Friday, September 07, 2018

It's In the Voters' Hands


Eugene Robinson writes this morning that Americans have known all along who Donald Trump is:

We’ve all known about Trump from the beginning. We’ve known that he was entirely unfit to hold any public office, much less wield the awesome powers of the presidency, regardless of what political views he might have. Trump demonstrates this fact every single day.

All the reporting -- particularly Bob Woodward's new book -- confirms what  thinking Americans have always known. The problem is that those who occupy the seats of constitutional power will do nothing about Trump:

Trump’s enablers in Congress have all been lying to us. They pretend there is a normal president in the White House instead of, let’s be honest, a maniac. They know the risk the nation is running. They have the power to alleviate that risk, but they do nothing, instead counting on “mature adults” in the administration to keep Trump from plunging the nation off some cliff.
As for the anonymous “senior official” who penned the op-ed in the Times, I’m not inclined to join the chorus of commentators who say he or she is being cowardly and instead should have gone public, resigned in front of television cameras, marched up to Congress and demanded to testify and . . . and then what? Exactly what would such a performance achieve?
Does anyone believe the Republican leadership in the House and Senate would do anything? As Corker said, Trump’s unfitness has been obvious from the beginning. Republican officials have made the conscious decision to see, hear and speak no evil. We’re probably better off with the “senior official” still in place, saving us from Trump’s destructive whims.
The whistleblower wrote that “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment” by which Trump could be removed, but “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.”

There is only one remedy that will work. Voters will have to take Trump out. And that means they will have to reduce the Republican Party to an impotent rump. Are they up to the job?

We'll see.

Image: Benzinga

10 comments:

Trailblazer said...

So much for the checks and balances of the USA constitution!
I doubt there will be any radical change with the removal of Trump as both parties are complicit in retaining the system .

TB

Owen Gray said...

It's pretty clear, TB, that the republic is self destructing.

Lorne said...

I see in his latest campaign-like rally in Billings, Montana to bolster to his fragmenting ego that Trump is telling his supporters to make sure he isn't impeached by voting in November. Clearly, he knows that ubiquitous and spineless Congressional Republicans are his best hope, Owen.

Owen Gray said...

I've just watched the noon newscast from the CBC, Lorne. Forty-five minutes of the hour were given over to a speech Barack Obama was giving at the University of Illinois. He covered a lot of ground. But one theme he kept returning to was, if you want to restore democracy, get out and vote.

Jay Farquharson said...

While polling before the QAon-op-ed suggested both the House and Senate will turn blue, the ReThug's won't be "destroyed".

There are structural compromises made to appease the Slave States that continue to compromise democracy in America.

States manage the Election process, and only a few have handed the process off to nonpartisan neutral bodies. So the whole process is "rigged".

Each State get's 2 Senators, as a result, the empty, welfare, Slave States and empty spaces have more representation and power, than the populous wealthy States that drive the economy. Demographic trends in the US suggest that by 2040, 17% of the US population will be represented by 70 Senators while 83% of the US will be represented by only 30 Senators.

the same situation impacts the weight of the Electoral College,

and of course, the House.

As a result, a Gullabillies vote in North Dakota is equal to 117 Democratic votes in the Bay Area.

Anonymous said...

Asking whether voters are up to the job presupposes free and fair elections. We all know those don't happen in the US. I don't know that voting alone is enough to change a system that governments have rigged with the collusion of the courts.

Cap

Owen Gray said...

I understand your point, Cap. Hilary beat Trump by three million votes and still lost. Still, it's all about turnout and strategy. The Republicans did everything they could to make Obama a one term president. They didn't succeed.

Owen Gray said...

Conservatives in many places have understood, Jay, that they don't have enough votes to implement policies, so for decades they have used a number of techniques to leverage their influence -- like gerrymandering and voter suppression.

So I freely admit that it will be an uphill climb. But George Bush won the first time when total turnout was fifty two percent. That was about the same total percentage that elected Trump. Obama won with a 62% turn out.

John Kerry is right when he says that those who didn't vote elected Trump.

Jay Farquharson said...

Turnout has, and will have as time passes, less and less effect.

Because the Electoral Votes, Senate Seats, House Seats are apportioned by State, as the Welfare States and Slave States continue to hollow out as the smart ones leave for the wealthy Blue States,

that leaves the Gullabillies, Nazi's and Deplorables with greater and greater relative power.

Democrats started barely talking about it when they lost the House, but they are really starting to talk about how to fix what's broken.

When politics and policy are run for the benifit of Corporations, as it has been in the West since the mid-70's, it gets harder and harder to get out the vote.

Owen Gray said...

Point well taken, Jay. When corporations can buy politicians, those politicians will serve the folks who pay the bills -- their constituents be damned.