The US Constitution was written so that each branch of the federal government would be a check on the other branches. The president can be impeached by the US House of Representatives and convicted by the US Senate. The president can veto bills written and passed by the US Congress. The US Congress can overcome the president’s veto if they have the votes. The Supreme Court can determine if a law passed by the US Congress is unconstitutional. With good behavior, the justices of the Supreme Court can serve for the rest of their lives although it is doubtful that this was the intention of the writers of the US Constitution. However, the justices of the Supreme Court are nominated by the president and confirmed by the US Senate. It was also written to protect a minority of the country from a tyranny of the majority and to protect smaller states with smaller populations from being dominated by larger states with larger populations. This last arrangement was necessary in order to get small states to sign onto and ratify the US Constitution. The US Constitution can be amended, but it would not be easy to do so. While one can see how some of this may have seemed like a good idea at the time and in some ways it served us well, there is no defense for the failure of the writers of the US Constitution to outlaw slavery and to guarantee equality including the power of the vote to women and people of color.
The country has changed dramatically since the writing of the US Constitution and yet even with majority support it is too difficult to pass amendments to the US Constitution and some necessary changes have no hope at all of taking place. For example, smaller states will never agree to reduce their representation in the US Senate.
Here is a partial list of serious and enormous problems with our current framework:
- 30% of the US Senate represents 70% of the population of the country and 70% of the US Senate represents 30% of the population of the country
- For most states, one political party is overwhelmingly likely to win its US Senate seats
- 6 of the 9 justices on the Supreme Court were picked by a president who lost the popular vote
- Gerrymandering means that most of the US Representatives only have to worry about winning their primary
- The attorney general of the United States in the last administration gained that position by writing a letter to the president, a member of his political party, stating how he would defend the president from the Trump Russia investigation
- In order to get most bills passed, 60 votes in the US Senate are needed
- Forty US Senators can prevent most bills from being voted on
- Because each state has two US Senators regardless of population, the power of the vote of an African American is only ¾ of the power of a white person’s vote and the power of the vote of an Hispanic is only 55% of the power of a white person’s vote
- Gerrymandering is used to dramatically dilute the power of the vote of voters of color and reduce their representation in Congress
As a result, there were no checks and balances from republicans in Congress upon the previous president. Hence, he was able to violate the law with impunity. A minority of the voters of the country can hold the power of the majority in each chamber of Congress. White voters have far more power than they should based upon the population. Tribalism has become dominant. There are far fewer people of color in Congress than our demography suggests there should be. Then you add in the fact that only one voter in three earned so much as a bachelor’s degree from a four year university and that the voters of one political party are far more likely to be educated than the other, and you have a real problem. The vast majority of the voters of one political party are white whereas the other political party is approaching parity. While the Democratic Party does engage in some gerrymandering and it is wrong and bad for our politics regardless of which political party does it, the vast majority of gerrymandering is done by the Republican Party. While the members of each political party are likely to choose their news based upon their political party, the members of the Republican Party are overwhelmingly likely to watch Fox News and those who watch Fox News unlike the viewers of other cable news programs are less likely to be able to identify facts as such than those who watch no news at all. Religious fundamentalists are extremely likely to vote for Republican Party candidates. This happens in large part because fundamentalists churches pressure their members to vote for Republican Party candidates. Xenophobia and racism and misogyny dominate the Republican Party and its members. Members of Congress who are republicans are afraid to stand up to Donald Trump.
