Category: Uncategorized

Friends

In the legal world it’s called “venue shopping”.  If someone’s going to sue, they look for a Court that would be most likely to favor – them.  In a local dispute, it might be to manipulate the Court schedule so that a “favorable” judge decides the case.  Or, if the question could be settled in State or Federal Courts, the Court with the set of laws that most favors their case.

It’s kind of like Major League Baseball.  In the National League, pitchers take their turn at bat every inning.  If the manager wants a better hitter in the pitcher’s slot, then he’s got to change pitchers.  In the American League, there’s a designated hitter that bats for the pitcher, no change required.  If you’ve got pitchers who can hit, National League rules are better.  If not, the American League rules are better.  

Donald Trump and his supporters have gone to Court over fifty times since the November 3^rd election,. They tried in one way or another to change the results of the vote count.  Trump has lost over thirty times, with several cases still in legal “limbo”.  They won one case, in Pennsylvania. It required that Trump observers be allowed as close as six feet from the vote counters instead of ten.

Evidence

But what the President and some of his followers believe, is that if they can get their case to the United States Supreme Court, they can win.  It’s the venue where they actually have had the most success.  He won on the Muslim ban (eventually), on the border wall, and on several other issues where “lower” courts ruled against him.  And, as far as “judges” are concerned, Donald Trump believes as least three of those Justices “owe” him.  He appointed them, and in the “quid pro quo” world of Trump, that means they should rule for him.

The US Supreme Court let the President down yesterday, refusing to take an appeal on the Pennsylvania case to invalidate the voting results.  The Court had no comment, just a 9-0 refusal to hear the case.  But that case was on appeal from a lower court, with all of the evidentiary decisions already made.  

 Mr. Trump and his supporters, including several members of Congress, claim that if they could only get their “evidence” in front of the Supreme Court, then the Court would be “required” to overturn the election results that went for Biden.  They want the Supreme Court to order those states to ignore the “tainted” results, and appoint Trump Electors to the Electoral College.  And Trump has his “quid pro quo” with Justices Bennett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch.  It would only take two more.

Jurisdiction 101

A little reminder from high school American Government class here.  There are two ways that a Court hears cases.  The first is “original jurisdiction” That’s when a Court hears the case for the first time and determines both the facts (evidence) of the case, and how the law applies to that case.  After the original court, the facts are “settled” either by a jury or the judge.  If a case is appealed to a “higher” court, it is appealed based on whether the law was applied correctly or not.  Those higher courts have “appellate” jurisdiction, determining the law, not the facts.

The Supreme Court almost always has “appellate” jurisdiction.  But there are Constitutional exceptions where the Court could step in and take “original” jurisdiction. Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 2 of the US Constitution states:

“In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction.”

So if only a State would sue, and particularly if a State would sue another State. Then that case might have a clear path to “original jurisdiction” in front of the US Supreme Court.  They could present the “mountains” of evidence that all of the other Courts, both Federal and State, have rejected out of hand.  The President could “make his case” to the “friendliest” Court he knows.

The Lone Ranger

Enter Ken Paxton, the Attorney General for the State of Texas.  In a 128 page brief to the Supreme Court in the name of the state of Texas, General Paxton claims that the voting process in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin violates the due process rights of the citizens of Texas.  How did they do that?  Paxton claims those states counted votes in ways that, even though their own state courts approved, violate their own state laws.

That’s right – the State of Texas has determined that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin don’t know how to judge their own laws.  And since they don’t, they’ve allowed an election where the “wrong” candidate won, not the candidate that Texas chose.  But General Paxton knows how their laws should be judged, and he wants the Supreme Court to take the case directly on original jurisdiction, to present the evidence and prove it. 

And what remedy does the great state of Texas suggest?   From the Texas suit:

“The Court should grant leave to file the complaint and, ultimately, enjoin the use of unlawful election results without review and ratification by the Defendant States’ legislatures and remand to the Defendant States’ respective legislatures to appoint Presidential Electors in a manner consistent with the Electors Clause…”

Or, in plain English, throw out the results of the vote count, and require the state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin to choose electors for the Electoral College.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that all four of those states have Republican controlled legislatures.

Experts Agree

This is an act of desperation.  Can’t we imagine the proud Texas response if those other states demanded that the Lone Star state to throw out their election results?  Almost every “Supreme Court Expert” agrees that this lawsuit is “dead on arrival”.  But it’s the era of Trump:  we’ve learned to our dismay that the word “impossible” doesn’t apply.  Don’t expect the Supreme Court to hear this case – but don’t be overly “shocked” if they decide to give Texas a “fair hearing”.  After all, there are twenty-two days left in 2020.

Update 12/11/2020

• USSC ORDER REGARDING THE TEXAS COMPLAINT
• 155, ORIG. 

             FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2020 

               ORDER IN PENDING CASE 

TEXAS V. PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL.
The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution.  Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.  All other pending motions are dismissed as moot. 

Statement of Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins: In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction. See Arizona v. California, 589 U. S. ___
(Feb. 24, 2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting). I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue. 

Wrestling

I coached high school track and field for forty years.  And while track and Cross Country were my “primary sports”, for many of those years I coached wrestling as well.  I started the middle school wrestling program at Watkins Middle School, forty kids on a tiny, hard old mat in the middle of an elementary gym.  We had to take shifts wrestling, with kids doing pushups and sit-ups on the gym floor waiting for a chance to practice on a corner of the mat.

And I couldn’t teach throws, when a wrestler would pick up their opponent and (carefully) put them down on the mat.  The “postage stamp” we were wrestling on was too hard.  In today’s world of lawsuits we never would wrestled on that mat, but back in the mid 1980’s it’s what we had.  And we had a lot of fun.

In those years there wasn’t a “little kids” wrestling program.  The eighth graders who stepped on our “postage stamp” were almost all wrestling for the first time.  And for many of them, their only exposure to “wrestling” was “professional wrestling” they saw on television.  They came to their first wrestling practice looking for the ropes and the turnbuckles, what they saw on TV.

Big Time Wrestling

Professional wrestling has been around for a very long time.  When my Dad went to work in Dayton at WLW-D television station (now WDTN) in 1962, there was still the big “warehouse” area in the back of the station with a full sized ring.  The travelling “Big Time Wrestling” show would come through town and broadcast “live from the studio”.  It was the travelling carnival of television.  

There isn’t much in common between “professional” wrestling and the kind of wrestling we did in middle school.  Professional wrestling is a carefully scripted performance, with the wrestler/actors knowing their opponent’s next move and how they should react for the greatest spectator excitement.  It has to be.  Jumping from five or six feet up in the air and landing on someone, even on a springy mat, would break ribs, crush organs, and make for a very short career.  Hitting someone with a folding chair in the real world is just short of assault with a deadly weapon.  When you know things “went wrong” is when someone actually gets hurt.

On Steroids

Today the spectacle of professional wrestling is taken to the extreme.  It’s called World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and it’s not just the wrestling-performance. It’s an entire drama – from entering the arena, music blaring and special effects going off, to “non-ring” fights between managers, girlfriends, and even the guest celebrities.  In 2007, Pre-Presidential Donald Trump got to be “in the ring'” right after he body slammed WWE President Vince McMahon on the sidelines  (WWE). It’s the “good guys” versus the “bad guys”.  The good guys are victimized all season by the cheating bad guys – but usually come back to win at the end of the season. 

For the audience it is a time of suspended disbelief.  Sure, if someone did that “eye-gouge” or “flying pancake” in the real world, ambulances and policemen would arrive on the scene.  Everyone knows there’s a script, but no one knows what the preordained outcome is.  So it’s a show, a performance.  We can cheer on the “good guys” and lustily boo the “bad ones”. 

Trump

Donald Trump learned a lot from his friend, WWE President Vince McMahon.  He got so much from him, that he appointed Vince’s wife Linda as Administrator of the Small Business Administration.   Trump learned the art of spectacle and suspended disbelief.  He understood the clear “black and white, good versus bad” that attracts WWE’s audience.  And critical to understanding his actions today, Donald Trump learned that the “good guys” are always victims, waiting to “win” at the end of the season.

It may come with some surprise, but Saturday night I watched the entire Trump Rally in Valdosta, Georgia.  The President was there to support the Republican candidates for Senate in the January (not June) 5^th runoff.  But the rally really wasn’t about that.  For over one hundred minutes, so long that even Fox News cut him off for Judge Jeanine; Donald Trump performed exactly as he learned from WWE. 

Trump entered to his “theme song” – God Bless the USA!  He was the “good guy”, the victim cheated in the biggest “ring” of all.  He complained about the “refs”, the Republican leadership of Georgia who refused to overturn the election. The President decried his cheating opponent, the Democrats, with their “suitcases” full of ballots and signatures from the dead. And he didn’t forget to talk about the “other” bad guys outside the ring, the media.  There was the “traditional boo and flip off” the press section moment. And in the end, he promised that “next season” he will come back to avenge his loss.

Next Season

Democrats are constantly amazed that the President can stand in front of an adoring crowd (“WE LOVE YOU” was one on the chants) and tell outright lies for hours.   It’s easy to “assume” that the folks there are stupid, or at least deluded. They’re not.  They are suspending disbelief, just like they do with WWE.  It’s not only entertaining; it’s comforting and familiar. 

Want to know what comes next in “Trump World”?  Better tune in to some WWE Smackdown to get the flow.  Trump sees himself coming back in a cloud of smoke, crowds singing “proud to be an American”, and throwing Joe Biden over the ropes and slamming him out of the ring.  Watch out for the folding chairs, Kamala!!  But none of that is funny – because it so very real.

Don Dahlman

Sunday, December 7^th, 1941: it’s seventy-nine years ago tomorrow that the Japanese launched their successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.  It began US involvement in World War II, and it was the pivotal event in the “Greatest Generation’s” life.  

My Dad was twenty-three, a Jewish boy from Cincinnati bound to succeed as the nation came out of the Depression. He was on all of the “committees” and graduated from Walnut Hills High School in 1936. He then became a co-op student at the University of Cincinnati, alternating learning how to manage the Bookstore, his studies, and leadership on several university committees for five years. But the clouds of war were gathering well before Pearl Harbor, and Don Dahlman registered for the draft on October 16^th, 1940 in his junior year. He wasn’t drafted though, and remained at UC to earn an accounting degree in the spring of 1941.

Walnut Hills Yearbook – Class of 1936

Dad enlisted in the US Army on November 17^th, 1941.  Maybe, now graduated, he knew that his “draft date” was coming.   Anyway, as least as he told it, the “new boot” managed a pass to Atlanta for the weekend of December 6^th.  The story he told was that he was recovering from Saturday night’s partying when he heard about the attack.  It was one in the afternoon in Atlanta, and Dad quickly headed back to his basic training camp.

Don Dahlman’s Draft Card

The Great Leveler

It was the same experience for all enlisted or drafted: boot camp, the military process and the war.  For an entire generation of American men born between 1905 and 1925, there would always have their “war” experiences in common, whether they actually saw combat or not.  It “leveled” them in many ways.  Jewish boys from Cincinnati and Southern boys from rural Georgia were pressed into common service.  The military was still segregated, so it did not change America’s racial divisions.  But it did create a shared “national” experience.

It was like the radio.  Prior to the spread of radio entertainment throughout the nation in the twenties and thirties, American “English” was strictly divided by accent.  A southerner might not even be able to understand a Minnesotan, much less a man from the Bronx.  But as most Americans listened to national radio broadcasts, a “common” accent emerged. 

