NOT SO FAST (CORRECTED)

The first two primary elections of the year are behind us, the Republican caucus in Iowa, and the primary election in New Hampshire and both have resulted in large, double digit, victories for Donald Trump. The next primary will be held in South Carolina on February 3, where polls indicate that Trump has a 63% lead, with Nevada, where Trump will run virtually uncontested, following on February 6. If not before, the Republican primary contest is likely to be decided on March 5, Super Tuesday, when 17 State primaries will be held, including the major ones in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. With the Republican primary reduced to a two-candidate race, Donald Trump versus Nikki Haley, Trump has a 45-point advantage over his remaining opponent in the remaining State primaries and, at this time, it appears that all Trump must do to secure the Republican nomination is staying alive and out of jail.

Counterintuitively, the overwhelming appearance of dominance and inevitability of a Trump victory in the primaries does not translate in a repeat pattern for the general election in November. A look into the numbers behind Trump’s big wins in Iowa and New Hampshire provides the first reason why the predictive value of these wins for the Presidential election in November is minimal, if not zero.

If we look at the Iowa caucus first, we see that Trump only collected 56,260 votes from 752,200 registered Republican voters in the State. The vast majority of Republicans stayed home (the weather was nasty) and of the 110,298 voters who came out, Trump collected only 51% of their votes. In other words, 49% of the Republican voters in the Iowa caucus preferred someone else than Trump as their nominee for the presidency.

In New Hampshire the results for Trump were not much better. While among registered Republicans Trump trounced Nikki Haley by 74% versus 25%, with registered Independents the roles were reversed with Haley collecting 64% of the votes against Trump with 35%. As much as Trump ended up winning the New Hampshire Republican primary by 54% of the vote, the numbers show that 25% of Republican voters refused to vote for him and that among registered Independents he was trounced by Nikki Haley. Independents represented 44% of the votes cast in the New Hampshire primary. According to the exit polls, 6% of the voters were self-declared Democrats and 95% of them voted for Haley. 35% of the Haley voters said that they would not vote for Trump in the general election.

We need to keep in mind that we were witnessing Republican pre-elections here and that Trumps opponents in these contests were other Republican candidates. Democrats are essentially out of the picture, other than that in a number of States they are allowed to vote in Republican primaries. But there are no Democrats to vote for in these elections.

The way to look at the results in Iowa and New Hampshire is that ten months ahead of the general election Trump has the uncontested support of only 50-75% of Republican voters and no more than 35% of Independent voters.

Donald Trump collected roughly 74 million votes in his 2020 race against Joe Biden, who collected roughly 81 million votes. In the likely repeat contest for 2024 he cannot afford to lose any part of the electorate that came out for him in 2020. In that election only 6% of Registered Republicans voted against him. Even though many Republican voters who voted against him in the primaries may vote for him when their choice is between Trump or Biden, he really cannot afford to lose any of them (by staying home or voting for someone else) if he wants to do better against Biden in 2024 than he did in 2020. Similarly, he cannot afford to lose the support of any of the 41% of Independents who voted for him in 2020.

That’s why I’m saying: Not So Fast! Trump has surely conquered any Republican opposition. He has consolidated his base and his vise grip on the Republican party. But, to what avail?

If you, like I do, believe that a resounding Trump defeat in the 2024 Presidential election is required to preserve the constitutional republican democracy in America, you can find solace in the numbers beneath the primary results and in the following facts and likelihoods:

·      Trump on top of the Republican ticket has yet to prove a winning proposition. He would most likely not have made it to the White House in 2016 if Hillary Clinton had seriously campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin, Jim Comey had not made a last-minute about face and Russia had not interfered in our elections.

·        He has centered his campaign on revenge and retribution, ingratiating his MAGA base but alienating about everybody else. He does not seem to realize that he starts off with a 7 million vote deficit and would need to expand his support base.

·        His legal challenges, including one or more possible criminal convictions ahead of Election Day, will impact his chances negatively.

·        His record and campaign rhetoric will cast the upcoming election as a contest between constitutional republican democracy and populist authoritarianism and only fools bet against deep seated democratic values instilled in the American voting public.

·        Wild cards are the age, health, and cognitive capacities of the contenders who are both well over the age of prime performance and, relatedly, the turnout of the young vote. 

