Back in 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate at the time, ran for the presidency of the United States. Well, I think it’s worth mentioning that he did that while serving time in a federal prison for delivering a seditious speech.
Believe it or not, he got almost a million votes. His sentence was soon commuted by his rival, the newly elected Republican Warren G. Harding, only two days before Christmas in 1921.
No one actually expected Debs to win the White House. His best period was in 1912, when he captured almost 6 percent of the popular vote (with no presidential electors whatsoever).
By that point, the nation had never really grappled with the idea of someone winning the presidency while serving jail time. Well, it’s not far-fetched to consider this now.
If you remember well, the Donald Trump years brought plenty of peculiar constitutional hypotheticals to life. In fact, he kind of earned a reputation based on that.
4 Responses
he needs to be in prison
Do you believe the Biden Crime Family shouldn’t go to prison too?
I hope you believe the Biden Crime Family should go to prison too? Biden doesn’t believe he can win fairly, so he uses democrat judges and prosecutors to help him win the election. That is really sad.
you must be Democrate. What a shame that you cannot be neutral. That really comes through with you article? It also seems you are very angry. It shows.