Regional accents didn’t disappear, but everyone knew how to sound like a radio “newsman” or entertainer.  A national accent appeared: everyone sounded like they were from Cincinnati. (That might also be because WLW Radio in Cincinnati broadcast at 700 on the AM dial with 500,000 watts.  You could hear it throughout most of the nation, from Iowa to Mississippi to South Carolina to Maine.  And if you lived near the broadcast tower in Mason, Ohio, they said you could hear it on your bedsprings and lose fillings).

The Yank Arrives

After basic training, Dad was moved into Army Intelligence.  He told us about concern that the Nazis were trying to encourage the draftees to desert – he called it the Ohio Plan, “Over the Hill in October”.  But as the Army became more aware of Nazi ideology, Dad was transferred from Intelligence to Finance.  Intelligence operatives might to be behind enemy lines, and the Army determined that was a bad place for a Jewish man.  

Dad was an accountant by degree, so they switched him into the Finance office.  It would be almost seven months before he was shipped out, bound for the “British Isles” and arriving on July 12^th, 1942.  His job was making sure the troops got paid.   

Don moved up through the ranks, ultimately becoming a “Warrant Officer”.  And he was always “social”.  On a weekend pass to London, he arranged for one of his former colleagues in Army Intelligence to set up a blind date.  The prospective candidate was wary of Americans, “They had terrible reputations”.   So they met at a restaurant, The Queens Brasserie, where she could eye those coming through the door and decide whether to “make contact” or not.

Babs and Don

She did, and Don Dahlman met Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor, known to her friends as Babs.  They hit it off from the very first dinner, and Dad soon found a way to get stationed in London.  Troops need to be paid everywhere anyway.  Babs and Don became a constant pair, walking the streets of blacked out London, and hiking the English countryside.  And while Babs was unable to explain her frequent absences (out of town on her Government job, she said), Dad knew many of the Americans she knew.  They were intelligence operatives, some working behind enemy lines in occupied Europe.

But that’s another story.  Don sent a letter to his family:  this “good Jewish boy” from Cincinnati was going to marry a Roman Catholic girl from London.  They weren’t happy on the home front, but love is love.  The wedding was scheduled for June 6, 1944.   But the war had other plans.

So Don and Babs moved their wedding plans up, having a small civil ceremony in March.  Don’s best man was his first cousin, Bud Levine, representing the whole of Cincinnati in the ceremony.  And after a brief honeymoon, Babs “disappeared” again, dropped in France to help prepare for the invasion.  And Don was “sequestered” with the rest of the invasion force in the South of England.

France

The D-Day invasion landed on June 6^th.  Dad would say, he “went in” with the fifth wave of WAC’s (the Women’s Army Corp) but it wasn’t just “paying the troops” that was important.  An invading Army needs “invasion currency”, and an invaded nation needs to switch from the currency controlled by the Nazis, to one controlled by the Allies.  It’s a big job in the “background” of the battle, but it also has to be won.

So as Babs helped coordinate with the French Underground to cripple Nazi communications and transportation, Don was wading through mounds of currency in the Paris banks, trying to audit the differing monies.  

If not for World War II, they would never have met.  Their “fairy-tale” marriage, that lasted for sixty-nine years wouldn’t have happened.  And, of course, this author and his sisters wouldn’t be here.

Theirs is a story of happiness and success born in a world of tragedy.  While not all of their compatriots of the “Greatest Generation” had that joyful life, they can all say the same thing.  They can tell you exactly where they were in December 7^th, 1941. It was the day that inalterably changed their lives, seventy-nine years ago.

Babs and Don – 2008

“There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. ” – Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin – the French Revolution of 1848

Whispers

You hear the whispers:  maybe the Republican leaders are finally “backing away” from Donald Trump.  And there is some evidence of that. Attorney General Bill Barr announced the truth: the Department of Justice found no evidence of mass voter fraud.   And a very few Republican Senators acknowledge the obvious, that Joe Biden will be inaugurated President in January.  It’s sad that telling the truth is seen as an act of “political courage”. 

Some Democrats and “never-Trumpers” have a wishful “vision”.  They hope that with the grudging departure of Donald Trump, Republican leaders will “regain” their independence, and return to the Party of John McCain, the “Lincoln Project” heroes and the “Rockefeller Republicans” of old.  But there are two facts that stand in the way of this “rebirth” of the Republicanism of my father.

Power

The first:  Donald J Trump received over 74 million votes in the 2020 election, the second most ever.  Sure Joe Biden won with 81 million, but there is incredible power in that 74 million too.  It’s like the Olympic 100 meter dash, where the second place sprinter breaks the world record.  He neither gets to enjoy the gold medal, or the record.  But he can’t wait for the rematch.

Donald Trump must be highly motivated by the loss.  He got more votes than Barack Obama, more votes than Ronald Reagan (yes – I know that the population was smaller then – does Trump?).  To be so close and fail would motivate almost anyone to want to try again.

And those are 74 million votes that EVERY Republican needs to win their own election.  Sure it’s easy for Bill Barr to “stand up” to Trump, if you call telling the truth “standing up”.  Barr was retired before he took the Attorney General job, and he’ll be retired when he leaves it.  And Mitt Romney doesn’t get “brownie points” for “standing up” either.  He’s from Utah, and while it’s a “Red” state, Trump has never been particularly popular with the Mormon Church.  Sixty-two percent of the state is Mormon, so Romney has a “cushion”.  He can vote for Trump’s removal in the impeachment trial, but also must vote for Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court Justice.

Who Is Fooled?

And while Democrats and “Never-Trump” Republicans might wish it weren’t so, Donald Trump still wields incredible power over those 74 million.  It’s not just the “Tweets” or the “crazy” Trumpers either.  A substantial number of those who voted for Donald Trump agree with what he did.  They liked the tax cut for the one percent and they liked the border wall. And, “shhhhh”– don’t tell anybody – but they even secretly liked the child separation policy. 

Many, including myself, have quoted Lincoln in regard to Trump supporters:  

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

But the “fooling” is on us.  Trump supporters aren’t fooled – they agree with Trump.

Money Talks

Need more evidence?  Here’s the second fact:  Donald Trump has raised more than $200 million SINCE the election.  Sure he’s done it under the “umbrella” of challenging election results, but other than re-counting votes in Madison and Milwaukee he really hasn’t spent much on that.  What Trump is doing is creating a whole new fund for “what’s next”.

And “what’s next” for Trump?  Today, and for the next few months, it might well be consideration of a Presidential run in 2024.  But even if he decides that’s too much effort, the $200 million goes a long way towards funding political action.  And political action for Trump means holding other politicians to the fire of what Trump wants. It’s a quid pro quo:  Trump controls the voters, and the others need the votes.  

So don’t expect the Congressional fealty to Trump to change.  Look at some of the Republicans up for re-election in the Senate in 2022: Murkowski (AK), Rubio (FL), Young (IN), Kennedy (LA), Blunt (MO), Burr (NC), Scott (SC), and Johnson (WI). They cannot stray far from Trump.  And in the House, the Democratic margin is narrowed.  The 2020 election showed Republicans doing well everywhere but for President.  And if the House becomes Republican in 2022, it will be Trump influence that does it, and McCarthy and Jim Jordan empowered to put Trump’s policies back in effect.

I’m sad to say that Monday, January 20^th, 2021 will not mean the end of Donald Trump.  And it won’t mean the end of his influence over the Republican Party either.  As Ledru-Rollin said, “There go the people…” and it’s the Republican leadership that must follow them.  And the “people” the Republican leaders must follow are the people of Donald Trump.  

Polarized

We are alive in a divided nation.  We are so divided, we can’t even agree if the almost 160 million votes in the Presidential election were cast accurately.  Illogically, we accept the results from those same ballots for other offices. We are so splintered, the deaths of more than 270,000 Americans in the past nine months hasn’t created a unified front.  And we are so polarized, when offered a “cure” for the pandemic, forty percent of us won’t take it (Gallup).

The experts tell us that by March 1, 2021, another 200,000 Americans will die from COVID (IHME).  That’s at our current rate of “mitigation”. We need to take care of each other by doing the “stupid, simple” things:  wear masks, social distance, don’t travel.   Because of our divisions we simply aren’t doing them, and more people are dying.

If an American President committed to an unjustified war that would cost 200,000 lives in the next four months, we would all rise in righteous indignation.  More Americans will die in this year of COVID than died in all of World War II.  But we are so splintered, we won’t stop it.

Before the War

America was a divided nation before World War II.  Franklin Roosevelt brought the nation together to recover from the Great Depression, but he was unable to unify us to battle Nazi Fascism.  The horror of the trenches of World War I, and the crushing disappointment in the failure of the peace afterwards, convinced Americans to “isolate” behind our ocean “walls”.

Even America’s heroes warned against war.  Marine General Smedley Butler, two-time Medal of Honor winner, denounced intervention.  Charles Lindbergh, the hero of “The Spirit of St. Louis” was against involvement in European battles.  And the US ambassador to Great Britain itself, Joseph Kennedy, was recalled because he didn’t think America should fight.

The radio was the great public medium of the 1930’s. And Father Coughlin spoke to the nation night after night against entering the war.  He broadcast on WJR from Detroit, a “clear channel” station that at the time was so powerful that most of the nation could listen to it directly.  The CBS radio network further spread his voice across the rest of the country. He did not create the divisions, but he knew how to inflame them. He was more popular and more powerful than a Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity of today. His power was like a Donald Trump.  Many in the nation listened and believed him.

It wasn’t until December 7^th, 1941 that the tide turned.  The Japanese direct attack on Americans at Pearl Harbor proved to unite Americans in a single effort.   It took the loss of American lives, 2,403 on that December day, for America’s “righteous might” to respond in an all-out effort to save freedom in the world. 

What Now?

Our ocean “walls” did not protect us against COVID either.  In fact we know that the virus was already in the United States before it was “identified” in Wuhan, China in January.  Research now shows that Americans in America were already infected in December of 2019 (NPR). COVID was in the streets of New York before we even knew about the “wet markets” of Wuhan.  It was here before we knew it, and before any efforts to stop it.

So it really no longer matters whether we stopped flights from China, or anywhere else.  What does matter is what America will do now.

Joe Biden has already evoked wartime efforts when talking about the pandemic.  But can any President unite a nation that doesn’t even believe in the same news, the same set of facts, or even the same creed?  In essence, is America ever going to be “unite-able” again?  Have we reached a point where we are in fact two nations, irrevocably divided by the message of our modern-day Father Coughlin, Donald Trump?

After Pearl Harbor Americans lined up to volunteer for the military.  My parents’ generation was willing to give their lives for the cause. What will it take to get us lined up for a simple shot?  Will the cause of saving the lives hundreds of thousands of those at the greatest risk be enough?  Or will the “Father Coughlin” of our time continue to exploit the divisions among us.

Hofbrauhaus

It was in the “before times”, the time before we all could identify a Corona Virus by sight.  Jenn and I met some friends in Cincinnati for a Reds game (they lost, unfortunately).  But, before the game, we wandered across the Ohio River into Kentucky, and had dinner at the Newport “Hofbrauhaus”.   It’s a Munich “beer festival” type place, with long wooden tables; families and strangers all sitting together with large pints of German beer.  