LIZ

In the epilogue to Liz Cheney’s just released book ‘Oath and Honor’ she writes: “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.” It is as remarkable as it is encouraging that a die-hard conservative and life-long Republican is willing to suspend her ideological beliefs in favor of creating a (temporary and single-purpose) pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian coalition with Democrats and Independents who share her belief in the overarching necessity to preserve our constitutional Republic. I assume Liz realizes that, if she gets her way, she may have to endure ‘damaging policies’ not for a four-year term, but for a full eight years of a Democrat in the White House and yet, she does not blink. She is still wrestling with the question what she can do, other than voicing her fierce opposition against Trump and his acolytes as she has done in several capacities and in her book, to convince the public to unequivocally reject authoritarianism when they go to the voting booth in November of next year.

The first primaries, the Iowa caucus on January 15, the New Hampshire primary on January 23, the South Carolina primary on February 24, and the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5 will show if, as polling suggests, Trump will be the Republican nominee for the 2024 Presidential election. If the conventional wisdom prevails and Trump is on his way to become his party’s candidate, Liz Cheney will have to decide if she wants to oppose him directly by running against him. She has repeatedly declared that she is willing to do so if it appears that her opposition would likely help keeping Trump out of the White House for a second term. That will be a difficult calculation to make. She will not run to win. Her sole purpose would be to siphon enough electoral votes away from Trump to deny him the 270 he will need to become President for a second term. But her participation in the race, together with other independent or third-party candidates, would present a realistic possibility that none of the contenders obtain the threshold 270 electoral votes, in which case the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives, where each State would have one vote and each state delegation would vote en bloc. Currently, 26 States have a majority Republican delegation, 22 States have a majority Democratic delegation, and 2 States have an equally divided delegation. The uniquely American constitutional provision that gives each of the States only one vote when the House is called upon to elect the President places, as Liz Cheney herself has stressed, exceptional weight on the election for the House of Representatives. Little doubt that, if the current constellation holds, the vote will go in favor of the Republican nominee, but a little shift towards the Democrats in the 2024 election could alter that picture. Just like in the American system the President can be elected by a minority of the voting public, it is possible for one of the parties in Congress to have a numerical majority in the House of Representatives without having the votes to elect the President if the election is thrown to the House.

Given this uncertainty, my speculation is that Liz Cheney will not herself contest the 2024 Presidential Election but work very hard on building a coalition of Democrats, Independents, and Trump-averse Republicans to defeat Trump even if it means that the presidency is delivered to the Democratic candidate. What she will do in the unlikely case that the Republicans nominate someone else than Trump remains to be seen, but in that case, she will definitely not run for the office herself and less likely support the Democratic nominee. Although she says for now to be single focused on the 2024 race and the defeat of Trump, she has made it abundantly clear that she is done with the Republican party that has kicked her out of Congress and refused to hold Trump to account for his refusal to support the Constitution, concede defeat, and arrange a peaceful transfer of power. In several of the many book-interviews she has given since her book was published, she has informed us that, after November 2024, she will explore with other like-minded conservatives the feasibility of either taking back control of the GOP or creating a new, truly republican and truly conservative party.

At this point it is way too early to say if Liz Cheney’s crusade to preserve democracy in the USA will prevail. If we could believe current polling, she is fighting an uphill battle as poll after poll suggests that Trump is a shoo-in for the GOP nomination and a favorite over Biden in the battle states that will decide this election. But there is a lot of fight in Liz Cheney, and she will not be alone in the fight to the finish. She is capable of mobilizing a coalition for democracy from all those Republicans who already have borne witness to the threat Trump poses to the functioning of our democratic republic, Democrats, and Independents.

I am confident that when the moment of truth arrives and Americans fill out their ballots for the November 5, 2024 election, they will realize that the only choice in front of them is between a fully democratic and an autocratic form of government. A choice between the Constitution and chaos. And I’m confident that at that moment a large majority of them will unambiguously decide for democracy over autocracy. If that comes to pass, it will in no small part be thanks to the profile in courage exhibited by Liz Cheney, the rare politician who valued honor and constitutionality over her political career.

