One Step Forward, Two Back

By Stephen Macaulay

Although there are certainly metrics associated with bringing kids back to the classrooms across the country, a country where the COVID-19 numbers are beginning to decline — but decline from a high place to what still should be an inconceivable place, were it not that we’ve become inured to large numbers (it is still a really big number, folks) — it seems that the anecdotal is important in thinking about this issue.

Kids and teachers are human beings, which is something that can be readily overlooked when they are turned into metrics. And let’s not forget about the other people who make schools operate, whether it is the absolutely important janitorial staff or the bus drivers or the school administrators. There are plenty of people who are involved that transcends the teacher-pupil ratio.

So, the anecdote.

I have a niece who is a third-grade teacher in Southwest Michigan. Before the pandemic, her parents, who live in Southeast Michigan, would periodically travel west, not only to see their daughter, but to bring her essential school supplies that they bought because (1) they knew their daughter, who was also buying things like paper and pencils, wasn’t exactly making a whole lot and (2) the school district didn’t have the funds either. As you may have learned of late, Southwest Michigan is an area where there isn’t a whole lot of interest in things like tax increases, even if it is for school children.

Teachers, like my niece, want to teach. They didn’t go into that profession thinking that they’re going to get rich. And as my niece has discovered, part of her income is going to support her students.

My niece has been back in the classroom for several weeks now. Whereas in a pre-pandemic year she would go in on weekends to decorate the classroom with educational materials, now she goes in on weekends to assure that there is proper spacing and to do some additional Lysol wiping.

Clearly, priorities change.

Although the school district she teaches in is literally about 10 miles from the Pfizer plant where the vaccine is made, she has yet to get her first shot: it will happen next week. It will be a Moderna jab. Do you want to know what my niece says is one of her biggest challenges while teaching during a pandemic?

“The kids want to hug one another.”

Yes, we’re talking about people here.

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While the U.S. is deservedly renowned for many of its universities, when it comes to primary and secondary schools, things aren’t so swell.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) runs the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which “measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.”

How well did U.S. middle schoolers do compared with those in other parts of the world in the most recent survey (2018)? Thirteenth place.

China, separated into four divisions for the survey ((1) Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang; (2) Singapore, (3) Macao and (4) Hong Kong) are in the first four positions.

To get a sense of performance, the students in the B-S-J-Z grouping scored 555 on reading, 591 in math and 590 in science.

In the U.S. those numbers are 504, 502 and 505.

Which ought to be an argument that we need to get students back into classrooms ASAP.

But here’s the thing. While it can most certainly be argued that local districts have local concerns and consequently don’t need some Big Government program to tell them what to do, the dirty little secret that doesn’t seem to want to be acknowledged is that: The pandemic is something that no one—local, state, regional, national—knew how to deal with. There is no handbook with protocol in it.*

Note how the CDC keeps changing its recommendations. It isn’t because it doesn’t know what it is doing. It is because things keep changing.

It is absurd to think that a school superintendent in any district in the country — to say nothing of the teachers, bus drivers, custodial staff, etc. — is a skilled epidemiologist who knows everything that one needs to know to keep people from being sick.

This takes the know-how of people who deal with these life-and-death situations on a daily basis.

Yes, there is huge frustration on behalf of parents who want their kids back in schools.

But to rush things, to think that bad things won’t happen simply because “damn it they won’t” will likely move things one step forward and then two in reverse.

And that surely won’t help the next ranking for the U.S. in the OECD global survey.

*Although it is worth noting an advisory group that was established by George H.W. Bush in 1990, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) wrote a document in August 2009, “Preparations for 2009-H1N1 Influenza,” to help mitigate the effects of the swine flu epidemics. And prior to Obama leaving office a 69-page report, “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents,” was developed by the National Security Council and presented to the executive branch — and was reportedly — and evidently — ignored by the Trump administration.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay on Trump vs. McConnell, and Bryan Williams on censured Republican moderates ; Click on FORUM.