Dinner was schnitzel and spatzle, served by Bavarian dressed waitresses. An “om-pah” band played in the background, and as the beer mugs were drained and replaced, the diners joined in old German drinking songs. By the end of the dinner, many were standing on benches, swaying to the songs, swinging their beer steins and belting out the lyrics. It’s a fun night.

Today it would be called a different name:  a super-spreader event. 

COVID 

It’s been eight months and fifteen days since we last sat down inside a restaurant.  We’ve dined on the patio a few times, but now that winter has set in, that’s out of the question.  Life is different, with political ideology somehow tied to public health.  Who you supported for President last month is reflected by whether you’re wearing a mask or not.  Today’s “butcher’s bill”:  277,017 have died in the United States from COVID, and over fourteen million have been diagnosed with the disease (Covid).  That includes relatives and close friends.  There is no “distance” from COVID:  it’s at the front door.

There is a “light at the end of the tunnel” for COVID. This morning, the United Kingdom approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine. The United States is a couple of weeks behind, but likely both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will be in use here before Christmas. When the number of vaccinations reaches seventy to eighty percent of the population, life might get back to something that resembles the “before times”.

But in the meantime, we’ve got to “control” an uncontrollably infective virus.  Face masks help, but aren’t a guaranteed protection.  “Social distancing”, maintaining space from those outside your “personal bubble” helps. And being outside with air circulation makes a difference. But the biggest issue is behavior.  Will people avoid “spreader” events?

First Amendment

So what are “spreader” events?  They are large gatherings of folks, crowded together, and often inside.  Add to that physical contact, yelling or singing, and you have all the “fixin’s” for spreading COVID 19.  It definitely would include an evening at the Hofbrauhaus.  Packing the stands for the high school basketball game would fit the bill, and, unfortunately, the high school indoor track meet too.  And the same could be said for the 7:00 pm service at the local church, mosque, or synagogue.

But many, including a majority of the Supreme Court, claim that the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees “freedom of religion”.  What it actually says is this:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (First Amendment, US Constitution).

And there we are:  “no Law” prohibiting the “free exercise” thereof (emphasis added).  So if the Third Gospel Church of the River wants to have a packed service with singing and hugging, there can be “no Law” that prohibits it – right?

That same First Amendment also states that the “Congress shall make no law, “…abridging the freedom of speech”.  But we all know the caveat to that “freedom”:  One can’t be “falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic,” (Justice Holmes, Schenk v United States).   So there are limits to free speech.  And we already accept limits to the “free exercise” of religion as well.  Fire inspectors go to churches, and set crowd limits on the building.  Building inspectors look at the structural integrity of the synagogues, and could legally condemn a building that was in danger of collapsing.

Buying Time

So when the local government or the Governor places limits on religious services in the name of COVID, it’s not some incredibly broad expansion of power. Just as we expect that the government will protect us from fires, it’s reasonable action to protect the population from “super-spreader” events.  To be fair, that government better do the same with the local sports, and the dance clubs.  And they are.

And while I haven’t been there, I bet they aren’t standing on the benches and singing at the Hofbrauhaus either.  But six months from now, if we can “de-politicize” the vaccine, maybe we can return to “raise a glass” again.  There’s a Billy Joel concert re-scheduled at the Great American Ballpark in September, and we have tickets.

Trump’s History

As a Democrat, the current actions of Donald Trump seem outrageous. The President of the United States is openly accusing the American electoral system. He says it’s rigged and rotted to the core.  At the minimum that undermining of American democracy is irresponsible.  At the worst, is an open challenge, an attempt to overthrow the will of the people:  in short, an attempted coup.

But from Trump’s standpoint, it is simply an extension of the same theory that has carried him through his political career.  Much of what Donald Trump has done in the past five years was based on the actions of past Republican Presidents.  From the “Law and Order” battle cry of Richard Nixon, to the “Make America Great Again” phrase of Ronald Reagan, the Trump campaign has tried to copy both the successes and failures.  

Certainly Roger Stone was a key influence towards “Nixonian” actions, especially in the 2016 campaign.  Stone, a young “dirty trickster” in the 1972 Nixon campaign, brought that attitude with him as a chief advisor to Trump.  Stone’s “win at all cost” attitude spread itself throughout the senior Trump staff.  One of his close associates, Paul Manafort, became the Campaign Chairman.  It’s why Russian contacts really didn’t seem like a big deal.

Now five years later, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Trump camp is looking to another Republican predecessor on how to win a contested election.  The Trump team is trying to take George W. Bush’s strategy in the Florida recount of 2000, and apply it “writ large” to all of the critical swing states.

Florida, Florida, Florida

The 2000 Florida count was extremely close, with Bush ultimately declared the winner by 526 votes.  The Presidency hinged on Florida’s electoral vote. The slim difference between Bush and Gore was so small, every single ballot actually mattered.  There were all sorts of real issues:  ballots in Palm Beach where intended Gore votes went to third party candidate Ralph Nader, punch card ballots where the “chads” weren’t completely punched out, and incompetent election officials.

While Florida Democrats controlled the counties of Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, the ultimate Florida elections authority was the state.  And the Florida statewide offices were all controlled by Republicans, led by the Republican Governor Jeb Bush.  As the Presidential candidate’s brother, Jeb “recused” himself from election recount activities.  But the rest of his state government was “all in” to make George W Bush the President.

And as a practical matter, they did.  The Florida Secretary of State waited until a moment when the recount favored Bush, then stopped the count.  The issue was thrown into the Courts, where the United States Supreme Court ultimately ruled for “Florida” and stopped the count.  The Court was split, five Republican appointees to four Democrats.  It was exactly where the Republican state government wanted it to stop.

As a practical matter – either candidate could have won Florida, and therefore the Presidency.  It depended on what ballot – standard was applied to counting the ballots.  Gore wins about as often as Bush (details in this CNN article).

Fealty to the King

So what does Trump want?  He wants what he thinks Bush got in Florida, the complete dedication of Republican state party members to his victory.  It’s why Donald Trump is now attacking Governor Kemp in Georgia, and Republican election officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.  Regardless of what the law states, Trump sees their actions as disloyal.  But even more insidiously, he sees them as disrespecting his role as President.

In the background of the last six years of Trumpism, is the “distinction” between Trump and the Republican Party.  Ever since the April 2016 rumors of a Republican revolt at the Cleveland Convention, Trump has been wary of the “mainstream” party.  He’s done everything he can to drag them “into line”.  From McCain to Flake to Sanford to Tillerson, Donald Trump has smacked down any “independent” action or thought in “his” party.

So when Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger “refused” to “change the vote”, or Michigan State Board of Canvasser member Aaron Van Langevelde voted to approve their results, or Arizona Governor Ducey silences a Presidential call; Trump sees betrayal.  Where is his Jeb Bush, or Katherine Harris, or “Brooks Brothers” riot? 

It’s the reason that other Republican leaders like Senators Marco Rubio or Lindsay Graham or Party Chairman Ronna McDaniel have done everything they can to “uphold” Donald Trump.  Graham may even have crossed the line into criminal election interference with his calls to Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.  But they did it to “prove” their “fealty” to Trump, like a medieval noble to the King:  kneel and kiss the ring.

What’s Lost

In the short run, the Trump strategy won’t work.  Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20^th, and Donald Trump will head back to Mara Lago. And the doubt that Trump is sowing in the election process may directly impact the Georgia Senate runoffs.  Republicans in Georgia listening to “their” President may well choose not to participate in the “rigged” system he “exposed”.  So the Democrats might win, and gain control of the US Senate as well.

 But in the longer term, there may be devastating effects.  Trump continues his ironfisted control of his ninety percent of the Republican electorate.  A Trump “tweet” can still make or break a Republican candidate – and that’s not likely to change for the next few years.  The Trump strategy will be to insinuate his loyalists into every level of the Party, from Governors to members of the Board of Canvassers.  Whether Trump himself runs in 2024 won’t be as important as being a “Trumpist” with “the Donald’s” support.  And this time, the election system might not hold up against the cries of “foul play”.  Votes may well be denied – and Democracy will begin to die.

Sunday Mornings

If you read Trump World often, it’s probably a surprise that I am a steady Fox News Sunday viewer.  It’s on my “Sunday List”.  I start with Ali Velshi on MSNBC, move onto George Stephanopoulos on ABC, then Chris Wallace on Fox, and finish with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. But I don’t just sit and watch four hours straight. I usually write a blog, balance the books, get a workout and have breakfast during that time too.

Fox News Sunday is well done, and reasonably dispassionate.  And you can tell why regular Fox viewers aren’t all that fond of Chris Wallace.  He lives up to the “fair and balanced” theme that Fox so frequently fails to achieve.  It helps to “balance” my viewing, and I know what to expect from the Fox commentators  (Brit Hume being the worst).  I need to hear what “the other side” is hearing.

This Week

On Fox this week, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams talked about the transition to the Biden Administration.  He used a track “pass the baton” analogy, talking about how we need to have a “clean” exchange, particularly when it comes to the COVID pandemic response.  

And on Meet the Press Hugh Hewitt was on the panel.  He is a conservative radio commentator on the Salem Network who was a “Never Trumper” until after the 2016 election. Then he swallowed the “Kool Aid” and has been a Trump apologist ever since.  

This week, he rattled off a Trump 2024 (that’s right – 2024) campaign spiel as justification for the President’s failure to offer the common courtesy of a concession.  Hewitt claimed that the future candidacy justified delegitimizing the incoming President.  It’s the first time in a while I’ve wanted to throw something at Meet the Press.

Track 

And it dawned on me:  I am an “expert” in both of those areas.

Let’s start with relay exchanges.  I was a track coach (still one in my head) for forty years.  One of our team’s specialties was in taking solid but not great sprinters and teaching them amazing exchanges to beat more talented teams.  I watched the alternative:  the spectacle of the US Olympic 4×100 Relay team, the most talented in the world, disqualified year after year because they couldn’t complete an exchange.  

As my assistant coach for sprints would say:  “They had one job – make the exchange”.  But they didn’t, and we got to watch the agony of the fastest men in the world sobbing on the field.

So the trick was to set up a simple system that allowed the incoming runner to maintain his speed of almost twenty miles an hour, while the outgoing runner got up to that speed and seamlessly accepted the baton.  The baton never slowed down as it moved from one to the other.  It took a group of talented kids to sixth place in the state meet.

Our National Exchange

And we know that the “exchange” between the outgoing and incoming President should be the same, because the United States cannot afford to “slow down” in the middle.  The rest of the world won’t wait for a “bump and run” or worse, a dropped baton.  Think about what’s happening now in Iran, or Afghanistan, or with the pandemic.

There is a system designed to keep America moving.  But it takes both the outgoing and incoming Presidents to agree to do it.  George W. Bush did for Barack Obama.  And Obama offered the same to Trump, though Trump decided it wasn’t “a thing” for his team.  They took over at a standstill, then managed to go backwards for the first few weeks.  Remember the inauguration count, and the Muslim Ban?

Titles

 I have experience with “titles” as well.  How important is it for the outgoing President to recognize the legitimacy of the incoming President?  It’s all about the 72 million Americans who voted for Mr. Trump.  If they follow his lead in denying the 2020 results, then Joe Biden will struggle to “unite” America – especially when it comes to ending the COVID pandemic.

I was hired as the “Dean of Students” at Watkins Memorial High School.  My job was to be the primary “discipline guy”, the first person a kid in trouble would see.  As that “guy”, I spent a lot of time on the phone with parents, who often weren’t particularly glad to hear from the school.

