The country I know and love is at a critical crossroad. Will the conservative majority confer immunity for crimes committed by a rogue president attempting to subvert the votes of 80 million Americans who had voted for the current president? Will it carve a new exception for the schemes of those who would arrogate power to themselves, contrary to the will of the people? Will it delay the DC election subversion trial that should already have been underway by throwing oil on the bonfire of Trump’s vanity?
These questions and more rock the nation. More importantly, will the American voter decide that the kind of country we become—a nation that has cast aside the rule of law, one that coronates a King?
Frightened as I was to listen to the oral arguments presented to the court by Trump’s unapologetic lawyers, that fright was exponentially increased by the pandering Justices, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch asking questions of the advocates so far distant from the issue before them, advancing a false narrative, upon which they could construct an opinion to further delay the DC election subversion trial.
How quickly they forget—the speech on the floor of the US Senate by Mitch McConnell, after hypocritically voting not to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial, gaslighting the nation, stating that Trump would be held accountable by the criminal justice system. Never mind putting the country through the ordeal under which it now suffers. Any other candidate, a patriot, (as did Al Gore, and even Richard Nixon in 1960, in a tightly contested elections, would have stepped aside for the good of the country.) Not Trump.
We could have had a normal GOP candidate whose policies with whom one might legitimately disagree, running for President, debating the issues instead of the nightmare scenario of Trump brazenly standing before his throngs crying “retribution.” McConnell now says he will support Trump, if he is nominated, even after recognizing Trump’s corrupt and even treasonous enterprise.
Norms are what our country runs on. Cuba, for example, had a written constitution modeled after our own. We know how that worked out. Norms that are abandoned or shredded fall to the famous Benjamin Franklin remark when asked by a bystander when he emerged from the constitutional convention in 1789. “What did you do Dr. Franklin?” He responded, “We give you a Republic, if you can keep it.”
We do not yet know how the court will rule, but they have already given Trump a leg up and if they do not rule quickly, voters may not have the information needed to make an intelligent decision.
Democrats need far more votes to win than Republicans, because of the bizarre and antiquated electoral college, the US Senate, and the gerrymandered House of Representatives. Candidates with a minority of the popular vote should not win elections. It is not democratic. It is not fair, and it adds to the public discord and the notion that the rich and powerful, the landed gentry (in our times the billionaire class) is favored, is preeminently privileged, is controlling the discourse, and again the Supreme Court, in allowing dark money flowing freely swaying elections, is again throwing a judicial get out of jai free card to Trump. Of this injustice, nations fall.
In Florida, Democrats see that their votes in a Presidential election do not matter, because of winner take all electoral votes. Florida should consider rank choice voting and award proportional allocation of the vote to each candidate. And nationwide, the electoral college should be repealed or a state compact awarding all the votes of each state to the winner of the national popular vote. Too hard to amend the constitution.
No more minority popular vote presidents. No more battleground states. No more wasting millions of dollars on politicians jetting around when they should be doing their jobs. Just a few debates on television. No more two- year riving presidential election process. No more Iowa caucuses. Just an election of the nominees selected in a national primary followed by an election six or so weeks later. These reforms would also lead to less divisiveness, something of which we sorely need.
We live in an age of AI, of internet banking, of remote work. Of great technological change. Let’s get with the program.
America, let us please reform our anachronistic, creaky, outdated, elections system.