TWO HARVARD PROFESSORS

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are two Harvard professors of government and co-authors of two books that are addressing the causes of the ever more evident shortcomings in the American experiment in democracy. The books are “How Democracies Die” published in 2018 and “Tyranny of the Minority” published this year.

For anyone who is interested in understanding why politics in America have become so dysfunctional and why America has been sliding down the scale of the most democratically governed nations in the world, these two books are highly recommended reading. In fact, they should be mandatory reading in political science classes at the high school and college level.

The authors put much of the blame for the slide in America’s standing among the world's democracies to what they term “excessively counter-majoritarian institutions” including the fact that updates to the US Constitution have become nearly impossible to make. The authors point to many other countries where, over time, counter majoritarian elements have been removed, one after the other, from their governance structure.

While acknowledging that, just because of the existence of excessively counter-majoritarian institutions, required changes in the American public governance system are difficult to make, the authors point to the fact that America has in the past proven that it is capable of making previously considered impossible changes in the rules of its government e.g. when it abolished slavery, when it enshrined civil rights, when it established women’s right to vote, and when it transferred the right to elect the Senate from State Legislatures to the People of America.

In their book “Tyranny of the Minority” the two Harvard professors offer 15 practical suggestions for further democratization of the American political process that I quote hereunder (with only a few edits for brevity). The recommendations are grouped under three major headlines: Uphold the right to vote; Ensure that election outcomes reflect majority preferences; and Empower governing majorities.         

Here they are:

UPHOLD THE RIGHT TO VOTE

1.       Pass a constitutional amendment establishing a right to vote for all citizens, which would provide a solid base to litigate voting restrictions.

2.       Establish automatic registration in which all citizens are registered to vote when they turn eighteen.

3.       Expand early voting and easy mail-in voting options for citizens of all states.

4.       Make Election Day a Sunday or a national holiday, so that work responsibilities do not discourage Americans from voting.

5.       Restore voting rights (without additional fines or fees) to all ex-felons who have served time.

6.       Restore national-level voting rights protections. Reinstate federal oversight of election rules and administration.

7.       Replace the current system of partisan electoral administration with one in which state and local electoral administration is in the hands of professional, nonpartisan officials.

ENSURE THAT ELECTION OUTCOMES REFLECT MAJORITY PREFERENCES

8.       Abolish the Electoral College and replace it with a national popular vote.

9.       Reform the Senate so that the number of senators elected per state is more proportional to the population of each state.

10.   Replace “first-past-the-post” electoral rules and single member districts for the House of Representatives and state legislatures with a form of proportional representation in which voters elect multiple representatives from larger electoral districts and parties win seats in proportion to the share of vote they win. This would require repeal of the 1967 Uniform Congressional District Act, which mandates single-member districts for House elections.

11.   Eliminate partisan gerrymandering via the creation of independent redistricting commissions such as those used in California, Colorado, and Michigan.

12.   Update the Apportionment Act of 1929, which fixed the House of Representatives at 435, and return to the original design of the House that expands in line with population growth.

EMPOWER GOVERNING MAJORITIES

13.   Abolish the Senate filibuster.

14.   Establish term limits (perhaps twelve or eighteen years) for Supreme Court justices to regularize the Supreme Court appointment process so that every president has the same number of appointments per term.

15.   Make it easier to amend the Constitution by eliminating the requirement that three-quarters of state legislatures ratify any proposed amendment.

The push by two Harvard professors is not enough to break the dam. What America needs now is a nationwide popular movement, akin to the abolition movement, the suffragette movement, and the civil rights movement, insisting on democratic reform of our institutions, including the Constitution, and elimination of the remaining counter-majoritarian institutions. For America to lead the world, it cannot afford to be anything less than a model democracy. It was designed to be that model when it adopted its Constitution in 1789, it now must catch up with the rest of the world.

A YEAR FROM NOW

The date for the next national election, in which the White House, the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, State legislatures, and many State governor seats are up for grabs is set for November 5, 2024. That is only a year from now. It is no hyperbole to label next year’s election ‘the election of the century’ even though many pundits named the 2020 election by the same label. Then, like again next year, the main issue was a popular referendum on Trump and Trumpism. Except that this time around it is even more clearly not so much a vote between nominees of the two parties as a vote between governance doctrines. 2024 is shaping up as the year in which the American voters must make up their mind if they are still intent on having a government of the People, by the People, and for the People, or if they are willing to be autocratically governed by an all-controlling executive branch.