Two years into the job, the Principal called me in and told me the District wanted to change my job title from Dean of Students to “Teacher on Special Assignment”.  It was a contractual/legal thing he said.  I said no.

What’s in a title?  So let’s say I caught a kid smoking dope in the locker room.  I call the parent.  They’re angry with their kid, angry with the school, and angry to be interrupted at work.  And in all of that anger, I would have to explain what a “teacher on special assignment” was.  It wasn’t going to work. The conversation went to the Superintendent, and included the possibility of me going back to my former life as a Government teacher.  In the end we agreed that I would remain in my current assignment:  as the Dean of Students.

Disqualified

Like it or not, Joe Biden is the next President of the United States.  But it would be a whole lot easier for him to govern, and better for the country, if the current President simply acknowledged it.  It would give Biden a fair shot.  Barack Obama had Trump to the White House within days of the Clinton’s defeat.  And Secretary Clinton herself urged us to support the new President.  

The Presidential “exchange” looks like it’s going to be a disaster.  The future President is going to be hamstrung from the start.  It’s not good for Biden, but more importantly, it’s not good for America.  

Trump’s not just dropping the baton.  He’s throwing it off the track.

Here’s the next in the “Outside My Window” series, chronicling life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joni Mitchell – The River

Walking in the Dark

 My routine has changed a bit.  I’m usually an early riser, a habit of decades of teaching, but my recent mornings were coffee, dishes (from the night before) and then onto the keyboard.  But with our “rehab” dog addition, there’s now a thirty-minute or so walk added in.  It brings back memories of “dawn-thirty” workouts over the years, but I can’t get moving that fast anymore.  I’ll work out later, when my sixty-four year old muscles get a little warmer.

So “Louisiana” and I wander the quiet streets of Pataskala.  We start by starlight, but things brighten as we get through our journey, and it’s almost dawn when we return home.  “Lou” feels the early morning stiffness too. As he gets stronger we’re letting him do more.  He’s playing with Atticus and Keelie, two of our other dogs, and Lou’s sore and stiff in the mornings like me.

But we warm along the way.  Lou’s getting the hang of things, no matter which direction I take him, he recognizes when we’re back on our street.  He stops sniffing around, and the pace quickens to a light jog.  Lou knows the way home.

Decorations

The fall leaves are gone and there’s frost on the grass now.  Tomorrow we’re supposed to get our first snow.  I look forward to Lou encountering that; after all, he’s a Louisiana dog.  All the dogs get excited with the first real snowfall, but for him, it’ll be a whole new experience.  And the political season has changed as well:  it took Christmas decorations going up to get some of the Trump signs down. 

There are a lot more Christmas decorations up than usual in our little neighborhood.  It used to be just a couple of us decorated, but this year, most of the houses have lights or inflatable figures.  This was already a “short” Christmas season. Thanksgiving was late this year; it’s less than a month before Christmas Day.  And it’s the Christmas of COVID, the end of the Trump Administration:  there are lots of reasons to get decorations up.  We can’t “Gather Together” like the old Thanksgiving song, but we can demonstrate our togetherness by decorating.

But I am still working on the motivation to break out Christmas lights.  Usually I am a traditionalist:  Friday after Thanksgiving, rain or shine, I’ve got the boxes down from the rafters, plugging in to find out which strings of lights somehow were “healed” over the past eleven months.  It’s such a clockwork thing, that the next-door neighbor checked up on me yesterday, wondering where the lights were.

They’re still in the boxes. 

We won’t pull the “big tree” out of the rafters either this year.  It doesn’t feel like a “big tree” year, and with more dogs there’s more dog “crates” – not much room for a “big tree”.  So for this year we purchased a smaller one.  The “traditional” schedule says that will go up sometime after next week.

Sad Christmas Songs

It’s easy to get in the “sad Christmas song” mood.  After last week, when it seemed like our world “forgot” about COVID, I anticipate that our Thanksgiving “dessert” will be even greater spikes in the disease.  And I watch as Donald Trump seems to be doing everything he can to sabotage the Biden administration.  

Israel assassinated Iran’s premier nuclear scientist yesterday.  It’s not something they would do without clearance from the United States, and it certainly won’t help when Biden tries to reinstitute the Iranian Nuclear Accord.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu going to get everything he can before his friend Trump leaves.  And as for Trump:  he can check one more box for future Evangelical Christian support, and mess with Biden in the process.

A small Christmas, walking in the pre-dawn darkness – you’d think Donald Trump is the NEXT President of the United States.  He’s not – and Joe Biden will be the man to lead us through what may be our darkest hours – but just before the dawn  (yep – CSNY reference).  

So I’m going to finish this essay – and get the ladder out.  It’s a short Christmas season – and it’s going to snow tomorrow – so the lights have to go up today!!

Out My Front Window – Part One (4/21/20)

Outside My Window – Part Two (4/23/20)

Outside My Window – Part Three (4/26/20)

Outside My Window – Part Four (5/13/20)

Outside My Window – Part Five (6/3/20)

Outside My Window – Part Six (7/3/20)

Outside My Window – Part Seven (7/31/20)

Outside My Window – Inshallah (8/13/20)

Outside My Window – Part Eight (9/15/20)

Outside My Window – Part Nine (9/25/20)

Outside My Window – Part Ten (10/9/20)

Outside My Window – Part 11 (11/29/20)

Facebook

Here’s one I found on Facebook the other day.  An acquaintance (Facebook does not define my friendships) has been an advocate of Donald Trump since the 2016 election.  His posts are “acerbic”: he not only advocates for Donald Trump, but he constantly questions the intelligence of anyone who is in opposition.

So yesterday’s post fit right in.  He tried to explain why Trump refuses to acknowledge the Biden victory.

Does anybody understand why Trump protested the election results for as long as possible?  

Answer:  To keep the rural Republicans from burning this Country to the ground.

If you doubt this hypothesis, it is because Trump is a whole-ton smarter then you are.  You should be able to fully understand everything that Biden does.

His logic is the “inscrutable mind of God” argument.  Since we are not gods, we cannot understand how God thinks.  We “mere mortals” are unable to comprehend the Trumpian strategy.  But since we voted for Biden, who, like us, is a mere mortal, we will have no problem following him.

For my “acquaintance” it is just another needle in the “progressive eye”.  But it brings up a larger point.  Maybe all the fear that Trump supporters will NEVER accept the legitimacy of the Biden Presidency is overblown.  Maybe they really do “get it”, and they are just looking to “alternative” reasoning to justify the inevitable result.

Through the Night

If the “inscrutable mind of Trump” is what his supporters need to get “through the night” of their election defeat, that’s fine.  As long as come January 20^th, they will step up to be Americans, willing to work with their fellow Americans to solve our most pressing concerns.  That is Joe Biden’s message.  

And that isn’t really about Trump.  It’s much more about McConnell, and Jim Jordan, and all of those Republicans who have determined that it is more important to defeat Democrats than it is to govern.  It’s been going on since Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.  The division has been going on so long, that when it started Trump was a Democrat (hate to admit that).  So Trump, “inscrutable mind” or not, may be the ultimate and inevitable result of the political trend that started with the “Gingrich Revolution of ‘94”.  

While the spoils of victory may have been worth it in terms of Supreme Court seats and State Legislatures controlled, it has left our nation unable to solve our most pressing issues:  COVID, immigration and healthcare, climate change and racial justice.  Instead of the “inscrutable mind” we need to choose another religious analogy, “the middle path”. 

Our Bitter Pill

And for my fellow Democrats, that will be a bitter pill.  We don’t want the “middle” anything.  Democrats want our spoils, and we want them now.  We don’t want to compromise, in fact we can’t see HOW to compromise on COVID, climate change or racial justice.  There either IS a plan to combat COVID and climate change, or there’s not.  There is either going to be racial justice so long neglected in this nation, or there’s not. 

And we want payback, to be honest.   Payback for what we see as the atrocities of the Trump Administration.  We want a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to examine everything from Russia to Ukraine, child separation to emoluments.  But to get those paybacks, we may have to give up opportunities to move forward.  That is a choice every “Resistor” may need to make.

I want the “progressive agenda” as much as anyone.  But I also realize that, at best, there will be a Senate evenly divided, with any one Senator, Democrat or Republican, able to swing the outcome.  And we Democrats chose the “middle path” when we selected Joe Biden.  Bernie had his chance, but was unable to deliver “the expanded majority” he so promised us all.  So instead of demanding “it all”, we need to take a breath, let out the mysterious “OM”, and try to make things incrementally better. 

Separate or Together

I took an early morning walk in my neighborhood this morning.  The Trump signs are dwindling, as if the sure knowledge of his defeat is slowly being accepted by his supporters.  They are gradually be replaced by blow-up Santa Clauses and Christmas gnomes.  Maybe time is the answer, and our nation will grudgingly move to work together on something.  If a COVID Thanksgiving apart didn’t teach us what we have to lose by being separate, a COVID Christmas certainly will.

.  

Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving, perhaps the most American of holidays.  It is a time of family and food – a favorite of mine.  How can you go wrong – no presents to buy, just eat, and eat, and eat some more.  The turkey and the beef tenderloin are poised for the fixing!!

But this is COVID Thanksgiving – when gathering is a danger to us all.  So what do we have to be thankful for?  

COVID is awful.  Look back at historic plagues; it could have lasted for years.  Yet today we look forward to vaccines that are literally “ready to go”.  The “light at the end of the tunnel” may only be months away, not the years we thought might be ahead when COVID began.  Stay healthy, stay safe, and look forward to next Thanksgiving and maybe even next Fourth of July when we can all gather together again.  Raise a glass!!

Presidential Pardon

As we enter the final-final phase of the Trump Administration, it is only fitting that he will leave office under scandal, the same one he entered with.  Today, the 45^th President of the United States pardoned his convicted former National Security Advisor.  Retired US Army Major General Michael Flynn was one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters.  His “stars” gave an imprimatur of respectability to the Trump campaign when there were few others besides former Senator Jeff Sessions standing beside him. 

But he was also a harbinger of events to come.  After the shock of the 2016 Trump victory, almost everyone from Chris Christie to Barack Obama told Trump not to hire Flynn as National Security Advisor.  But Donald Trump, known best for taking his own counsel over others, proceeded to do so anyway.

Flynn lasted two weeks. Publicly what we knew then was that he lied to the Vice President and the American people about “ex parte” conversations he had with Russian officials almost a month before the Trump inauguration. Flynn suggested that the Russians should ignore then-President Obama’s sanctions for Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections. He said that the new Trump Administration would “fix” them. We knew all of this, because the NSA listens in on Russian diplomatic phone conversations. And Flynn, the former Director of Defense Intelligence should have known that too.

Flynn’s resignation was one of the first “scandals” of the Trump Administration.  It was so dramatic that it was the subject of one of the early essays I wrote for Trump World, – What Happened to Flynn?

Flynn’s Deal

What we now know is that Flynn didn’t just lie to the Vice President, placing himself in a “compromised” position with the Russians.   He also lied to two FBI agents who had a transcript of the phone conversation in hand, and who gave him multiple chances to “get straight” with the story.  Flynn didn’t. The Mueller team indicted him for lying to Federal agents.

Flynn made a cooperation-deal with Mueller.  He pled guilty to lying to Federal investigators.  He then reneged on the deal, and was up for sentencing when the Attorney General, Bill Barr, directly intervened in the process and tried to withdraw the Government’s charges.  Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan took the highly unusual step of refusing the Government’s move. The case was still being determined.  Of course, that’s now all done.  A Presidential Pardon absolves the recipient from all charges and penalties.

