There was an interesting article yesterday in RealClear Politics written by Jeff Greenfield, titled, "Is American Democracy Really Holding? Maybe Not." The sub-heading is "Donald Trump didn’t manage to overthrow the electoral system. But he’s drawn a clear road map for breaking it." Greenfield is a very good, thoughtful journalist, and addresses five points that Republicans pushed to steal the election, noting that next time -- if handled by an equally corrupt but more accomplished leadership -- could undermine a legitimate vote.
You can read the full article here, but in brief the issues he addresses in detail are -- 1. Convince your voters that the election has been stolen from them 2. Make sure local and state officials are loyal 3. Open the door to state legislatures seizing the vote 4. Turn to the Supreme Court 5. Bend the last guardrail: the U.S. Congress The article got a lot of attention, including a discussion on Morning Joe on MSNBC. It was well-deserved, and I think it's a very valuable issue that people should be seriously concerned about. Indeed, as much attention as there's been on the Team Trump efforts, the larger problem is how it impacts future elections, cutting into public trust. However, I have a wider view of the issue. As well-addressed as point of Greenfield's article is, I thought that the article was too focused on a single “What if…” scenario and didn’t do as good a job as it could to make the case of what I think is the much-larger problem. Basically, the article tries to make its point by saying that “If every piece along the way is fascist and corrupt, and everything works perfectly in their favor and all those pieces fall perfectly into place when everything is aligned exactly right, then democracy is in trouble.” Well…yes, this is 100% right. But I think the issue isn’t “What if everything goes wrong at the same time?” – because “If everything goes wrong” at any time, it is always a problem for everything. The larger issue, I think, isn’t “What if everything goes wrong at the exact same time perfectly?” but rather what if nothing goes wrong, but lots of small things start eroding protections that are taken for granted. And we’re there now. The larger problem, I think, is having a demagogic president and a compliant party supporting him in Congress, not doing their checks-and-balances sworn duty. Far more than imagining the article’s convoluted scenario, imagine instead a very simple one: imagine if Republicans hadn’t been swept in 2018 and had maintained control of the House. They’d have had the House, Senate and White House. No checks on Trump, no committee investigations, no impeachment. Total free reign. And even add to that something just as simple: imagine also if the president wasn’t so clearly and proudly nuts and sociopathic and insecure and didn’t do such things so horribly wrong. For instance, imagine if Trump had actually listened to scientists and pushed masks and social distancing and kept the pandemic under reasonable control. He’d likely have won and perhaps in a landslide – without needing the article’s five corrupt, fascist steps going perfectly. Just simply followed science and helped protect the country. The good thing about the article is that it notes loopholes that can be fixed. The bad thing about the larger issue is that it’s not reliant on fixing loopholes but is the result of human nature. And that takes relentless working of leaders and the public to fix inequities and making the world a better place so that people don’t feel lost, downtrodden and without a place to turn, and therefore feel they can rely on public institutions and the law to be their support. The good news is that the reality is democratic institutions did ultimately hold in this election. There was no fraud, so no evidence of fraud could be offered in court. And they lost in court every single time. The bad news is that even with the democratic institutions holding, 40% of the people believes the election was rigged. And I think that’s an even bigger problem. The issue the article addresses is serious. But I think the most critical problem is not “What if every step of the process gets corrupted by fascists?”, but what if fascists convince the public and win legitimately? And that’s what people have to stay most vigilant over. Three final things: First, in listing its points of what could be corrupted, the article is wrong about state legislatures overriding the voters and instead picking Electors. By law, that cannot be done after an election. Whatever standard for selecting Electors is in place before election must be used for that election. It can only be changed for the next election. Second, the important issues raised in the article all point to the greater need of addressing the Electoral College, which would go a long way for fixing this. And that means hopefully more effort can be made to passing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is actually reasonably close to becoming reality. And third, when the title says "Maybe not," that's not especially definitive, and means that "Maybe so" is an equally viable answer. But the larger point holds. It's a valid, serious question to be vigilant over. And the bigger point related to it -- that while democracy is vulnerable to corrupt actions, it is just as vulnerable and in need of eternal protection to the perfectly legal misuse of its principles until democracy bleeds across the fine line into fascism. Which is one major reason why for the past two years I have been writing -- This is not about Trump, we know who he is. This is about the elected members of the Republican Party who enable him and are complicit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|