Yes, there will also be elections this year, on the 7^th of November, but none of a national scope. Some may be bellwethers for how the 2024 elections may turn out. In my State of Ohio, for instance, the main issue, issue #1 on the ballot is a proposed constitutional amendment establishing “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety”. This popular driven initiative, which is opposed by the Republican DeWine administration, follows the defeat, in August, of an administration driven initiative to require a qualified majority of 60 percent and support in each of Ohio’s 80 counties for a vote to amend the Ohio Constitution. For the proposed constitutional amendment about Reproductive Freedom, a simple 51 percent of the popular vote will be enough to pass. This ballot initiative is a popular reaction to the passing in 2019 of a strict ‘heartbeat’ law by the heavily jerrymandered GOP controlled Ohio legislature (which law is currently suspended pending judicial review). In essence, the issue, in this election as in the big election of November 2024, is about the functioning of our democracy. Are we self-governing or subject to the tyranny of a controlling minority?

The campaign around Ohio issue 1 brings to the surface the frightening degree of dishonesty and deception condoned in political campaigns. Opponents of issue 1 want to make you believe that the amendment for Reproductive Freedom will lead to horrifying scenes of late term abortion butchering and unfettered access to abortion by juveniles, completely ignoring the provision in the proposed amendment that abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability and suspending belief in the high standards of conduct by medical professionals and the ethical values of the American people. On the other hand, the proponents of Ohio issue 1 are too easily papering over the legitimate rights to protection of the unborn, scaring the voters with an Orwellian ‘big brother’ government taking control of every aspect of our lives, conveniently ignoring the democratic and judicial checks on governmental excesses or abuses.

With the advent of A.I. and the dominance of social media in our lives, combined with the near boundless interpretation of our first amendment rights of free speech, it becomes very hard to determine who and what to believe anymore. Almost impossible to separate fact from fiction when all sides, enabled by previously non-existent information technology, are permitted to create their own alternative realities. How can we expect people to make the right choice at the voting booth when they can no longer determine what campaign rhetoric is false or mere propaganda and what is factually correct?

The November 2024 election will be held at the confluence of a legitimate policy debate about the management of the country’s business, its finances, its national security, its political agenda, and its role in the world and a fight for the soul of the nation fed by spurious identity politics: will it be increasingly democratic or increasingly autocratic? With a scarcity of unbiased, fact based, information on the choices on the ballot, people, particularly those who are only casually attentive to policy choices, are forced to rely on emotion, gut feel, and the voice of their preferred media channels when making their fateful ballot choices.

A year out from the election, we can only expect that control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate will be decided by extremely narrow margins. It is the nature of the beast: the population of the United States is hopelessly divided in its partisan allegiance and kept in place by its adherence to either Fox News or MSNBC. The stalemate this political reality creates in Congress, combined with the rules that pertain to the management of the agenda of the House and the Senate, means that there is no room or incentive for a meaningful policy debate and thus, the peoples’ choice is forced back to identity politics. And the world is watching in amazement and disbelief how one of its political parties is well on its way to place its bets on a failed former President, who is twice impeached and three times indicted for crimes committed in office and against the proper functioning of our democracy.

It is an outright depressing thought that, even if democracy wins over autocracy in the 2024 election and the person who belongs in prison is kept out of the White House, the chance for meaningful policy advancement will remain stymied by a stalemate in Congress. It is not clear if and how this impasse can be cleared. And the American people will be kept waiting for fiscal responsibility on the part of its government, for a comprehensive immigration policy, for climate protection, for gun safety regulation, and for diminished inequality in income and wellness between segments of our society.

Depressing as this may be, we are well advised to accept that we can win only one battle at a time. And, as former GOP congressman and member of the January 6 Commission Adam Kinzinger recently said on a PBS interview: “I consider there to be only one issue on the ballot for 2024, do you believe in democracy or not?”

That will indeed be the challenge the American voters will have to address a year from now.