The School Opening Conundrum

By Charles Dervarics

A few years back, I visited a high-poverty middle school during a lockdown, with students confined to classrooms and the doors closed. It also was a 90-degree day in an old building without air conditioning. Observing a math class, I couldn’t help but notice how the teacher had strategically placed 19 small and medium-size fans around the room, generating air flow to take advantage of the one open window. Clearly, she had faced similar challenges before, probably using her geometry skills for the best fan placement.

While this visit took place before COVID, I sometimes think about that school – still open during any normal academic year – when considering how fast schools should reopen in 2021.

With medical facilities and some colleges open for months now, conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t take that long for most K-12 schools to offer more than remote learning. With PPE, partitions, masks, and a goal to vaccinate teachers, it makes sense to offer in-person learning especially for low-income youngsters with the least technology access and the most chance of falling behind. But just as achievement among schools can vary greatly, so do the facilities and crowding that teachers and students have to deal with on a daily basis.

National debate on this issue has erupted anew now that President Biden has pledged to reopen the majority of schools during his first 100 days in office. But that plan is putting the president in crosshairs with some teacher unions, who warn of the risks posed by overcrowding, substandard ventilation systems and lagging vaccination rates.

Similar debates are playing out across the country, as typified by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long battle with the Chicago Teachers Union on school reopening. And in San Francisco, the city just sued its own school district, citing a lack of planning and vision to get back to in-person instruction.

Meanwhile, Republicans have remained largely unified in calling for schools to re-open. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, recently called remote learning a “pale shadow of proper schooling” and said the science shows that schools can offer in-person instruction. Earlier this month, the House GOP tried to require schools to provide a reopening plan before getting funds from last December’s COVID relief bill. Democrats rebuffed that idea.

This GOP message plays well with its base. In some communities, it’s not uncommon to see residents who have replaced their Trump 2020 signs with signs pushing for school re-openings. A Republican push on this issue also may help recapture the attention of suburban parents weary of the school-at-home trend.

According to Burbio, a research and data company, about 39% of schools are currently open for traditional, in-person learning. That leaves the administration until late April – the end of Biden’s first 100 days – to reach the 50% mark.

On Feb. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also offered a possible way forward. The agency outlined a series of steps to promote safe school openings, including use of masks by students, teachers and staff, social distancing, handwashing, strong cleaning and maintenance practices and speedy contact tracing in response to COVID cases. With the school year more than half over, those guidelines may arrive just in time.

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Low Risk to School-Age Youth vs. Being Deprived of Learning, Socialization

By Andrew Boyd

I met recently with a friend and colleague whose spouse and he made a decision some years back to pursue public schooling for their two young children, despite having the resources to have put them into private institutions. They are preparing now to graduate their son to the public middle school, which is not as well regarded as was the elementary program; however, they imagined that their son, and a couple dozen of his friends and their parents, could do some good in helping this school to advance and grow.

Then, the pandemic. Then two weeks to slow the spread. Then national lockdowns. And as our great national nightmare dragged on, many of those same parents have decided that they will be enrolling their kids in private institutions going forward. Add this little story to a growing pile of evidence favoring the argument that the extended national lockdown, in particular as it relates to schools, has been a complete disaster of both economic and social policy.

The costs of these policies are far-flung and harder to measure in the near-term relative to the daily updates on COVID infections and deaths, and as we all know, if it bleeds it leads, the ever-present failure of journalism to take its responsibility seriously. Add to that the disease of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has run wild through our political, social and media institutions, accompanied as it is by all loss of perspective, which only compounds the problem: That is, our inability, as a people to engage in reasoned, rational and thoughtful discussion of deadly serious issues. In such environs, all suffer, but none so much as the children, deprived of learning, socialization, protections from abuse and despair. One can hardly imagine the scale of this tragedy.

