Live-blogging the End of the Republic
Live-blogging the End of the Republic
The title of this piece is increasingly my feeling about the times we are living in. Almost everywhere it has been implemented, the Madisonian system has ultimately failed, ending in presidential autocracy. All of the tools are now in place for the US to fail as well. If Trump doesn’t succeed in a second term, then the Sulla or Caesar who ends our republican experiment is alive now and has learned the necessary lessons. All that is missing is their competent and strategic implementation.
The bottom line is: provided a President has 34 Senators and a majority of the Supreme Court who will back him, he can do anything he wants. And I’m not even sure the Supreme Court majority is necessary. If Trump were to defy the Supreme Court about, e.g., his tax returns, who exactly is going to force him to obey?
I’ve made this point before, and Matt Yglesias immediately picked up on it. A couple of days ago, Chris Hayes came around to the same conclusion:
One way to understand the constitutional grant of powers to the president is that the president can do *literally* whatever he wants as long as he can hold onto the votes of 35 [sic*] senators in his party.
* Greater than 1/3rd = 34. Math, bitches!
Meanwhile conservative columnist Rich Lowry has flat-out stated, in essence, that he would prefer a Trump who tramples on the Constitution but appoints judges who will outlaw abortion to a presidential candidate who believes in the rule of law. Which proves, as my Sibling Unit pointed out to me, David Frum‘s point that “If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.”
While winning in 2020 is essential, simply going back to “normal” isn’t going to do the trick. The Constitutional fabric of a President being constrained by the law has been rent. Shoring up and repairing the weak points via updating the Constitution about things like the Presidential veto, emergency powers, appointments to legislative bureaucracies, lame duck sessions of Congress, gerrymandering, and the right to vote are all necessary, even if they appear to be a superhuman lift.
In the meantime, I’ve been reading about the Republics of Venice and Genoa, and the book about the Dutch Republic is in queue. It does seem that there are some strong points of Republics that can lead them to last a very long time. I’ll update once my reading is further along. I’ve also concluded Eric Foner’s “The Second Founding,” about the post-Civil War Amendments, which not only sets forth a compelling rebuttal to the Federalist Society’s cramped and dismissive constitutional theory, but also specifically suggests a completely effective Congressional solution for gerrymandering. Finally, I’ve gone back and re-read my 2015-16 articles on forecasting the presidential election, so that I can update those for 2020. Hopefully I’ll have time to do some of this starting this week.
Excellent post. Thanks!
Taken to the extreme, the president can declare himself president for life. If he has the armed forces in his pocket, no one can stop him.
Problems with the U.S. Constitution that could lead to dictatorship were famously noted long ago. In 1946 when Kurt Godel was preparing for his citizenship hearing he reported to his friend Oskar Morgenstern that “in looking at the Constitution to his distress he had found some inner contradictions and he could show how in a perfectly legal manner it would be possible for someone to become a dictator and set up a Fascist regime …”. Months later, Morgenstern drove Godel to Trenton for his examination along with the second witness, Godel’s good friend Albert Einstein. The examiner asked Godel what country he had come from and what kind of government they had there. Godel replied Austria, which was a republic but the constitution was such that it finally was changed into a dictatorship. When the examiner said that this could not happen in this country, Godel replied “Oh yes, I can prove it.” Fortunately, the examiner said “let’s not go into this.” Morgenstern’s account of the incident, from the Institute for Advanced Study archives, is here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9_mR_M2zOc4Y2VhNzZkMDQtMDdlNC00YWQ0LWJlYzQtMzAxZjAxMGYxNzM5/view
Since Godel was the foremost mathematical logician of his time, one can be certain that his proof was accurate.
Bob:
You provided a letter, not the proof. Do you have his proof (his comments) of whether a dictator can take over?
Evaporate Trump’s base: make your number one issue to institute labor union cert/recert/decert elections at every private (non-gov) workplace.
Trump is only in the White House because Obama did nothing for working people. In NYT’s Nate Cohn’s words: “[Mr. Obama] would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html
In 1988, Michigan went for Jesse Jackson in the Democratic primary by 54%.