The Constitution of the United States gives the President the sovereign right to issues pardons.  The only limitations are:  it’s only for federal crimes, and there is no “pardon” for impeachment conviction.  It is one of the few times that the Founding Fathers looked to the sovereign power of monarchy for Presidential powers.

Who to Pardon?

President Trump has a limited amount of time to get things done – until 11:59 am on January 20^th.  He already is trying to restrict the incoming Biden Administration on several fronts.  Trump withdrew the United States from the Open Skies Treaty, and is in the process of destroying the aircraft that enforced it.  His Treasury Secretary is moving more than $400 million in COVID relief funds into accounts that could require Congressional approval to spend.  

And the President continues to try to “up-stage” the Biden Presidency by “stepping” on each Biden announcement. Today, Biden gave a pre-Thanksgiving speech, trying to steel the nation for impending COVID losses and rally us together. Trump waited until the speech was done, then released the “tweet” pardoning Flynn. Regardless that the election is over and Biden is the winner, Trump continues to try to focus attention back to Trump.

Don’t expect that this will be the last Presidential Pardon.  Paul Manafort is home, but still convicted of crimes.  He has been a “good soldier” and maintained his silence about the Trump 2016 campaign.  In Trump’s gangster-style life, he deserves a Pardon.  Bet on it.

And somewhere in the next few weeks, Donald Trump will raise the “specter of retribution”.  He will claim that the “radical Democrats” are going to attack his family.  Don’t be too shocked when he issues pardons “for any act they may have happened” to Jared and Ivanka, and Don Junior, Eric and their significant others. (Sorry Tiffany). 

But, of course, he’ll then explain that the main target is Donald Trump himself. 

The President 

There are two ways that the sitting President can “indemnify” himself from future Federal prosecution.  The first would be to follow the Nixon example.  Nixon resigned from office, and his replacement, Gerald Ford, soon issued a blanket pardon for any offense he might have committed.   I am not implying a “deal” was cut in 1974 – I don’t doubt Nixon wanted one, but Jerry Ford wasn’t that kind of politician.  Ford legitimately felt that it was in the nation’s best interest to end the Nixon era.

Donald Trump could resign from office – maybe right after New Year’s. Vice President Mike Pence would then take over for the brief interregnum before the Biden inauguration. Pence could then pardon Trump. And while there can’t be a direct “quid pro quo”, perhaps Trump might guarantee backing for a Pence Presidential run in 2024. And in the converse, if Pence didn’t pardon him, then Trump could use the deadly “tweet” to destroy Pence’s chances.

Or President Joe Biden could pardon Donald Trump, harkening back to Ford’s “…long national nightmare is over”.  I don’t think (or hope) Biden would do that, but anything is possible.  But Trump won’t count on that.

Or, as a last act of defiance, President Donald Trump could pardon himself.  It’s never been done, but there is no Constitutional prohibition against it.  Should Donald Trump do this, he is ultimately throwing himself on the “mercy” of the Supreme Court, made up in part by three of his appointees.  There are legal arguments on both sides.  If he can’t get a Pence pardon – what does Trump have to lose? 

But the most secure way for Trump to avoid prosecution would be a Pence Presidential pardon.

It’s THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION – Don’t be surprised!!

President-Elect Joe Biden is choosing his cabinet, and anyone who knows Joe Biden, isn’t surprised at his picks.  There are some simple principles that are driving Biden’s selections and are likely to continue. 

Something New – Competence 

First, Biden is looking for competence.  The folks he picked for his “National Security” team aren’t necessarily ideological.  They are proven, competent, professionals in their fields.  Tony Blinken, Biden’s pick for Secretary of State, worked for Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  He also served on the National Security Council, was the Deputy National Security Advisor, the National Security Advisor to the Vice President (Biden), and was the Deputy Secretary of State.  Sure he’s mostly worked for Democrats, but more importantly, he knows foreign policy, knows the workings of the State Department, and knows Joe Biden.

Many of his other selections are the same.  Avril Haines will be the next Director of National Intelligence – the top administrator of the United States “spy” agencies.  That job became controversial with the Trump appointment of John Ratcliffe, a Texas Congressman with little National Intelligence experience.  Ratcliffe’s prime qualification for the job seemed to be defending President Trump during the impeachment hearings.

Haines, on the other hand, is the former Deputy Director of the CIA. Prior to that she was a legal counsel to the White House, the State Department, and to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  And she’s not necessarily popular with more progressive Democrats.  Haines was a key player in the development of the Obama “drone strike” policy.

But she is competent, experienced, and knows Joe Biden.

Heavy Weights

And what about John Kerry?  Kerry, Secretary of State, Democratic candidate for President, US Senator from Massachusetts, is the new “Environmental Czar”.  Biden created that crucial appointment to show his own commitment to improving the environment, a critical issue to the progressive Democrats.  He appointed a “principal” level candidate, and elevated the job to cabinet and National Security Council status.  John Kerry is not going to be “shuffled aside” by anyone, not in the White House, and not in the world.  And he knows Joe Biden.

And Janet Yellen, the first woman to be the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, will be the first woman to be Secretary of the Treasury.  She is a career economist, having held several positions with Federal Reserve banks alternating with professorships at major universities.  And she is considered a “progressive” in the economic world, more concerned about unemployment than inflation. 

Senate Seats

So what happened to using the other Senators who ran for the Democratic candidacy for President?  What about Sanders and Warren, Klobuchar and Booker?  The first factor to consider is the makeup of the Senate itself.  Right now, there are 50 Republicans and 46 Democrats and two Independents who organize with the Democrats.  Two Senate seats are up for grabs still, the runoff seats in Georgia.  That January 5^th election will determine which political party controls the Senate.  Should the Democrats win both it will create a 50-50 Senate, with the new Vice President, Kamala Harris, breaking the tie for the Democrats.  

Joe Biden isn’t going to pull anyone out of the Senate that could alter that possible balance.  Sanders is from Vermont and the governor there is a Republican.  Warren is from Massachusetts, and believe it or not, the governor there is a Republican as well.  Normally, the Governor of the state can appoint an interim Senator until a special election is held.  Republican governors will appoint Republicans:  Sanders and Warren aren’t going anywhere.

The same is true about Sherrod Brown.  Ohio’s Senator is an obvious candidate for Secretary of Labor.  As Ohio’s only statewide elected Democrat, Brown is unlikely to accept any Biden appointment.  Republican Governor Mike DeWine would love to appoint a Republican to that Senate seat.

Progressive Demands

Does that mean that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party won’t get any Cabinet level appointments? 

There are still “domestic” Cabinet level jobs to be filled:  Labor, Commerce, Interior, Energy and others.  And, of course, there is the Attorney General’s position.  There will be other opportunities for more “progressive” Democrats to make their mark.  

But several things are clear at least from these first appointments.  Biden is living up to his campaign pledge of a Cabinet that “looks” like America:  men and women, Black, White and Hispanic.  But there are two even more critical factors in Biden’s first appointments.  Joe Biden knows and trusts them.  And they are experienced and competent.

It was “No Drama Obama”.  Joe Biden wants that too:  an Administration with quiet, competent leadership.  That’ll be a change.

Results

Democrat Joe Biden leads the popular vote by over six million, and has over fifty percent.  When all of the votes are “certified” by the various states, Biden will have 306 Electoral Votes to Donald Trump’s 232. That’s the exact total that Trump claimed was a “landslide” in his victory in 2016.  And, in the three “Blue Wall” states that gave Trump his 2016 victory by the narrow margin of 77,744 votes, Biden flipped them by 255,754.

For a few moments (more like a couple of weeks) it seemed that Donald Trump would try to somehow ignore the popular vote, and politically maneuver himself into a second term in office.  And while last night we saw a Trump tweet “allowing” (ordering?) the Administrator of the GSA to “ascertain” that Joe Biden was the President-Elect and begin the transition process, even in that message Trump still claims to be “fighting the good fight”.  

Donald Trump’s supporters tweeted back to their leader.  Just a few:

“Greatest President Ever!”

“You have to wake up, this is no longer a conspiracy theory.” 

“BIDEN IS NOT MY PRESIDENT”.

Delegitimize

President Trump has led a yearlong campaign to discredit this election.  He has questioned the results every step of the way, including filing “nuisance” lawsuits.  He has created among many of the almost 74 million who voted for him, a “more than reasonable doubt” about the whether the election was “stolen”.

But what if the “shoe was on the other foot”?  What if the very real strategy to political “flip” the results and take the Presidency for Trump had actually worked?  I believe, when history reveals the whole story that we will find that it was a much nearer thing.  It wouldn’t have taken much; a couple more state legislators susceptible to Presidential level pressure, a judge or two that could be influenced, and the Trump plan might have worked.

And what would we Democrats do?  Would we accept that the election was “stolen”; that over a six million vote majority ignored, and the “rules” manipulated to maintain a Trump Presidency? 

Our History

We were “led” by an honorable candidate in 2016.  Secretary Clinton conceded on Wednesday morning, even though the election margin was razor thin.  She said all of the right words:  support the new administration, the will of the people, we must unite and move on.  And even though many of us didn’t follow that advice, with the term “Resistance” in play even before Trump took the oath of office, few questioned the legitimacy of the Trump victory. (Though there remain statistical questions about what happened in balloting in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and with large precincts in – surprise – Detroit.)

But if the Trump “team” had managed to reverse the election decision, Democrats this time would have been unwilling to accept the results.  What that means – I’m not sure.  It’s not likely that Democrats would take to the streets with guns:  that’s not our style.  But take to the streets – absolutely.  What kind of civil unrest might result from that, I don’t know.

Expect This

So there are many millions of Americans, including some of my closest neighbors; that have been told by their “leader” that the election has been stolen from him, and them.  Many of them are “true believers” in Donald Trump, and in the aura of victimhood he engenders.  

What are they going to do when Joe Biden is sworn in on January 20^th at noon?  It’s hard to imagine that those who would “storm” the State Houses with semi-automatic weapons at the ready because of face masks and stay-at-home orders, would do less if they felt the Presidency was stolen.  Are they going to have a national “truck parade” to block traffic throughout the nation?  That seems pretty futile.  

President Trump has achieved a personal goal.  He has established a “base” that will follow him – anywhere.  And while last night’s tweet (a Hell of a way to run a railroad) acknowledges a Biden victory, Donald Trump is never going to say it.  And so his “base” will never believe it.  Many of those supporters fly the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag of the American Revolution.  Do we really expect they are going to “swallow” an election they believe was “stolen”?  I don’t.

This isn’t over.

Re-Evaluation

We have re-evaluated the “story” of the American Civil War in recent years.  While Americans still recognize the “pathos” of a struggle that set brother against brother, the “new revisionist” history of the War creates a clear moral position.  One side was fighting for the “right” to enslave others: the other side was fighting against it.  

That was clear to those in the 1850’s before the War, and it was clear during the effusion of blood that was the War.  It was only in the 1890’s, after the Union Reconstruction troops were withdrawn from the South and the now older Confederate leaders began to write their stories that the first “revision” of the history began.  “It wasn’t about slavery,” they claimed, “It was about the right of states to determine their own course.”  And they added that the North benefited mightily from slavery, perhaps even more than the South, so there was no moral “high ground”.

