Torching the Rulebook

I'm starting to think Donald Trump really could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it entirely.  Not only would he not lose any voters, he'd escape any legal consequences as well.

Once I sat down and listed them all, the number of crimes and ethical transgressions he's survived unscathed is staggering.  Professionally, he screwed over American farmers with his trade war, disregarded co-equal branches of government and the concept of separation of powers, tapped his unqualified, un-appointed kids to perform government duties they have no business doing, shared highly-classified intelligence with Russian government officials (Note: as president, he has declassification authority and can legally share whatever he wants with whoever he wants; that doesn't make it a good idea, though), sparked a crisis with Iran, praised multiple dictators and authoritarian-leaning leaders, ignored the Saudi government's murder of an American journalist, obstructed justice by interfering with the Mueller probe, sanctioned the abuse & mistreatment of children, and attacked the free press. 

In his personal life - before and outside of the presidency - he's the subject of double-digit credible accusations of rape and sexual assault (including raping a teenager), accepted assistance from the Russian government during his campaign, raided the government coffers for his golf junkets, and has a track record of racism and sexism.

And those are just the scandals I could remember off the top of my head.  So where are the people and institutions that are supposed to hold him accountable? Well. . .

On one side of the aisle, the GOP is largely enabling him (and has been from the first day of his presidency). Republicans in Congress are reinforcing Trump's lies by repeating them in the media, creating lies of their own, undermining and attempting to derail legitimate investigations into Trump's crimes, shielding Trump and his appointees from oversight and repercussions, blocking attempts to exercise Congressional oversight.  And why? What does the GOP get out of this? The answer is conservative judges in lifetime appointments and continued support from its base.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are well-meaning but timid and ineffective. Based on my observation, they seem to be giving up too easy ("Oh shucks, the Trump administration ignored our subpoena.  Well, we tried.") or refuse to play hardball.  I get they impression they expect this whole mess to work itself out without their influence - that this will all blow over and things will return to normal.  And maybe it will.  I've never made a secret of how much I despise Trump, so maybe my resentment is clouding my judgment. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing about Trump refusing to leave the White House in 2021 or 2025. 

Then again, he's checking off a lot of boxes on the "making yourself a king" list: showing disdain for the separation of powers, grooming his kids as a potential successor, hinting at a possible 3rd term or rejecting an election's outcome if it's unfavorable. (Yes, he might have been joking, but it's telling that he keeps going back to that theme and a lot of humor is spoken in jest.) In just two and a half years, he's made Americans more accepting of undemocratic practices.  His base (somewhere around 35% of the country) supports whatever he does, and the rest are becoming numb to his antics. (Think I'm exaggerating? Less than two weeks ago, a woman came forward with a credible accusation that Trump raped her a few decades ago, and the story has already vanished from the headlines.  Think about that: someone accused the president of a violent crime, and it's already been forgotten.  I'm not the only one to notice this, by the way.) 

So if the public has become inured to that, what else is it downplaying? Unfounded allegations of voter fraud? Baseless criticism of law enforcement? Nepotism? Defying the Constitution and putting himself above the rule of law? Because Trump has done ALL of those things. Now, do I think we're going to wake up the day after the 2020 elections to find MRAPs and M4-toting police officers on every street corner? No. For his many faults, Trump seems adverse to bloodshed. That's what makes me believe he doesn't plan to declare martial law or anything radical like that.  But his conduct is paving the way for a more unscrupulous version of Trump down the road, someone politically savvier and less reserved about using force.  Maybe that's when we DO see the MRAPs and the rifle-carrying cops show up.

What people tolerate, they get more of, and Trump has shown that Americans will tolerate quite a lot. 

And here's another thing: whether you think Trump is an empty gasbag or an American Mussolini, his influence on government will take a long time to go away.  He's reshaped the country's political norms, and not in a good way.  He's made lying more acceptable, he's made bipartisan compromise less likely, and he's shattered future expectations of civility.

We've already seen what that looks like over the past two years - do we really want to see the "on steroids" version of that? I don't think any of us could call that a good thing. So if we want to avoid that fate, we need to fight back.  Hard. 

Even if that means breaking a few rules ourselves.  Because the Democrats need to stop "playing nice." They need to stop believing (or pretending) the GOP is acting in good faith. They need to get a bit more ruthless themselves, inflicting a few metaphorical broken bones and shattered reputations if necessary.  Steamroll over the GOP. If you wonder why I'm focusing on the Democrats instead of the Republicans, it's because the GOP's enabling of Trump has shown it's unfit to govern many times over. (Quick aside: I would not be bothered if the next Democratic president drew inspiration from Reconstruction, and instituted harsh measures like stripping GOP Senators of voting privileges, until such time that it becomes fit to govern again. Because, yes, the modern GOP is that bad.)

Because what we do now will affect what type of government we have over the next 20-30 years.

The Push to Abolish the Electoral College, Part 2: Possible Solutions

I wanted to include all this at the end of yesterday's post, but that piece took a lot longer to write than I expected.  I'm chalking it up to a healthy dose of writer's block plus lots of writing something, striking it out, writing something new, then going back to what I originally wrote.  Repeat until insane.  That post was an absolute grind to write.  Plus, I got distracted by Atlanta's beat-down of the Packers.

Anyway, here are a handful of off-the-cuff suggestions I have for improving the Electoral College.

First, eliminate "winner take all" districts.  There's something deeply wrong with a rule that lets my vote contribute to Candidate A's electoral vote tally even if I voted for Candidate B.  Unfortunately, forty-eight states play by "winner take all" rules.  This practice is truly undemocratic, because it invalidates the votes of everyone but the people who picked the winning candidate.  I propose that all of the states adopt a proportional allocation system: the number of electoral votes a candidate gets is based on the percentage of the popular vote they received.  I didn't come up with this idea, but I think it makes a lot more sense than the "winner take all" rule.

Second, redraw the outrageously gerrymandered districts to make them more reflective of their inhabitants.  Gerrymandering has been a problem for a long time, and has been derisively described as "politicians getting to choose their voters." The Supreme Court is hearing a case about partisan gerrymandering right now, and I'm glad to see the practice is being challenged in court.  I just hope SCOTUS rules against gerrymandering.

Third, let's take a look at mandatory voting as a stop-gap solution while we figure out why so few people are voting.  (Hey now! Whoa! I said we should just consider it.  Stop yelling at me.)  I was going to suggest implementing mandatory voting and leaving it at that (so maybe that yelling is justified), because it would solve the problem of low voter turnout, therefore making election results more reflective of the overall population.  Unfortunately, this is like a kid shoving all their toys, stray clothes, etc into the closet instead of actually cleaning their room.  It gives the appearance of everything being fine while ignoring the issue.  Something is wrong when 41% of eligible voters didn't vote in the 2016 election.  Maybe those people don't feel represented, and that's a symptom of bigger issues.  I was going to write about those bigger issues, at least as I saw them; but I realized pretty quickly that those issues were a lot more than I was prepared to tackle right now.  I haven't done enough research or thinking to write about them, and besides they're outside the scope of this post, so I'm tabling them for another day. 

Those are a few quick and simple solutions I came up with off the top of my head.  They probably have flaws, but I wanted to offer up some ideas, even imperfect ones. I don't think the Electoral College is perfect, but I think these changes could improve it a lot.  But even with its flaws, I think the Electoral College is a better system than a direct popular vote.  Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.