There are reasons for the laws governing campaign contributions. The reason why no one person is allowed to donate directly to a campaign more than $2,900 per candidate in the primary and no more than $2,900 per candidate in the general election is to prevent the wealthy from having a dominant influence upon elections. However, individuals can donate to political action campaigns (PACS and Super PACS) as much as they want and so long as these PACS and Super PACS don’t coordinate and work together with the political campaigns of candidates, then it is legal. Nevertheless, there was a reason for the laws governing campaign contributions. If some people contributed much more than the legal limit to a campaign, then it is likely that the candidate would feel obligated to vote or govern the way that the donors to their campaign wanted even if it was not necessarily in the best interest of the country or the constituents of the candidate. This is also the reason why it is illegal to solicit or receive donations from foreign nationals. Yet Donald Trump has been allowed to violate these laws without consequences so far. He repaid the payments made by his fixer, Michael Cohen, to two porn stars for their silence three weeks prior to the election. Clearly, these payments were made to benefit Donald Trump’s campaign. The amounts were larger than the legal limit for campaign contributions and Donald Trump repaid Michael Cohen for these contributions according to his attorney, Rudy Guliani. Donald Trump’s campaign solicited opposition research from Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian attorney connected to Vladmir Putin, and opposition research is a thing of value. This clearly could have influenced Donald Trump to have favorable policies towards Putin’s Russia instead of being motivated by love of country. Trump solicited political help from Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, in exchange for receiving foreign aid already approved by Congress. This was abuse of power as well as soliciting a campaign contribution from a foreign national which would obligate him to support favorable policies towards Ukraine in exchange for the political help.
.
The result of all of this is unprecedented. Donald Trump clearly committed at least 16 serious felonies: 1-10 instances of Obstruction of Justice documented by the republican Robert Mueller, (11) Bank and Tax Fraud Act [He gave wildly different valuations of the same property at approximately the same time. For banks when he was using the land as collateral, it was much more valuable than when he included the property for tax purposes (12) paying the two porn stars far more than was legal for a campaign contribution for their silence three weeks prior to the election (13) soliciting opposition research from Natalia Veselnitskaya in exchange for future favorable policies from Trump (14) Abuse of Power when Trump withheld foreign aid approved by Congress for Ukraine after determining that Ukraine qualified for it (not corrupt) and pressuring the Ukraine president, President Zelensky, to announce an investigation into the son of a political opponent in exchange for being allowed to receive the foreign aid already approved by Congress (15) Soliciting a foreign national, President Zelensky, for a campaign contribution (announce an investigation into the son of a political opponent) and (16) inciting the insurrection. Yet, the vast majority of republicans in Congress refused to vote to indict or convict Donald Trump.
.
Furthermore, we had 147 republicans in Congress who voted in support of a written objection to counting state certified electoral college votes including 8 republican senators. The only event even remotely close was in 2004. However, that was very different. In 2004, John Kerry had already conceded and thus was not seeking to and would not have won even with electoral college vote shenanigans. In 2004, only one senate democrat, Senator Barbara Boxer, voted for a written objection to counting the electoral college votes of Ohio. However, she had already stated that she was not challenging who won; rather, she was highlighting voter suppression in Ohio.
.
Another unprecedented event was the refusal of Donald Trump to concede within 24 hours of the official call of the election for Joe Biden. The voters of the losing candidate are much more likely to listen to their own candidate than the opposing candidate. Therefore, it is an essential feature of American democracy that the losing candidate concede promptly. It is an essential feature of the peaceful transfer of power. The only event even remotely close to this was the 2000 election which also was very different. The 2000 presidential election was decided by one state, Florida, which was won by 538 votes. The 2020 election was won by three states each with a margin of over 10,000 votes. Vote counts and audits were consistent and consistently reaffirmed that Joe Biden had indeed won. In 2000, we had different outcomes based upon different standards for counting a vote. In the 2020 election, the courts ruled universally for Joe Biden whereas in 2000 both candidates won significant victories in different courts. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided 7-2 that there was an Equal Protection Violation and 5-4 about the remedy and handed George W Bush the win. When this happened, Vice President Gore saw that no legal recourse remained and he conceded. He followed tradition. Because Donald Trump did not concede, ¾ of republican voters wrongly believe that Donald Trump won but was robbed. This along with Trump’s constant repetition of the Big Lie, the lie that said he actually won but was robbed, helped create the circumstances that made it possible for Trump to incite the insurrection of January 6.
.