Like all good excuses, the “Lost Cause” Confederates had just enough truth on their side to sound convincing.  The North certainly benefited from slavery.  The textile mills of Massachusetts needed the raw material of slavery, cotton, to feed into their giant looms.  Even during the War itself, Southern cotton still found it ways across the tenuous border into the North.  But if it weren’t for slavery, there would have been no war.  And if the South had won, slavery would have remained.  All the “Lost Causes” in the world couldn’t change those facts.

Lost Cause

I too have walked the line from Seminary Ridge to “the Copse of Trees” at Gettysburg, the line of Pickett’s disastrous Charge and the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy. Southern author William Faulkner (a wonderful writer and a “Lost Causer”) described the “dream” of every fourteen year old Southern (white) boy: to stand at the ready on Seminary Ridge, the flags unfurled, before the order, and change the awful results of that charge. It’s romantic, it’s compelling, but what Faulkner never describes is that the “dream” is one of enslaving his fellow fourteen-year old boys who were black.

So when we think about Robert E. Lee, the leading Confederate General, we need to revise our “eighth grade history class” view.  We were taught that Lee, a career military officer and the rising “star” of the pre-war Army, struggled to determine whether to stand with the Nation he spent his career defending.  And we eighth graders somehow justified the fact that Lee turned on his Nation to defend “Virginia”.  Had Lee taken the commission offered as the leading Union General, perhaps the four years of Civil War and the 600,000 dead might have been only a fraction.  But he didn’t.  He stood for slavery.

Appomattox

But there still is one moment when we can look at Lee and find honor.  After four long years of struggle, when Lee saw he could find no legitimate path to continue the fight, he surrendered.  At Appomattox Courthouse, Lee chose to give up, rather than continue the slaughter.

He did have other options.  He could have led his Army of Northern Virginia to “fight to the death”.  His depleted and starving troops would have followed Lee into the rifles and the canister shot once again, until they were all just bodies lying in the April Virginia sun.  Lee had plenty of officers who wanted it to end that way.

Or Lee could have taken the advice of his younger staff.  They laid out a plan of guerilla warfare.  He could have “dissolved” his Army, sending them up into the Blue Ridge and the Appalachians to hide, regroup, and continue the war as small groups of “terrorists”.  The “cause” would have continued for years, perhaps decades or even longer.  America could have become a land of perpetual fighting, like the Middle East, or the centuries in Ireland.

Legitimacy

But Lee knew the fight for a “legal” Confederate nation was over.  The “peculiar institution”, slavery, which served as the foundation of the Confederacy, was done.  To become a “guerilla force” would not change that irrevocable result of loss on the battlefields.  So he surrendered, and ultimately ended the bloodshed.  He went to Lexington, Virginia, to Washington College, and lived the remaining five years of his life as its President.  His last act as a General was to allow for an actual peace.

Donald Trump has arrived at such a moment.  

In all the “legitimate” ways he has lost the 2020 Presidential election.  Even the states like Georgia, where the Republican Party controls all of the levers of electoral power, acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election.  And in the Courts, Trump’s attorneys are being more than laughed out of room.  Judges are disparaging their arguments, and seeing their “evidence” for what it is:  propaganda.

Trump can find a way to accept the loss, and allow the institution of the American government to continue.  Unlike Lee, Trump won’t be going to some university retirement:  perhaps he will even look to run again in 2024.  But he can maintain the legitimacy of the election, and keep it as a means for his own regaining power.

Ruin

Or he can follow the strategy the he has set upon now.  He can delegitimize the election.  Today, tens of millions of Americans really believe that the election was somehow “stolen” and the results are tainted beyond acceptability.  Those millions could be like those Confederates who would go into the hills, to fight on as guerilla forces.  But instead of acts of terror and attacks in the middle of the night, the Trump “guerillas” would simply deny the validity of anything a Biden government might do.

In the end, Democracy is a cooperative effort.  The winners govern and the losers plot to become winners once again.  But all participate in the process of governing, legitimizing the system.  But Donald Trump is flirting with a path where there is no acceptance, no moving on.  Republicans who depend on Trump’s support cannot be allowed any cooperation to govern.  That cooperation becomes “traitorous”, and to do so means political suicide.

The Choice

We see it happening today.  Even the “moderate” Republicans cannot utter the words “President-elect Biden” without risking political exile.  

Our view of Robert E. Lee is less “mythical” than it was forty years ago.  We see him more clearly as a man who stood for an unacceptable institution, a man who could have made a morally right choice, but didn’t.  But there is still the one “honorable” act of Lee:  the act of allowing the nation to move on.  We have a lot lower expectations of Donald Trump.  But Trump only exists because those in power around him allow him to continue by their silence.

Their legacy and our Democracy are at stake.  Should those Republicans standing silent remain so, the “revision” of their actions by history will be brutal.

John Mellencamp – Pink Houses (Ain’t that America)

Louisiana

So if you’ve read many of my recent essays, you know that my wife Jenn has taken in a “rehab” dog, Louisiana.  Lou was rescued from Baton Rouge with two broken legs and a dislocated hip. A team from Lost Pet Recovery, the group that Jenn and I volunteer with, went down to pick him up.  OSU veterinary care patched him up, with a plate in one leg and hip relocation surgery, and now he’s doing his second “rehab” stint here at our house.

Lou’s up early, and needs his “big” walk of the day as part of the rehab.  Then he takes a bunch of drugs to keep him quiet so he can heal. It takes a while for him to settle down again and he needs company.  We’ve turned Jenn’s office into his rehab facility, and we take turns “hangin’ with Lou on the daily shifts.  He wants us there, you can tell from the Cajun accented howls if we leave too soon.

But it’s a good time to get some writing done.  I’m sitting here in Jenn’s office at 5:30 in the morning, staring at her map of the United States on the wall.  There are pushpins in all of the places she’s gone. Most of them we’ve visited together. There are pins up the coast of California, from LA to San Francisco from when Jenn, our son Joe and I drove the Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur.  We made it to Yosemite National Park on the trip as well.

Packed with Stars

The first night near Yosemite we stayed at a hotel just outside of the Park.  Yosemite National Park is huge; maybe thirty miles from the Park entrance to Yosemite Valley and the amazing waterfalls and cliffs.  The hotel was “rustic”; it kind of had that old summer camp look.  It was somewhere my Dad would have taken us on a road trip back in the early 1960’s with rough pine log beds and wood paneled walls.  

We arrived there with a couple of steaks we picked up in a little town called Manteca on the way over from San Francisco.  That was our stop to do some laundry and shopping. We also brought some bottles of wine from the Hearst Castle winery in San Simeon just south of Big Sur.

After grilling steaks, potatoes and green beans, and knocking back a couple of bottles of Chardonnay, Jenn, Joey and I decided to climb “the mountain” behind the hotel.  It was really a hill; we were already in the mountains.  But our adventure led us to the stars of Yosemite, far away from the city lights.  It was amazing, from the Milky Way to the constellations to the planets:  stars packed the sky from horizon to horizon.

We woke up slow the next morning, sore from the stumbling journey back down, and from the chardonnay as well. We would see Half Dome, Bridal Veil Falls, El Capitan and Glacier Peak, that next day, and they were amazing.  But nothing was quite as striking as all those stars, up on the hill above the camp just outside the Park.

Solitary Drive

There’s another pushpin in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jenn and I, and Dash and Buddy, our two dogs at the time, drove out to Telluride, Colorado, to visit my sister and brother-in-law.  We travelled out through Missouri, Kansas and Colorado, but decided to return on the “Southern Route” through New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.  

So we drove out of Western Colorado, past ancient Mesa Verde and into the high desert Navajo Country in New Mexico.  We made the long empty drive down US 550 diagonally through the plateau country, from Farmington to Albuquerque.  It was empty land on an empty road, dry red high country.  It was remarkable for it’s quiet solitude, as if no one had walked those hills before.  

We stopped at a gas station in the middle of the journey, the only stop for a hundred miles.  The blaring heavy metal rock coming through speakers in the store contrasted with the ultimate quiet of the squared off mountains all around.  The kids working the store seemed surprised by the interruption – a customer they didn’t know.  But they were polite, and directed us to the Port-a-Potty in the back.

Twelve Hours 

And there’s a pushpin in one of our “go to” places, Pensacola, just twelve hours from gray Pataskala winter to the white beach and sun.  It’s a fun town, part beach, part Navy, part Southern charm and part New Orleans. 

There’s a park nearby, just across the state line, the Alabama Gulf State Park. The Lodge there is isolated on the beach, half a mile from the next nearest structure.  The hotel is wonderful, the Gulf of Mexico just outside the room windows.  You can sit on the balcony and watch the waves come in.  And while the restaurant is a little “too” gourmet for our taste, there are plenty of other places to eat not too far away.

That was the last trip we took, just a couple weeks before the world changed with COVID. 

Just Folks 

In all of those places, from Big Sur to Yosemite, Telluride to Albuquerque, Pensacola to Gulf Shores:  no one ever asked if we were Democrat or Republican.  We were all just “folks”, enjoying the scenery, the food, the life and the people of those very different places.  

So when I get too wrapped up in the politics of the moment, on what damage might be left to do before this President leaves office, and how my family, friends and neighbors will react to our shockingly fragile government and life, I think back on that map, and Jenn’s pushpins.  It’s still an amazing country, with lots to see.  When COVID is over, and maybe our politics get back to “normal”(whatever that might be now); there’s Boston and Seattle, back to New York, and maybe Big Bend National Park way down in Texas.  There’s a lot of America to see, and Americans to meet.  And maybe we can all be just “folks” again.  

I’m looking forward to that. 

Farm Town

When I moved here to Pataskala, Ohio in 1978, it was still considered a “farm town”.  The directions to the high school were: “Turn left off State Route 16 onto Watkins Road, go south three miles, and it’s in the west cornfield just before you reach the National Road”.   In October, soon after the fields were cleared, the high school had “Tractor Day” when the seniors drove their Green or Red (it’s a thing) tractor to school and paraded in the parking lot.  

The landscape, now covered with sub-divisions, was dotted with older farmhouses, barns, sheds and silos.  Silos were the tall circular structures where grain was stored, piped into the top and filled at the end of the harvest.  Some silos would get corn some would get soybeans.  In the spring, when the structures were empty they were fun to “play” in. 

The school “tradition” was to kidnap the senior government teacher on the last day of seniors’ regular school.  No one told me about that tradition when I took the job, but for the first three years of my career, I found myself bound (one year handcuffed) and held by the graduating class.  Silos were a great “prison”, though one year I figured out I could jump out of a window about twenty feet up.  

I managed to escape, hide from the searching (and not quite sober) seniors in a field, and walked the few miles back home.  That year they weren’t able to parade me as the trophy into the morning senior assembly.  They were eighteen, I was twenty-four.  It was a great game.

Danger

But silos could be dangerous places as well.  Every year in some small farm school in Ohio, there’s the tragic story of a kid lost to the grain in a silo.  They fall in as the grain is being loaded, the dust chokes them to unconsciousness, and the grain smothers them to death.

While there are still a few old farmers left at the local diner, Pataskala is not really a farm town anymore. Forty years have turned it into a suburb of Columbus, with housing developments and industrial parks filling the places were corn and soybeans grew. Most of the kids at school couldn’t identify what “green and red” means when it comes to farm equipment, and struggle to tell the difference between soybeans or corn growing in the few remaining spring fields. John Deere makes lawn tractors as far as they are concerned.

