Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25626-20170620165203/@comment-21519-20170705223052

I'll post a full summary and commentary when I finish, but I don't mind answering specific questions in the meantime.

Truman delays the presidential election until November 1953. Eisenhower accepts this on behalf of the GOP (informally, he's neither the party's nominee at the time nor does he officially hold any position inside the party at all) in exchange for Truman repeating that he has no intention of running in that election, so the extra year he's buying himself is definitely going to be his last year in office.

Congressional elections will still take place in '52, which will get Congress back to a full complement. Truman actually uses this as his constitutional rationale for delaying the election, on the grounds that, if Congress isn't in session when the Electoral College meets, it can't certify the result. That's a bit dubious: The lack-of-quorum thing is problematic as always (and by the way, HT repeats the special elections vs gubernatorial appointments goof yet again), and Congress could always certify the result at some point between January 3 and January 19. Still, at least he tried to come up with a constitutional justification, rather than saying "We're doing it this way just because."

I haven't gotten up to the point in the book where they hold elections yet, but everyone's expecting a Republican win. The book ends, by the way, with Aaron Finch at a New Year's Eve party (I flipped ahead to see what kind of time table we're dealing with here) so we should get the election result but not see the new session sworn in.