Promise these voters a future where a critical mass of union density will run the country for them AND THEY WILL COME!
* * * * * *
Republicans had a bill in their quiver (HR 2723, 115th, Employee Rights Act) to require recert/decert votes in all unions with over 50% turnover of membership since they began. Easy enough to understand: if folks with a union need help to make sure they really want a union, how much more (desperately!) do folks without a union need a labor law to ensure they can have a union if they want it?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2723/text
* * * * * *
PS. I think most of the military is ready to march in and toss Trump out is he tries any constitutional funny business. Assuming they needed any extra incentive just think North Korea, Putin and the Kurds.
Key word is republic. And not just any republic, a republic composed of California with 35 million and Vermont with 600 thousand.
Add to that the 50 little hoover fraud and we got big problems, namely small states cannot get economies of scale for national program.,
Worry rises in military over Trump’s decision-making
By Barbara Starr and Nicole Gaouette, CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/27/politics/pentagon-concern-trump-decision-making/index.html
As everywhere, the highest educated — which in the military means the highest ranks — will support Trump the least.
The republic ends with sudden stops in the senate.
The next increment of a national program kills Wyoming, Alaska and Vermont; they are not viable. The Constitution specifies a specific solution, halting the work of the senate.
It is, by the way, a 250 year problem, one never solved and the cause of civil wars which wipe out some 3% of our population and causes the economists pushing ’50 little Hoovers’ to be brought up on war crimes rials.
The solution is quite simple, actually, an accounting change. We need to move all the earmarks in all our programs up a notch in the budget rtee. In each budget period, the second priority, after interest payments, is a negotiated cash swamp from the House to the Senate, direct to state capitals on a per state equal distribution. This very simply solution allows each of the smaller states to find the economies of scale needed.
The net result is a senate that handles cash management better, the primary dealer system is thus eliminated and a major source of inequality abolished.
We cannot get the simple solution because our ’50 little hoover’ fraud is designed to create economists jobs for string pushers. A lot of economists will be run out of town as soon as the simple accounting solution is enacted.
And it is coming. Small states are organizing effectively, they understand the problem and it is a hot topic of debate in Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. The middle states like Colorado already taking actions.
If you go into the debate about nursing shortages in rural states, like Vermont, I hear intelligent voices raising the issue. Nation student loans are moving young kids away from small states. Social Security is sending retirees to Florida. Obamacare driving nurses to large states with economies of scale.
Economists who assume constant returns to scale are on the way to trial, I kid you not. It is an absolute fraud, and they know it.
Hi NDD:
The fabric of the constitution has been rent because each legislative body has been changed over the years. As I pointed out previously, the House no longer represents by population which was done to offset the Senate and its two members per state thereby giving equality to less populated states with more populated states. The Senate has been altered such that a minority can hold captive. Aaron Burr thought Senators were gentlemen and could be moved from positions without the previous question motion.
I think the US will eventually have to split up. The North-East and the West Coast will have had enough of paying the bills for the idiots in the rest of the country at some point.
Dennis,
What proof do you have that white union members have voted Dem for the last fifty years?
You will notice of course that in all of those states you mentioned, their state governments have been dominated by the GOP for decades. Voted into office by the white working class, the GOP has passed right to work laws in Wisconsin and have attempted to pass them in the other states.
So how does that relate to your union based Dem voters?
EM,
Ask the folks at Target and Walgreens and Walmart and McDonald’s.
NYT numbers: Obama could have beaten red-white-and-blue McCain and Wall Street Romney without the voters in Milwaukee, Detroit or Cleveland.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html
In the 1988 Democratic primary Michael Dukakis and Dick Gephart came out distant second and third to Jesse Jackson who had 54%. They will vote for anybody who they think will give them a better deal. Obama did zip for labor.
Point is — no matter what you predict — employees should simply have the free option (NO INTIMIDATION — THAT’S THE LAW supposedly) to have a union if they want to — no matter whether anybody thinks they will avail themselves or it or whether anybody thinks it is good for them — AND THE ONLY WAY THAT CAN HAPPEN IS REGULARLY SCHEDULED ELECTIONS.