Now, as both COVID and TDS ebb, we see all kinds of interesting after-effects, including the breaking of bonds between staunch Democratic, even leftist, institutions such as the Chicago mayor's office and San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the teachers’ unions. Said unions will not escape unscathed, as the masses take note of their moral depravity, abject cowardice, and total lack of commitment to the children they purport to serve. So, too, with that megalomaniacal, Emmy-award nominated, dare I say Trump-esque simulacrum of a human being, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-NY, who may yet get his just desserts if Joey from Scranton lives up to his promise of a depoliticized DOJ (not holding my breath, exactly).

Need I revisit the science as it stands today (understanding evolves, you see)? The almost statistically insignificant danger to our children from COVID, the presence of a 95%-effective vaccine, soon to be broadly administered to “essentials,” or the countervailing dangers presented by this sham that is virtual schooling? Surely, all reasonable and reasoning people are beginning to see the need for change and fast. That, at least, is my hope.

We all have a stake in this, unquestionably, so the fact that I have three school-age children grants me no special ownership of the issue or moral high ground. My children, as best I can tell, are extraordinarily well-adapted, loved and supported, and the damage to their lives is arguably minimized, but I can see in their eyes a pressing sense of loneliness and a creeping despair. It’s not just COVID we’re fighting here. It’s the tragedy of the human condition and the ever-so-thin layer of social organization, friendship, support and shared sense of purpose that keep us all from the edge of the abyss. We must work now to repair and uphold these structures, lest we lose a grip on the whole damned thing.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay on Trump vs. McConnell, and Bryan Williams on censured Republican moderates ; Click on FORUM.

The Me-lection of Donald Trump

By David Amaya

What followed after former President Donald Trump’s instruction to Proud Boys, a far-right group that endorses violence, to “stand back and standby,” telling his loyalists that the only way he’ll lose the 2020 election is if it is stolen from him, and finally, to “fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” before sending his rally off to the Capitol was his second impeachment. This impeachment would not be like any other in our history – the Representatives and Senators are not only the jurors and judges of the trial but also witnesses. In a careful balancing act between justice and incumbency, the Senate vote leaned towards incumbency.

The argument made by Donald Trump’s defense attorneys and most of his Republican backers that a former president can’t be subjugated to an impeachment trial is devoid of merit. It was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, (who has since been demoted to Senate minority leader) who postponed the trial for a date after Trump’s departure from presidency. McConnell’s decision was a hollow strategy that acted as a loophole to our hallow system of checks and balances.

Other than the purported defense that a former president shouldn’t be tried by the Senate, there is no other redeemable quality to the defense made for Mr. Trump. He was indeed guilty both “practically” and “morally” for the invasion of the Capitol, McConnell said after the vote to acquit, but Trump was freed from culpability because he is no longer in office.

In a move similar to McConnell’s expedient “the-end-justifies-the-means” strategy, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy bit his tongue about the pugnacious president and expressed support for the man who is “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022. For the sake of our country, the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped.” Both Republican leaders are gambling away their integrity for a chance at their party’s re-election and a fundraising cashflow crowdsourced by the man who refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

Although the House impeachment managers were successful in illustrating the cold hard facts of Trump’s insurrectionist intention, they were unified with the Republicans in one way – they both perpetuated Trump’s everlasting war on what truth is and what facts are. Both sides succeeded in expressing how precarious our fragile republic is at the moment. Trump successfully persuaded legislators on both sides of the aisle to deny and strip the ideological opposition of their humanity, their entitlement to truth, and how to put party over country–the antithesis of the very premise that founded our country.

Lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, prided himself in being part of the most bipartisan impeachment trial yet, but history may beg to differ. In 1974, President Richard Nixon was days away from being impeached before he resigned from the presidency for his crimes against the Democratic National Committee. Nixon’s Republican loyalists on Capitol Hill assured him he would not pass the impeachment vote–his party rejected him, so Nixon exiled himself voluntarily. Fast-forward to 2021 and the Republican party now defends a twice-impeached president who challenges the validity of our democracy’s electoral system; and for what, but to preserve and reinforce the Republican party’s incumbency.