And the few remaining silos are now homes for rodents and bats.  The danger there isn’t the grain, it’s the structure collapsing on the few adventurous kids who put down their video controllers long enough to venture outside.

The News

But there is a different kind of silo that impacts our growing suburban community.  It’s a silo of information, a “mental” structure rather than a physical one.  But those mental silos are just as real as the old silo that still looms by the railroad tracks in “downtown” Pataskala.  And they are just as dangerous.

While forty years has changed the landscape, it’s really only been in the last ten that we’ve seen this mental containment.  Up through the first decade of the twenty-first century, we all got our information, “the news,” from similar sources.  We read the Columbus Dispatch or the Newark Advocate, and we watched Channels 4, 6, and 10.  Sure there was cable news, with Fox, CNN and MSNBC, but we still all went to the same “well” for most of our general information.

Maybe we should blame it on the IPhone.  When did “getting” the news become a matter of watching a two-inch by three-inch screen?  And when did our news sources stop being Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw?  Now we have our “inside sources”, the Twitter feed that tells us exactly what’s going on.  And the only time we catch the “local” news on 4, 6, or 10 is to see the high school football highlights or catch a late weather alert.  

Facts

Our information is so “silo’ed” that what’s a “fact” is no longer a certainty.  We are in the middle of a global pandemic.  Over a quarter of a million Americans are dead just in the last nine months.  Our schools here in Pataskala just went “virtual”, because too many of the staff are getting sick.  And yet, we can’t even agree to wear masks, social distance, or stay home for Thanksgiving.  My silo of information says yes – my neighbor’s silo says it’s all a hoax.

Over the next six months, how we decide to deal with COVID will determine how many more will die.   And which information “silo” we live in will decide what we think about that.

And now there’s an even bigger question.  Another neighbor down the street flies his American Flag at half-staff today.  Below the Stars and Stripes – a Trump for President banner. He believes that Trump won the 2020 Presidential election, and that Joe Biden truly stole the Presidency from him.   There’s no discussing it.  His silo of information tells him over and over and over that the election has been rigged.

And my silo says the opposite: that Donald Trump is intentionally trying to destroy confidence in the election process, for his own personal and financial benefit.  And that the Republican Party, sold lock, stock and soul to Trump, is willing to disenfranchise as many minority voters as it takes to maintain their power.

Collapse

The old silos out in the fields are collapsing from disuse and age.  They are a hazard: old bricks falling from the top, and vermin living in the base.  But the information silos built mainly on the screens in our pockets are structurally impregnable.  We cannot peer out; we can only look up at our one source of information, pouring like grain on top of us.  And who’s to say that we are right?   If all we see is corn, how do we know what the soybeans look like?

There are two Americas right now, one looking at “corn” and saying there are no “soybeans”, and one doing the other.  And no matter whether corn or soybeans are “right”, as Lincoln said:

“…a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Holding a prior President criminally accountable after their Administration is not “the American Way”.  It is far outside the “norms” of American History.  It’s “banana republic” behavior; what the rotating dictators of some unnamed Latin American country might do.  

Watergate

Gerald Ford became President upon the resignation of Richard Nixon after two years of the Watergate scandal . The Republican leadership of the Congress, told Nixon he would be impeached and removed from office.  While removal from office isn’t a criminal offense, it would prevent Nixon from getting his much-needed Government pension.  And he still would be open to criminal prosecution. So he resigned.

 There was ample evidence that Nixon committed multiple criminal offenses as President. He was even an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a Federal criminal obstruction of justice indictment that resulted in multiple convictions.

But Ford determined that a criminal trial of Richard Nixon would drag the “Watergate Era” on for years.  His goal was to move the nation on, to end “…our long national nightmare”.  So he pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed as President of the United States.  There would be no “perp-walk”, no mug shot, and no “show trial” with Richard Nixon in handcuffs.

Ford took a tremendous amount of “heat” for the pardon, even testifying at a Congressional hearing to explain his reasoning.  It was one of the major reasons he lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter two years later.  But Ford was a Republican like Nixon, and the Vice President appointed by Nixon to replace the resigned Spiro Agnew.  There couldn’t have been a friendlier “venue” for Nixon’s pardon.

Political revenge in America occurs at the polling place.  We don’t “do” vendettas, and we don’t put our former leaders on trial. We vote them out. Or at least, that’s what we’ve done in the past.

Unprecedented

The Trump Administration can be characterized by one word:  unprecedented.  From his very first day in office, as Press Secretary Sean Spicer unabashedly lied about the size of the inauguration crowd, the Trump Administration broke the “norms” of American Government.   

There is an actual list of over 20,000 lies that President Trump told in the first three and a half years in office (WAPO). But lying isn’t illegal.  And there are the hundreds of outrageous policy decisions from selling off mineral rights in National Monuments to building oil pipelines through sacred Native American lands to using Federal forces to battle protestors in the streets.  But those policy decisions, as much as they were disliked, aren’t illegal either.

The President politicized the Department of Justice, suggesting prosecutions and demanding personal loyalties from chief law enforcement officers.  These actions might have bordered on obstruction, and were distasteful and against long established norms of America. But they weren’t illegal.

So if Donald Trump, forty-fifth President of the United States committed crimes, what were they?

Already Determined

There are two areas that are “done deals”.  The first is the Russia investigation, conducted by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s team.  The exhaustive report issued by Mueller and long debated in Congress turned out to be an exercise in “fence sitting”.  Mueller refused to take a side. 

 From the start of the investigation he determined that a serving President couldn’t be charged. So he never suggested what those charges might be.  While there seems like plenty of evidence for charges, those questions are already “asked and answered” in the eyes of the American people, regardless of the unsatisfying results.

The only possible charge Trump could face from the Russia investigation now is as part of the Michael Cohen indictment, where he was the unnamed “Individual One” who orchestrated the violation of campaign finance laws.  And while that is a pre-cooked charge, ready for re-heating, it also is exactly the kind of charge that would be seen as the Biden Administration “getting vengeance”.

The second area that’s a “done deal” is the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s impeachment.  The evidence was actually pretty clear, and is even clearer today than it was during Trump’s impeachment trial in front of the Senate.  The President tried to use the power of the US government to leverage a foreign leader for “dirt” against a political opponent. Criminal actions, including obstruction of justice and abuse of power, clearly occurred.  

But the people of the United States feel that this is “adjudicated”.  The Impeachment Trial felt like a trial. And even though it has nothing to do with criminal law or the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, in the public eye, the President is “not guilty”.

What’s Left?

There are two areas where the upcoming Biden Administration could look for criminal charges against the forty-fifth President.  The first area is in Trump and his family’s use of the office of the President to enrich themselves.  From getting special deals for golf courses in Scotland, to hotel fees in the Old Post Office in Washington, the Trump business has consistently “monetized” the Presidency.  Some of these may well violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and other actions look lie a straight “shakedown” of the American people.  

And though some of Trump’s personal and business behavior may be beyond the scope of the Department of Justice, they may be right in the ballpark of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.  That investigation is already underway, and will soon pick up the pace, unencumbered by the burden of Trump being the serving President.

And finally there is the singular outrageous act of the Trump Administration, separating children at the border from their parents.  At least 666 children cannot be returned:  the government lost contact with the parents.  This intentional and morally reprehensible act may be criminal as well, a crime against humanity.

Biden’s Choice

Joe Biden is a traditionalist.  He will almost automatically look to history, and Gerald Ford’s precedent.  I don’t expect Biden to pardon Donald Trump for anything. But I do expect that he will avoid the morass and division a Trump prosecution might cause.

However, Joe Biden is also an institutionalist.  He believes that the President should keep the Department of Justice at arms length.  So if his Attorney General, or a new US Attorney, wants to pursue charges against Donald Trump or his family, Joe Biden may feel obligated to stay away from the decision.  That would fit his and America’s norms for what the President should do.

COVID

It feels like life is starting to close down again, and it is not just Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio doing the closing.  We can read the COVID statistics.  Ohio in the past three days:  total cases increased by 14,000.  Hospitalizations are up 600.  And fifty more have died of COVID (Ohio).  Our local schools are switching to full online learning Thursday.  A statewide “mandatory unenforced” curfew goes into effect Thursday as well, from 10 pm to 5 am.  The circle of COVID is closing in.

We are lying low as well, taking care of the dogs, and staying close to home.  We seemed to have slipped into a shrunken world of our own.  So, to break things up at least a little bit last night we threw all of our rules out the window.  I went to pickup a fast-food dinner at Wendy’s!

Nullification

So I was in the Jeep, waiting in the drive-thru line when I heard the news.  There is an obscure government committee in Michigan, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers.  After an election, this four-member group has the task of “balancing the books”.  They make sure the precinct totals reported match the actual precinct counts.  After an election, they literally cross check the lists by hand. 

Like election boards all across the nation, the Wayne County Board is split between representatives of the two major political parties, Republican and Democrat.  These are “professional” board of election personnel; it’s their job.  But they are divided by Party, because here in America, that’s how we try to guarantee fairness.  There’s no pretense of some “apolitical” group of neutral workers.  We just assume both Parties have an interest, and will watch each other.  And they do.

So it was a routine meeting.  The four completed their task; the books were crosschecked and agreed to.  The vote was a formality, announcing to the world that one more step in the common election process was concluded.  They Wayne County Board of Canvassers would certify the election results to the Michigan State Canvassing Board.

But they didn’t.  The two Republican representatives voted against certification.  This was despite the books being “balanced”.  Their task was completed.  They simply refused to acknowledge it.  But by voting against “certifying” the votes, it was a two to two tie, and the certification process was stopped.

Disenfranchisement

Wayne County, by the way, contains the single biggest municipality in Michigan: Detroit.  Joe Biden won Wayne County by almost 300,000 votes.  He won Michigan by 149,000 votes, so if somehow the votes in Wayne County could be “vanished”, that would leave Donald Trump as the winner of Michigan.

The Wayne County vote is 15% of the total votes in the state of Michigan.  The thought was breathtaking.  These two folks on the Board of Canvassers, could disenfranchise over 800,000 people, and change the results of the election.  And they could do it, without legitimacy.  As the saying goes, “…they had one job to do”.  And they did it, to completion, and agreed on the results.  It was only then that they decided to vote against their own conclusions.

And that’s where I felt the rise of just a little bit of panic.  If two obscure folks in a dingy office in Detroit could change the course of the election in Michigan, couldn’t that happen in Philadelphia, and Milwaukee, and Atlanta?  Is the pressure generated by the Trump-led disinformation campaign so great, that everyday government workers will determine to ignore their own findings, and knuckle-under to illicit pressure?

For just a moment, I saw an America where the votes of millions could be completely ignored.  It already happens, legally, with the Electoral College system.  Out of the last five Presidential elections, twice the winner of the popular vote has lost the Presidency.  But this “vision” was on a whole different scale.  This wasn’t some Constitutional peculiarity; this was out and out disenfranchisement on a scale the United States hadn’t seen since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Win At All Cost

And who would be disenfranchised?  The Republican Party knows full well that people of color vote overwhelmingly for – not Republicans.  So disenfranchising them would allow Republicans to win.  The idea that an American political Party, the Party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Earl Warren, would fully embrace the concept that they cannot fully represent the nation is astounding.  That the Grand Old Party would then simply say:  “don’t count their votes” – well, that’s not my America.