What’s the alternative: draconian punishments for management interference in organizing — hiring tens of thousands of investigators — putting half our entrepreneur class behind bars? :-O
I see no reason why Jackson victory in a primary has anything to do with anything. Nor do I care about the Cleveland, Milwaukee thing. Turnout is all that matters.
Meanwhile, you need to stop with your criticism of the Obama Admin and labor. Faced with a totally obstructive Congress it was not easy.
“The Workplace Legacy of Barack Obama
The last eight years saw a surge in worker-friendly regulations as the nation shook off the deepest recession since the Great Depression. But some of his efforts failed, and a Republican president and Congress could further undo key Obama policies.
Barack Obama had been in office a mere eight days when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act making it easier for women to sue employers for equal pay.
It was the first law he passed as president and a bellwether of eight years of actions to expand rights and protections for American workers that had employers balking at the prospect of added regulation.
Fair pay was just the start. From the early days of the recession, the Obama White House promoted policies to put people to work, improve pay and benefits and protect their rights on the job.
Workplace boards and agencies soon flexed muscles atrophied by eight years of the Bush administration. Other prominent initiatives extended minimum wages and overtime pay for home health workers, and provided guidelines to stop employers from misclassifying employees as independent contractors. The Affordable Care Act, arguably Obama’s biggest, most controversial achievement, gave people not covered by employer-sponsored health insurance — including millions working in the growing gig economy — the opportunity to buy coverage through online marketplaces.
A Republican Congress pushed back on his efforts, leading Obama to use an unprecedented level of executive orders to change workplace and employment-related regulations for federal employees and contractors, moves he hoped private-sector employers would follow.
Not all of Obama’s labor and workplace initiatives succeeded. He failed to raise the federal minimum wage. Immigration reform remains in a holding pattern. An overtime pay law, a hallmark of his administration that would have affected about 4.2 million middle-wage workers, all but died after a federal judge blocked it in late November of 2016 shortly before it was set to take effect.
His relationship with unions was also inconsistent. A two-tier wage contract with union auto workers helped save U.S. automakers during the recession, but was widely unpopular with workers, as was Obama’s stance on trade. Obama appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees labor laws and employees’ right to organize, issued more pro-union decisions than at any other time in 30 years, but other efforts to push through pro-union legislation weren’t successful.”
https://www.workforce.com/2017/01/17/workplace-legacy-barack-obama/
And Trump and the GOP? They have been anti labor for almost my entire life. And trump is the worst of the bunch.
“Trump has wasted no time in rolling back many of the rather mild labor regulations that are in place to give workers some level of protection. He supported the repeal of Obama’s Fair Play and Safe Workplace Executive Order that protected workers from wage theft. Before Trump, workers had to earn over $23,000 a year before the requirement of overtime pay kicked in. Now that requirement has been moved to $35,000, eliminating that opportunity for the growing number of low-wage workers in the American economy. For these same low-wage workers, Trump ran on supporting a $10/hr minimum wage and has yet to take any action on it.
Worker health and safety has perhaps suffered the most under Trump’s regime. Among the many things workers give up when they go to their job each day is a guarantee of physical and mental safety. 5,147 workers died on the job in 2017 alone. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is being severely attacked and undermined, as their number of workplace safety inspectors has fallen to the lowest ever in the agency’s existence.
To further add to the damage, Trump removed a rule requiring corporations to keep records of worker injuries from year-to-year. In order to save the industry some $11 million a year, the Trump administration canceled a requirement for training for construction and shipyard workers to avoid exposure to beryllium, a known carcinogen.
Besides executive orders, Trump can use the various levers of the state and appoint personnel to do the bidding of the corporate sector. We’ve already seen the damage that can be done in this realm with the Janus decision against public sector unions.
Trump has left no doubt about his intentions towards workers by appointing Eugene Scalia as the new Secretary of Labor. Eugene is following in the footsteps of his father Antonio Scalia, whose dream was always to make the United States a right-to-work country. On behalf of corporate behemoth Walmart, he cut his teeth as an attorney arguing against a Maryland law that would’ve required them to spend more money on employees’ health care. The Wall Street Journal described him as “one of the industry’s go-to guys for challenging financial regulations.”