THE GOOSE AND THE GANDER

We are all familiar with the saying “What is good for the goose is good for the gander” (a gander is a male goose).  It is meant to say that if a boy is allowed to do something, a girl should be allowed to do the same thing. The saying was put in practice most notably when women were allowed to vote, when colored people were afforded the same rights as Caucasians, and when the military allowed women to serve in combat roles. It does not mean that if something is good for a certain segment of the population, it is automatically also good for everyone else (for that we use the saying that “The rising tide lifts all boats”). So, if we think of the goose and the gander in terms of the political reality of the two-party system in the United States, it is evident that what serves the interest of the Democratic Party does not serve the interest of the Republican Party as well. In our two-party system it is a zero-sum game. The national interest in a truly representative democracy is taking a backseat in this partisan contest. And herein lies the problem.

There is no denying that the current American political constellation is dysfunctional. It has been for a good while, but never more so than today, now that one of the two parties has decided not to be guided by the Constitution but by the whims of a narcissistic, populist, leader. That party is in complete disarray with House Republicans and the Speaker of the House held hostage by a handful of populist extremists and House Republicans at odds with Senate Republicans on vital issues like the funding of the government, the budget, and support for Ukraine. Almost certainly this disarray will result in another shutdown of the government when on September 30 the current fiscal year expires. This internecine squabble would not be as damaging if it was not for the additional dimension that a substantial segment of the Republican Party signals that it is ready to forego democracy as the governing principle for the nation. Republican lawmakers are making no bones about this when they say: “we are a republic, not a democracy” as if there was a contradiction in terms between the two. When saying this they are clearly echoing the sentiment of their cult leader who has repeatedly maintained that when you are the President you can call all the shots even if they are illegal or unconstitutional. L’etat c’est moi!

This dysfunction brings me back to the goose and the gander. As I have stated many times before, there is no lack of ideas about ways in which our system of government can be improved, and democracy can be protected from subversion by authoritarian impulses. Most prominently in these deliberations figure the elimination of the Electoral College and electing the President by a direct national popular vote, expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives, putting term limits in place for members of Congress, eliminating the “filibuster Rule” in the Senate, taking money out of politics, and eliminating the practice of jerrymandering from the creation of voting districts. The problem with all these suggestions, and the reason that none of them have ever gained traction, is that implementation of any of them requires, if not amendment of the Constitution itself, amendment of established federal and State laws, procedural rules set by Congress, or abandoning age-old covenants and practices. The hurdles to fundamental improvement of the system of public governance in the United States are so high that even the most obvious ways to improve the system have no chance of getting implemented. First, the hurdle for a change in the Constitution requiring a qualified 2/3^rd majority of votes in both Houses of Congress and ratification by 75% of the legislatures of the States of the Union, is so high that it cannot be achieved without complete bi-partisan support. In effect this means that going forward only innocuous, largely symbolic, amendments will ever have a chance to pass. Under current conditions, the avenue of using amendments to the Constitution as a means of improving public governance is closed off.

The next, equally obstructive, hurdle is in the construct of a two-party system, where the parties have roughly equal support. Every measure that we can think of if we want to improve the system by enhancing both democracy and effectiveness has a calculable impact on the electoral chances for each of the two parties. It is a zero-point game. If it benefits the Democrats, it hurts Republicans and vice-versa. Take jerrymandering which has largely enabled Republican popular minorities to achieve majorities in State legislatures. Prohibiting jerrymandering will hurt Republicans and benefit Democrats. So would elimination of the Electoral College and election of the President by direct national popular vote. Similarly, expanding the number of seats in the House of Representatives will give more representation to the larger population zones and thus enhance the prospects for Democrats, hurting the Republicans. Taking money out of politics and imposing term limits on members of Congress are less predictable in their impact on electoral chances for each of the parties, but will, in the unlikely event that they will ever come up for consideration, still be judged on their deliverable for the political future of both parties. I am hard pressed finding a system improvement that would result in a clear benefit to the Republicans and a disadvantage to the Democrats and conclude from that that the current system favors the Republicans and allows them to turn popular vote deficiencies into majority representation in Congress as well as in State Legislatures. In other words, the current system turns minority protection into minority advantage.