Because of gerrymandering and voter concentration, the vast majority of seats in Congress are almost certain to go to one political party with the other political party having almost no chance at that seat. As a result, a republican only has to win the primary in order to be assured of winning and holding the seat in Congress. In most cases, a president will be very popular among voters of his particular political party. This enables him to be able to pick who will be a member of Congress in congressional districts or states that are very republican. This leads to republicans in Congress being dominated by their last president, Donald Trump. Thus, there are few if any republicans in Congress who show any independence from the president. Again, this system led to six of the nine justices who serve for life with good behavior on the Supreme Court determining which laws are constitutional and what is and what is not constitutional. As stated above, this has led to an uneducated minority of white voters being able to run the government even though the majority of voters oppose their views. These voters imbibe lies by only watching Fox News and other conspiracy theory outlets that promote the lies that they want to hear and algorithms confirm their false beliefs on the internet. The few republicans who stepped up and helped stop the coup are being replaced so that at all the key places a loyal Trump lackey will make sure that Trump wins regardless of the actual vote count.
.
This means that our democracy is in grave danger. It is under assault by the Trump Republican Party. Typically, in the midterm of a president’s first term, the president’s political party loses a large number of seats in Congress. We can’t afford to allow that to happen if we want to retain our democracy. That’s why it is so important to heed the A Very Short But Necessary Post warning diary with Beau of the Fifth Column’s video. In it, he discusses a hypothetical congressional district with 167,000 voters which has an R + 10 lean (55% to 45%) to it. He points out that in presidential elections, 60% of the registered voters normally vote, but only 40% of the registered voters usually vote in midterms. If we nominate candidates who can win these districts and only 40% of republicans show up, then we only need about an additional 6,680 votes to win. They would have 36,740 votes and we would have 30,060 votes from the 40%. However, there are 75,150 democrats available and 45,090 democrats who would normally vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate in a presidential election. We only need 6,680 voters who are democrats of the remaining 15,030 democrats who only vote during presidential elections. That’s only about 40% of the voters who only vote during presidential elections.
.
Now think about the fact that this is an R+10 district. For districts that are not quite as badly gerrymandered, we would not even need that great a percentage of our only presidential election voters. That’s why we need to stop throwing our entire political party under the bus. We’ve got worldwide inflation and supply chain problems that are plaguing every nation and are raising the ire of voters here even though it’s clearly not President Biden’s fault. On the other hand, the six justices nominated by popular vote losing presidents just emitted a vomit inducing forced birther ruling that overturns Roe which has been established precedent for half a century despite the fact that doing so is overwhelmingly unpopular. It’s impossible for a president who is a member of the Democratic Party to really please nearly all members of his political party. There are a large number of progressives in the Democratic Party and, unfortunately in my view, large number of conservatives in the Democratic Party. About forty percent of our voters are voters of color, but voters of color tend to be more pragmatic for what I hope are obvious reasons to the educated reader. We are a diverse political party. So, some democrats are likely to feel like the president and the party are not aligned with their views. However, there is a consensus in our political party on a number of issues including Roe and voter rights and equality and both our candidates and our members of Congress are in the vast majority of cases much better on those issues than the republican would be. Even where that is not the case, the democrat will support democracy and the republican is unlikely to do so. Therefore, promoting the myth (it’s almost always a myth) that the Democratic Party’s candidate in the general election (who may be an incumbent) is only slightly better than the Republican Party’s candidate is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea because it’s almost always false and because the democrat supports democracy (and democracy is a rather huge issue since without it, it doesn’t matter what platform one supports) and because it will discourage our voters from turning out. That’s really bad because as the math above showed, if we can just get 40% more of our only presidential election voting democrats to turn out in this midterm, then we can win even in an R+10 gerrymandered district. If that is true in that kind of district, then in less gerrymandered districts, we should be in a strong position to win if we get our vote out. Thus, if we do get the vote out, we can have an actionable majority and make the defections of Sinemanchin relatively harmless.
.
Therefore, let’s stop pushing this false meme that our candidates are only slightly better than the Republican Party’s candidates. In the US Senate, on most issues we have at least 96% of the senators who caucus with our political party on board, 48 out of 50. On the other hand, on almost all issues, either 100% or 98% (Senator Murkowski is rarely with us but rare is not zero I suppose) of Senate Republicans are against us. This means that it is hardly fair to paint the entire party as bad simply because 2 of our 50 are bad. It also means that we are very close to having a working actionable majority on many important issues. So, now isn’t the time to give up. We are close to getting that actionable majority. Giving up and not doing everything you can to get every democrat in the general election elected is only going to help the republicans and make it LESS likely for you to get the legislation and the agenda you support enacted and turned into law.
.