Despite the usual right-wing propaganda, the Trump administration’s actions on labor law and regulation are not an example of less government intervention in our lives. These are targeted interventions that tip the scales even more in favor of capital against labor.”
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/10/donald-trump-labor-unions-workers
EM,
Tell it all to the employees at Target, Walgreen’s, Walmart and the scraping a living workers in the so-called battle ground states. I’m sure they will feel much better.
Frankly, I don’t see any prospect for positive political trajectory for the US in the foreseeable future.
The constitution is structured to allow very small minorities in the right states to permanently retain control over the senate, the judiciary, and, through the electoral college, the presidency. Unfortunately the 35% of Americans–currently supporting Trump–that seem to be the smallest practical governing coalition want to dismantle democracy and replace it with a white nationalist dictatorship based on social Darwinist principles. There’s nothing anyone can say or do to preserve enlightenment values in the face of such a determined, well-organized, well-funded, population that doesn’t share them.
I fear the only positive way forward for the territory that is currently America would be for America to radically decentralize, or break up entirely, so the evangelical white nationalists can have their Christian Apartheid state while the coats can work towards the kind of social democracy that most coastal people want. Forcing people with such radically different ideas of society to live together has become unworkable.
nobody:
Welcome to Angry Bear. First time comments and commentary go to moderation to weed out spam, spammers, and advertising.
To your points, the House was set up by the Founders to represent by population, a population far less than 700,000 which is the average today. This came about by the passing of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, fixing the number of Representatives at 435. The U.S. Constitution called for at least one Representative per state and that no more than one for every 30,000 (or 40,000 as some may argue) persons. This should have been done by amendment and which have never passed. The less populated states found the issue of a growing representation by population in the larger states troublesome. Return the House to representing by population and the issue goes away even if the number of reps is three times larger to support 125,000 per district. The issue of Gerrymandering will largely disappear also.
The Senate has not been altered and still represents by state and whatever politics they might be. Here it is party over country. McConnell and his fellow criminals in the Senate know what they are doing to subvert the process as determined by the Constitution.
The presidency can still be elected by population and selected by Electoral Vote. The EC’s issue is tied to the House and representation by population. Clinton would not have won the election even though she had more votes and even if the House was changed back to its intended function. That was the intent of the EC which was to prevent any region having the ability to swing an election.
I still believe in the end those who demand an autocracy will lose to the population of this country and other minds will prevail returning us to the original intent of this Republic as determined in its beginning.
They are feeling better. They now have health insurance.
I got it, more needs to be done, but there is only one party that will do it. And your constant carping at that party is beyond destructive of your desires.
We are a Republic.
Jurisprudence need go no further than the structure of the Constitution and Madison’s definition in the 51st Federalist paper – Article I, the legislature, PREDOMINATES.
Combined with Article IV, Section 4, the Republican guarantee, no court should accede to Executive branch aggrandizement at the General (national) or at the State level of governance in the US.
The separate departments are equal before the law in terms of the courts defending their basic independence and separation spheres (for instance, the Congress is unable to conduct law enforcement itself, though it can investigate to serve its legislative duties with predominating force in doing so). But the Departments are NOT co-equal, and I cringe every time I hear legislators say this. The legislative authority “necessarily predominates.”
A free people who governs themselves in the Republican form, or indeed by way of any form, need only fear the force, sometimes an armed force, of the Executive (NAZI Germany is the compelling reminder here). Which is why Article I predominates. In the national legislature, ideas of all kinds can come forward to persuade our representatives, and some may pass to be presented to the President whose lawful discretion is then proscribed to a narrow set of acts, such as the veto that even still can be overridden by the people’s legislature to become the public’s law (as they are called!). Debate ideas freely among the people with the legislative authority, no autocracy, no kingdoms, no theocracy, but a free society governing itself with the public’s laws, yes.
IMHO.
WITHIN the legislative authority. This how it should have been typed in the last substantive paragraph.