 I felt my foundational “Boy Scout” belief in American values tremble.  

A couple of hours later, the two Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers changed their mind.  Whatever threats they received that made them vote against their own conclusions the first time, paled when threatened by the real possibility that a Michigan Judge might find them in contempt for ignoring their own findings.  And the Republican leaders of the Michigan legislature made it clear that “they” weren’t going to overthrow the legitimate decision of the voters of Wayne County.  

So the two Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers changed their mind again, and the vote was certified by a four to zero agreement.  Sure, they got a “sop”, an agreement that the Michigan Secretary of State (a Democrat) would conduct an “audit” of the Wayne County results.  But the process continues in Michigan.

Fail Safe

The entire event shows how close to the knife-edge our Democracy seems to be.  There’s a 1964 black and white movie about nuclear war starring Henry Fonda called “Fail Safe”.  The story goes that a computer glitch sends bombers to attack Russia, and there’s no way to call them back.  It’s a dark, depressing film, as Fonda (the President) tries to convince the Soviet leader that he should not respond by using his nuclear weapons.  The rest of humanity went on about their everyday lives, not knowing that the mushroom clouds were just minutes away.

Life is on that edge right now.  COVID is closing in.  And this little vignette in Detroit should demonstrate how fragile our Democracy really is.  There won’t be tanks in the streets, or even Proud Boys with AR-15’s to change our government.  It will be obscure officials, making fateful decisions in backrooms.  

And then it will be gone.

Light in the Tunnel

I can’t leave this essay here.  The Attorney General of Michigan stepped in within minutes to defend the voters.  The threat of contempt of court was real, so the judicial system of Michigan was on hand to defend Democracy as well.  And the leaders of the Michigan legislature refused to “back” this subversion of the vote.

There is hope.  The “process” righted itself.  There is “light at the end of the tunnel”, and it’s not the headlight from the 4:35 freight to Chicago or a nuclear blast.  But somehow it does feel we need to watch our Democracy closer than ever before.  It’s not time to panic, but it is time to keep our eyes open.  

Democracy may need our help in the next sixty days.

Math

A “Facebook” friend of mine complained of COVID restrictions last night.  She posted: “Only .0001% deaths…and we are getting ready to shut down again.  This is more than ridiculous!!!”  Here in Ohio this has been a recurring theme since last March.  We had our fair share of protestors on the State House lawn, demanding their “freedom” not to wear masks.   And small business owners, reasonably afraid of losing their livelihoods, have fought against restrictions.

So let’s start with where we are in Ohio right now. First of all, the “.0001%” number is bogus.  How do you even get there?  Take the entire population of the state, and divide it into the number of deaths.  Mathematically, by the way – that’s “.01%”.  But besides eighth grade math mistakes, what’s wrong?  As a “snapshot”, most of the population hasn’t had COVID  – yet.  So since they haven’t been infected, they certainly aren’t dying from it.  But we know that COVID infection is spreading at an alarming rate.  Eventually most of the population may be exposed, and the “.01%” fatality rate will climb.  So here is a snapshot of Ohio numbers that make more sense.

Ohio Numbers

There are 11 million people in the state.  Almost 300,000 Ohioans have been diagnosed with COVID. That’s about 3%, and it’s growing quickly.  Also there are likely many more folks that had COVID, but were asymptomatic and never diagnosed.  Here’s the critical number though:  out of those diagnosed, 22,265 had to be hospitalized.  That’s 7%.  So if you are diagnosed with COVID, right now there’s a 7% chance of ending up in a hospital for treatment here in Ohio.

There have been 5722 deaths from COVID here in Ohio.  Most of those who died were hospitalized – which means that there’s a 25% chance that if you need to be hospitalized for COVID, you might not make it.  That’s one in four.

And here’s the final, scary numbers.  There were 40,000 new cases of COVID diagnosed in Ohio – last week!  We are averaging 199 new hospitalized patients each day.  The rate of infection, how many people are diagnosed a week, is increasing quickly.  Sure, part of that number is that from testing more people – and we ought to be testing a whole lot more people so we have a “real” percentage of the infection in our population (Ohio Coronavirus.org). 

Waiting List

But the number that should worry Ohioans is the number of folks in the hospital.  We can argue about “rates” of infection and testing, but there is no denying the fact that our hospitals are being crushed by COVID.  The Cleveland Clinic postponed elective surgeries for the foreseeable future.  Emergency departments in the Columbus metro area were so slammed last Friday, that one Level I Trauma Center (Level I is the most able to handle major cases) redirected ambulances away from their unit, and another Level II Center was unable to accept any new patients at all.  Think of that for a moment – ambulances are redirected to Emergency Departments farther away – and if you drive yourself to the hospital – they don’t let you in.

So let’s not fool ourselves with “bad” math.  We were warned back in March:  if we don’t control the rate of infection, we will lose control of our hospitals.  We will not be able to treat both COVID patients, and the folks with all of the other problems that put them in the hospital in the first place.  People will die, who didn’t have to die.

Who Lives

We dodged that bullet in March by shutting down, wearing masks, and social distancing.  But that was a long, long time ago.  Now shutting down, masks, and social distancing are “political” issues rather than medical ones.  We even had a Supreme Court Justice make “ex parte” statements  (outside of a court case) about the Constitutionality of restrictions.  He’s worried that folks can’t practice their religion by going to church.  

We should be worried about everyone in church getting COVID.  We should be worried about the elderly, often regular churchgoers, getting COVID and dying. Not because they “had” to die, and not because it was “their time”.  Dying because some church leaders willfully ignored science and brought them together.  Benjamin Franklin famously quoted, “God helps those who help themselves”.   Justice Alito and Ohioans need to help themselves and protect folks.

There is “light at the end of the tunnel”.  Vaccines are literally around the corner.  Sometime between now and June, it’s likely that most of the population could be vaccinated, and the COVID pandemic controlled (not over).  We can then return to many of the things that we call “regular life”.  

But in the meantime – we decide how many will die.  If we control the disease:  wearing masks, social distance, and, if necessary, shutdown for a few weeks to regain control, we can save many lives.  If we don’t, then we betray those who are vulnerable and kill them.  It’s not political – it’s simple math and science.

Teddy

The “gold standard” in modern United States election turnout was the election of 1908.  Teddy Roosevelt, the incumbent, chose not to run for a third term, citing Washington’s two-term precedent.  This was in spite of the fact that Roosevelt, still young at forty-eight, became President as a result of the assassination of William McKinley and only served three years of his first term in office.

But after seven years Roosevelt had enough of being President.  A yearlong world tour awaited, including a massive safari in Africa.  So his “chosen” replacement was Cincinnati’s own William Howard Taft, the serving Secretary of War.  And while Taft didn’t have the personable energy that the dynamic Roosevelt brought to the White House, he was the technocrat who could implement Roosevelt’s Progressive goals.

Progressive v Populist

Running against Republican Taft was the populist Democrat from Nebraska, Williams Jennings Bryan.  His soaring oratory in the name of the “people” galvanized the small farmers of Nebraska, and the coal miners from Pennsylvania.  It was his third (and last) run for the Presidency.

America was still a segregated nation, and women did not have the right to vote in many states.  But of those eligible to vote, almost 66% came out to help choose the President: 14,087,379.  That’s out of a total population of just less than 89 million Americans.

It wasn’t just the voting that was segregated.  The nation was only thirty-two years beyond the end of the Reconstruction Era.  While the issue of slavery was resolved, the former slaves states still voted as a solid Democratic block.  The “Union” states tended to still vote Republican, and though Bryan earned a few inroads in Colorado, Nevada and his home Nebraska; Taft swept the northern tier and won with 51.6% of the vote. Bryan earned 43%, with candidates from the Socialist Party and a smattering of other causes taking the remaining percentages.

Showing Up

It is projected that a modern record 67% of eligible Americans voted in this month’s election.  The current count is just under 152 million – but there are a few more million votes still to be counted, particularly in California. (No, the state of California isn’t “creating” votes, no matter what the Republican Party would like you to think.  Their “vote anyway you can” system just takes a lot longer to tally.  And besides, it’s almost 17 million votes – more than the entire national vote a century ago). The US population today is 331 million people.

So for those “glass half full” kind of folks – more people voted in 2020 than ever before.  For those “half emptiers”:  almost 100 million eligible to vote chose not to.  For many it was a conscious choice. Some military officers and other officials follow the “George Marshall” precedent and don’t vote at all.  And of course, there are different groups with religious reasons for not participating.  And there are those people who just don’t think it matters, or that their voice makes a difference. 

But as far as trends are concerned more Americans voted and at a higher rate in 2020 than ever before.  America “SHOWED UP”.

And here’s another notable fact from the 2020 election.  Donald John Trump, Republican candidate for President in 2020, received the second most votes of ANY candidate for President in American history.  More than 73 million Americans voted for him.  More than ever voted for Barack Obama.  So while Joe Biden may claim a “mandate” with over 78 million, the nation is still starkly divided into two visions of America.

Uniting

Biden sees himself as a “uniter” not a “divider”.  And that’s been the overall take on his forty-seven year history in government.  Biden is the one who reached “across the aisle”.  Not only did he deal with the opposition party, but some, like John McCain, were also his closest friends.  And in his earlier days in the Senate, Biden would work across the divides within the Democratic Party.  He could reach out to the old remaining Southern Democrats, the descendants of those post-Reconstruction era segregationists.  Biden could span a party that included John Stennis and James Eastland of Mississippi, as well as Ted Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts.

The challenge of the 21^st Century for President-Elect Biden will be finding common purpose with his opposition.  The Republican Party of the past, with defined goals of personal freedom, unfettered capitalism and a strong world presence, is no longer.  Instead, the “Trumpian” Republican Party has drifted towards a more isolationist, more reactionary and racist view.  Where Biden and McCain could often find agreements, it’s hard to see the same possibilities anymore with McConnell or Graham.

It’s not because those particular Republicans don’t “think” the same way they used to.  But the Republican politics of today don’t allow them to act on those thoughts.  A “tweet” might destroy their political base.  They are “required” to fall in line with Trump’s brand of “white victimization” or lose office.  That won’t change with the 2020 results and Trump out of the White House.  It’s how the former President will stay relevant, and more importantly, pay his enormous bills.  And the battle for his “hardcore 40%” support base is only just beginning.

Division

Meanwhile the “Progressive” side of Biden’s own party will demand their agenda, the one that Biden already agreed to, at least in part.  So how does President Biden take a nation so radically divided and apply an increased national health care plan, or improved environment standards, or comprehensive immigration reform?  Who on the Republican side can he find with common purpose?  Frankly, in a Senate so evenly split, regardless of the outcomes in Georgia, can President Biden even find commonality with fellow Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia?

Abraham Lincoln prophesized that, “…a house divided against itself cannot stand”.  That was over the fundamental contradiction of the American experiment:  how a nation founded on the principle of  “…all men are created equal” could allow slavery.  Biden faces a similar racial crisis.  Within twenty-five years, white people in the United States will be the minority.  It’s the growing fear of that unavoidable truth that creates the strength of Donald Trump’s “populism”.  It’s the new incarnation of the “snake underneath the table” of American politics, the same “snake” that was there at the writing of the Declaration and the Constitution – racism.

So just over half of America has turned to a white man from the 20^th Century to deal with this “not so modern” problem.  He truly believes that we can be “E Pluribus Unum”, out of many, one.  It’s hard to see the way forward – but I hope Joe Biden does.