....Or Pouring Spilled Milk Back Into The Bottle.
We tend to forget the recent past too easily and too quickly. We need to keep it in mind, to get a better understanding of the present.
I wonder how many Democratic voters see the history as I do. I continue to maintain that the Presidential election was stolen - not by votes being miscounted, but by illegal acts that preceded the voting. There were several of those. Russian interference - fake news and trolling, continues to get some press. The Republican attack machine going after Hillary Clinton about Benghazi and the emails; this has now been supplanted by attack on the Squad of Four. But it is the same McCarthyite bs, pure vitriol aimed to enrage the base and to cast doubt among swing voters. If there's smoke there must be fire, right? In this case, it's entirely wrong. Yet the attacks are made plausible by prior prejudice the voters have. For Hillary Clinton, this was in good part fueled by antipathy to Bill Clinton, itself fueled by the Republican attack machine, but also by the Monica Lewinsky affair. With the Squad of Four, the prior prejudice is obvious and requires no amplification here.
Yet the biggest of these prior acts, now seemingly forgotten, was Mitch McConnell not taking up the nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, a violation of his Constitutional imperative. Logically, there is only one reason why McConnell did this. Had Garland been considered through the normal Advice and Consent process, he would have gotten through, even with the Republicans in the majority, just as Clarence Thomas got through when the Democrats were in control. Had that happened, as it should have, then there would have been no vacant seat to fill on the Supreme Court during the 2016 election. In this case Evangelical voters would have stayed home, rather than hold their nose and vote for Trump, so they could get a Conservative on the Supreme Court. Hillary Clinton would have won in the Electoral College, as well as in the popular vote. That's how the election should have played out, if everyone played the game According to Hoyle.
While I don't read the news nearly as intensively as I used to, it's just too depressing to do otherwise, I believe that no Democratic candidate for President in 2020 has taken on this history at all. Instead the campaigns are about economic issues, identity issues, and bringing the country together. Of these three, the first two are persistent Democratic themes. I don't want to minimize them. They are very important. But on the third, we need a reality check. If my premise is correct - the Republicans did steal the 2016 election - how can we possibly bring the country together until that crime has been punished? As long as the Republicans act like they are fighting a war by other means, and especially if they feel they can keep getting away with it from here on out, there will be no reconciliation.
What follows is how I imagine a candidate who did take on this history, the policies this candidate would advocate for in taking on that history, and the tone that would be needed to make the message effective.
First, while history can't be completely undone, some of it can be reversed. There would be repeated accusations that the election was stolen. Given that the Republicans already had a majority in the Senate, this enabled a judicial appointments strategy that was pure tyranny. Sunshine would be placed on that consequence during the election season. While many voters at present may not care as much about judicial appointments as they care about the bread and butter issues, this would be an example of how an effective candidate cand educate the voters, rather than simply appeal to an already fixed voter preference. Voters should care about this. With enough education, they will.
Second, this would be coupled with the assertion that every judicial nomination made since Trump took office is illegitimate. The argument is simple enough. Given that the election was stolen, these appointments constitute ill gotten gains. This point would be emphasized so as to set up the remedy. The remedy needs to be drastic, yet be seen as balancing out these gains and not otherwise advancing a Democratic alternative. The idea is to restore true fairness to the system, not to win a game that has been cooked ahead of time.
Third, the candidate would announce during the campaign (now or in the not too distant future) that as President the powers of Commander in Chief would be exercised to combat domestic threats. This would entail the detaining of Senator McConnell, possibly other Senators as well who were involved with shelving the nomination of Merrick Garland, and detaining all the judicial appointments who attained their positions under Trump. These people would either remain detained till the President left office or they would be released immediately if they resigned from their positions.
Fourth, so as not to make political capital out of this act of detaining appointments, the candidate would commit to serving only one four-year term in office. Let us have good and fair elections in 2024 and not have this history remain a burden for the indefinite future. It seems many candidates now treat running for the President as a perq and likewise for serving in the job. We need to return to the idea that serving as President is an obligation. Here the greater obligation is in restoring some trust into the process. Pre-announcing that the candidate will serve just one term will help to do that.
Fifth, if vacancies in judicial appointments do arise because detained members of the judiciary resigned, there needs to be a way for replacements to be selected that doesn't appear overly partisan. I have no bulletproof suggestion about how to do this. But in this context I am reminded of an episode from The West Wing TV series called The Supremes. In that episode, the President ultimately nominated one very left candidate for the Supreme Court and one very right candidate for the Supreme Court, to restore the previous balance. And the candidates were viewed as excellent jurists by each other, rather than as merely party hacks. I don't know how much of this is possible in actuality, but something like this should be an aspiration for this step, and perhaps considering multiple nominations simultaneously is the way to achieve this.
The above constitutes the direct steps that the candidate would take. There are also indirect steps that need to be taken. For example, it seems obvious that the hyper partisan political environment that we now find ourselves in has been fueled by yellow journalism which, it is sad to say, does attract eyeballs, coupled with current technology that seemingly requires the news to be entertainment as well. A more detached and objective presentation of events is desirable, but that's not what is happening. The market is failing here. There needs to be a remedy to this market failure. What that remedy looks like can be argued. One possibility to be floated seems evident - re-instituting The Fairness Doctrine. Another example, there is too much big money in our politics now. This is true both with regard to campaign financing and to lobbying. Presumably, Democrats might take these on without dealing with the history of the 2016 election. Bringing that history front and center should help amplify the case for solutions.
Let me close with the following observation, in case it is not obvious from what's been said until now. Talking about how the election was stolen, particularly emphasizing the Merrick Garland nomination, is a way to place the focus on the enablers within the Republican party and move it off of Trump. So, apart from it being the right thing to do in terms a remedying a wrong, it is the right thing to do regarding our politics now. And it makes sense even among those who want to bring the country together, once it is acknowledged that this can't happen as long as the Republicans want to win regardless of whether it is a fair fight or not. In particular, calling for an alternative to gerrymandering, that the election in 2016 was stolen should be brought to bear. While in the one case we are talking about Congressional Districts while in the other we are talking about the Electoral College, the unifying theme should be that the process must be fair. This rigging of the the political game needs to stop.
Now all we need is for one of the candidates to take up this strategy.
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