Legitimacy counts
For only the third time in American history, the House of representatives, voting along partisan lines, impeached a president yesterday. President Trump now faces a trial in the Senate, where virtually all of the Republicans are committed to following Majority Leader McConnell’s lead. He has announced himself not impartial, despite the oath he will be required to swear, and is coordinating with the White House on how to proceed.
The debate yesterday was a bore. If someone said something new, it escaped me. Democrats relied mainly on the facts elicited in public hearings that demonstrated the President
- had used his public office to seek and extort illegal Ukrainian help against a political rival, using his private lawyer as his main agent, and
- obstructed Congress’ efforts to obtain testimony and documents relevant to the proceedings.
The Republicans simply asserted that the above facts had not been demonstrated and criticized the process, claiming that parts of it were conducted in secret (even if Republicans were present in the closed-door hearings) and that no witness had testified to the President’s direct involvement (most of the witnesses who could have done so were prevented by the President). One Republican even claimed that Jesus had been given more rights in his trial by Pontius Pilate. This silliness merits no response.
One Republican claim deserves deeper consideration: that the Democrats are trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election. That is literally untrue, since removal of Trump from office by the Senate would bring Vice President Pence to the Oval Office, not Hillary Clinton. But the Republican claim reflects a real concern: Trump, whose 63 million votes (he actually got less than that) the Republicans repeatedly cited yesterday in the House, lost the popular vote to Clinton, who got close to 66 million votes. Trump won only because of the Electoral College, created in the 18th century to share power between more populated states and less populated ones. It gives a voter in Wyoming something like three times the weight of a voter in California or New York.
Trump is unlikely to do better in the popular vote in 2020. California and New York, which voted 62% and 59% for Clinton, both suffered big losses in the Republican tax cuts of 2017. Trump is loathed in both the first and third most populous states in the country. Texas, which Trump won with 52%, is turning increasingly purple, if not blue. It is hard to picture how Trump will make up in the rest of the country for the tilt to the Democrats–any Democrat–in the next election’s popular vote totals.
But these three populous states are arguably the most disadvantaged in the Electoral College. So it is easy to imagine that Trump might win in the Electoral College with, let us guess, 5 million fewer popular votes than the Democratic candidate.
This is a serious problem with no easy solution. It is serious because power in a republic needs to come from the people and the people need to have equal rights. There is no divine right, or right of less populous states, to choose leaders.
It can’t be fixed easily because amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College would require a 2/3 majority in both Houses of Congress as well as approval in 3/4 (38 out of 50) of the states. The Electoral College’s perverse effect on the popular vote can also be undone by a “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” in which the states agree to award their Electoral College votes to the popular vote winner. It would be activated once states with a majority of the electoral votes agree. But that ongoing effort is unlikely to produce results before the 2020 election.
Both Democrats and Republicans know this: Trump did not win the popular vote in 2016 and won’t in 2020. Republicans need to ferociously assert his legitimacy because he lacks the approval of the plurality of voters. Democrats will try in the Senate trial to ensure that he is de-legitimized further.
The trial in the Senate has the potential to make or break Trump. Speaker Pelosi is holding out on formally notifying the Senate of the impeachment until McConnell provides assurance of a serious process, with witnesses, including those prevented from testifying in the House. I don’t really see what leverage she has–the Democratic Senators who are candidates for President will want the trial early in January so they can get back on the campaign trail–but I certainly understand what is at stake. Legitimacy counts.
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Great analysis; fully agree, except for one fact: it does appear President Trump received just shy of the 63 million popular votes. From Wikipedia:
Donald J. Trump Republican 304 62,980,160
Hillary R. Clinton Democratic 227 65,845,06
And, one might add:
1) Finessing the Electoral College is what counts in the current era, whether we like it or not. If the Dems don’t produce a viable candidate win can win the battleground states — unlike their last candidate — then yes, for the first time in history, a second term for an impeached President
2) Pelosi’s possible delay of transferring the Articles to the Senate is pretty baffling: the sooner they get this done, the better off the Dems are for focus on getting their candidates out in the field — and winnowing it down.
IMHO, it’s a 50:50 shot as of today that the Dems successfully do what they did in 2016: elect Donald Trump.