Welcome to episode two of the Schmidt's Norm. You have questions? I have answers. Let's get to it.

Here's a great question. And it's if Kamala Harris is the winner of the presidential election,

while serving as the president of the Senate as a function of her being vice president of the United States,

is she able to certify the election as the presiding officer of the United States Senate,

like Mike Pence was on January 6th of 2021, but in her favor.

And the answer to the question is yes.

And this is exactly what George Herbert Walker Bush did as vice of the United States

when he certified the election as president-elect of the United States.

Now, Al Gore had to certify the election after the Florida standoff in George W. Bush's favor.

This day is one of continuity.

It is part of the majesty of a process that was stripped of all of the rituals of monarchy.

And so the founders of the country substituted royal ritual for secular ones.

Now, think about George Washington surrendering his authority to Congress.

This is the Turnbullet painting in the rotunda of the Capitol.

It's one of the most extraordinary in American history.

And it captures a moment that the artist thought was the most magnificent in human history, because it's about

power and specifically about political power in America. The French Revolution, which was a

cousin of the American Revolution, went completely off the rails.

It became a bloodbath of despotic violence.

Liberty can easily succumb to the disease of authoritarianism, to despotism.

It is a facet of a mob.

A mob empowered through democratic institutions is a mob nonetheless.

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