speech at the Capitol Dick Cheney was absent, though they also separately had a designated-survivor in Tommy Thompson (who was a low-level cabinet secretary, but also a former four term governor of a mid-sized state). And for Obama's first inauguration they kept Secretary of Defense Robert…

As far as we can tell the Chief of Staff is dead, right? The guy with Kirkman in the White House after the attack was the deputy chief of staff. I don't know that he had the authority to choose the designated survivor.

If you look at the list of past choices, it is most often a lower-level cabinet member (Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, Transportation, etc.). It's not really regarded as an honor or something you bestow on someone you think would make a great emergency president. In times of particular tension or signficance it has…

Is the Speaker from Montez's party? Previously he appeared to be only holding one vote because he is an ally of Tom James. Regardless, having the Speaker unilaterally decide to foreclose any additional votes when one candidate was one state away from victory would be hugely controversial. The idea that voters wouldn't…

I honestly couldn't even remember her name until this episode. I was aware that O'Brien had a female VP nominee with a Hispanic-sounding name, and that was it. They didn't put any work at all into setting up why anyone would want her to be president.

He can make whatever choices he wants, but a lot of his choices concerning the resolution of the presidential contest have been bad. Mandel decided to make things as maximally humiliating for Selena as possible, and then worked backwards from there without any regard to law, reality, or internal logic. Having this…