The only way to make the American political system more democratic is by lowering the hurdles to system improvement. A voting rights bill has been languishing in Congress for years under the Trump and Biden administrations. But unless both parties rededicate themselves to making the Union a more perfect democracy it is unlikely to ever become law. In American politics, this day and age, if it is good for the goose, it is not good for the gander!

15 MONTHS

Mark the date: Election Day 2024 is November 5. That is 447 days, a little less than 15 months, away and a lot can happen in the intervening time that will determine the viability, the intrinsic strength, of the American democracy. Benjamin Franklin was prophetic when, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention he was asked “What have you wrought?” and he answered “a Republic if you can keep it”.

The Presidential election of 2024 will be like no other in American history because we now know that the main contender on the part of the Republican Party will have to defend against four separate criminal indictments in addition to three civil cases in which he is the defendant, all of that while campaigning for the Republican nomination at the Republican convention in mid July 2024 in Milwaukee. If he is nominated, there is a realistic chance that he will be convicted of any of the 91 felony charges now levied against him in four different jurisdictions before the voters will be asked to pass their verdict. He may even find himself in jail on Election Day.

Further uncertainty is inserted into the process by the fact that the two most likely contenders for the Presidency will be in their late seventies and early eighties respectively and neither one of them is granted eternal life. It is a whole different matter, but it should concern all of us that American public governance is in the hands of so many politicians who have very little time left to experience for themselves the far-reaching policy decisions they make while in office. We can expect a forceful rejection by the younger voters of the dominance of their grandparents’ generations in Congress and in the race for the White House. Can the same people who have been complicit in building an insurmountable mountain of public debt and have refused to address the nation’s major challenges of climate protection, entitlement reform, gun control, immigration control, inequities in healthcare and education, and, most importantly, voting rights, be trusted with the responsibility to solve these matters for the future?

The voters in the 2024 election now must wake up to the astonishing revelation that no provision in our much-revered Constitution prohibits a convicted felon from ascending to the Presidency of the United States of America. Clearly, it has been beyond the imagination of our founding fathers and the authors of our Constitution that voters would ever elect a convicted criminal to the highest office in the land or even vote for a candidate who is standing trial for conspiracy to defraud the United States. Yet, the Constitution does not leave the people of the United States entirely without protection against the risk of putting an undeserving candidate in the White House (or any other civil or military office of the United States or any State of the nation).

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution bars any person from taking office who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.

In the 155-year history of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 has not been invoked against any candidate running for election to the Presidency of the United States. And it is not clear who would have legal standing to sue for disqualification of a candidate on the grounds of having engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States. Certainly the U.S. Department of Justice as the guardian of U.S. laws, but also any contenders or the political party they represent? No doubt any pursuit of the applicability of Section 3 to a candidate for the U.S. Presidency will have to be litigated all the way to the Supreme Court. With the four indictments in place against one of the contenders for the 2024 Presidential Election, the first question to come up will be whether any of the alleged charges against the candidate amount to insurrection or rebellion against the United States. It will be intriguing to find out how the current justices on the Supreme Court, three of whom have been nominated to the court by the indicted contender, will answer that pivotal question.

Much as we may be miffed by the fact that no provision of the law, other than Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, prevents a convicted criminal from getting elected to the Presidency, it is even more incredible that public opinion itself does not appear to disqualify the four-time indicted contender. On the contrary, his standing in the polls has gone up with each of the three earlier indictments. As of this writing it is too early to gauge if the fourth indictment will change the polls, but it does not look likely that it will keep the defendant in these indictments from prevailing in the primaries and obtaining the nomination of his Republican Party.

This alone should cause us to pause and reflect. If a good part of our population can live with the prospect of having a person accused of felonies against the republic placed in the White House, it is a good indication that those people vie for an authoritarian approach to public governance, democracy be damned. It confirms our fear and suspicion that the 2024 election will not just be a contest of personalities and parties, but a referendum on the American system of public governance, whether it should be democratic or autocratic. With the evidence we have in hand we have compelling reason to conclude that going into this election cycle we have one ‘democratic’ and one ‘autocratic’ party. As per our Constitution, the choice is up to the People, 447 days from today.

But a lot can change in 15 months. Stay tuned.

250 YEARS

Who will preside over the 250^th birthday of America on July 4, 2026? And will we still be living in the world’s leading democracy on that day? My overwhelming concern today is that too many Americans no longer care about democracy as long as the candidate of their choice comes out on top.

Like millions of Americans, I watched the pageantry of the 4^th of July celebrations on the Mall and the steps of the Capitol this week and, for an evening, felt good about America. The flags, the music, the fireworks, and, most of all, the crowd occupying the iconic spaces of Capitol Hill Parks gave the impression that America cares, that it honors its past and is eager to carry its heritage forward. On moments like that, you want to believe that what unfolds before your eyes is representative of the national mood and that democracy is alive and well, but the next day it does not exactly look that way. If anything tangible should come from these moments of euphoria, it would be that we make Election Day a national holiday and, by doing so, make it abundantly clear that there is no higher cause to celebrate than the solemn act of voting for who to represent us in government. There is never going to be a better time to make this happen than in 2026 when we celebrate 250 years of national existence.

But first we have to get there. Momentous events await us on our way to the quarter-millennial celebration. I wish it wasn’t so, but more likely than not we will be trying a former President who is also a current Presidential Candidate in criminal court and then we will have to see if the nation is ready to put that same person back into the White House. We will have to see if, despite the extreme polarization in our politics, we can find a jury of 12 people who are all willing to toss their political preference aside and pass impartial judgment on a former President some of them will have voted for and may want to vote for again in 2024. And it looks like a near certainty that, whichever way these momentous matters will be decided, half the population will feel cheated by the outcome.

How much better off would we have been if, to prepare for and honor the 250^th anniversary of our republic, we had committed to critically evaluating our public governance model, decide what works and did not quite work as intended, all with an eye on perfecting our republican democratic model. We could even have decided to hold a new constitutional convention to revisit the foundational principles of a multi-state democratic republic in today’s day and age and submit to popular vote a revised Constitution that is, better than the current version, equipped to address the exigencies and realities of the world we live in today and in the foreseeable future. The harsh reality is that we are so consumed by the political acrimony of the moment that nobody’s eyes are on an opportunity to make our 250^th anniversary meaningful in our constant strive to perfect our union.

An update of the Constitution alone would not redress all the flaws that stand in the way of a functioning republican democracy. We need to ask ourselves how it is that Congress, the legislative branch of government, is incapable or unwilling to address the most pressing societal needs of a fiscally responsible management of the nation’s finances, protection against the proliferation of guns, an orderly management of immigration needs, and universal access to affordable, state of the art, healthcare, and education. We can rightfully complain about the Supreme Court doing away with affirmative action in higher education and blocking the executive branch from providing relief from a stifling student debt burden, but we need to realize that the Supreme Court only gets to rule on these matters because Congress has not made any attempt to resolve them in the legislative process. With a “do nothing” Congress it is inevitable that both the executive branch and the judicial branch of government step in to fill the void.

Patience pays off. With little fanfare and somewhat under the radar the sponsors of the right wing of the conservative movement have, over many years, filled the ranks of State Legislatures and the Judiciary with candidates of their choosing. Their patience paid off big time when, against all odds and against the popular vote, Trump got placed in the White House and three vacancies opened up at the Supreme Court during his time in office. In quick order, the Supreme Court was stacked with three adherents of the Heritage Foundation with the effect that many Supreme Court rulings have pushed the law of the land far to the right of what a functional Congress would have been able to legislate. An ineffectual Congress handcuffs a President and shifts power to the Supreme Court that has the authority to further limit the executive power of the President but is, itself, unaccountable to the public.

We have only three years to go before we reach the 250^th birthday of our republic. We should not be satisfied with the status quo. We would honor our past by dedicating ourselves to improving our public governance, our democracy, for the future. Improvement will have to start with Congress. It will help a great deal if the House of Representatives would be expanded to reflect population growth by State since 1927 when House membership was set at 435. If, at the same time gerrymandering can be outlawed and money influences can be severely limited, we could make some real progress towards a better functioning democracy. We simply must find a way to make Congress do the job it has been assigned by the Constitution: legislate us out of trouble by addressing, one by one, the significant challenges confronting our political, economic, and social lives.

Let’s make sure that on July 4, 2026 we have real reason to celebrate!