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•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
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The Final Steps to Trump’s Acquittal

By Todd Lassa

Once the votes were counted Saturday afternoon and Donald Trump was acquitted in his second Senate impeachment trial, both sides declared a victory. Because 10 Republicans joined 48 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with the latter party, lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, could lay claim to the “most bipartisan” trial vote ever (click on Forum to read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on the impeachment trial, “The Long Con”).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, had it both ways, too, having been among the 43 Republicans in the minority who nonetheless snagged an acquittal because the 57-43 vote was 10 “guilties” short of the two-thirds needed to convict.

“They did this because they followed the wrong words of the most powerful man on earth,” McConnell said on the Senate floor after the vote, in what pundits were describing as the most critical excoriation of Trump made by either side. “There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

McConnell, who when he still was Senate majority leader before President Biden’s inauguration, told his caucus they could vote their conscious in the impeachment trial, said he voted “not guilty” Saturday because the trial of a president after leaving office is unconstitutional. Last Tuesday, the Senate voted 56-44 that trying an ex-president is indeed constitutional, in a decision that required only a majority decision. A major point in the House impeachment managers’ argument was that if an ex-president could not be tried thusly, it would risk the nation with a “January surprise,” with carte-blanche to commit high crimes and misdemeanors as a lame-duck.

But McConnell forced delaying the trial until after the inauguration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, said Saturday afternoon. The House voted for impeachment on January 15, while Trump was still in office.

Prior to the final Senate vote, Raskin moved to call a witness to give a video deposition in the case. Trump attorney Michael van der Veen objected, and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, threatened to call many witnesses for the defense, including House Speaker Pelosi, and draw out the trial to disrupt Biden’s agenda for weeks or even months to come.

In the end, the two sides agreed that the statement of Raskin’s intended witness, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-WA, would be admitted as evidence and that defense would stipulate to its veracity.

Herrera Beutler’s statement is that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, had called Trump during the siege urging him to call off the violent protesters. Trump had replied that the violent protesters were Antifa and Black Lives Matter, not pro-MAGA.

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump replied, according to Herrera Beutler. CNN reported her description of the call Friday night, but according to various news reports, Herrera Beutler told about overhearing the conversation to a local Washington state newspaper and to constituents.

In his closing arguments, van der Veen said the defense was not admitting to the statement’s truthfulness, though the House impeachment managers apparently were satisfied with the outcome.

The trial itself came down to House impeachment managers building a case that then-President Trump called for his supporters to rally on the Capitol January 6 to “Stop the Steal” of his November 3 “landslide victory,” a.k.a., “the Big Lie,” and did nothing to prevent members of Congress and vice president Mike Pence, from the danger of the mob. Trump’s defense attorneys argued that the impeachment was a continuation of Democratic and mainstream Republican “hatred” since before he took office January 20, 2017, and that the trial was unconstitutional.

But the nine House impeachment managers appear satisfied that the trial and its bipartisan verdict achieved their goal overall and are looking forward to investigations in New York for Trump’s business practices, and especially in Fulton County, Georgia, for his phone call with secretary of state Ben Raffensperger. In the meantime, however, Trump continues to maintain control of the GOP, especially on state and local levels. Rep. Herrera Beutler, for example, faces potential censure from Washington state’s GOP and a Trump PAC-funded primary challenger next year for her statement in the impeachment trial.

•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
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Trump Needs to be Rebuked for January 6

By Bryan Williams

Impeachment Part II has come and gone, and its result has surprised no one. Did there need to be a trial? I still say “yes.” President Trump had to be properly rebuked for what he did, and didn’t do, on January 6. He is forever besmirched as the only U.S. president impeached twice, and the only president who incited a mob to storm our seat of government. I have written before about the possibility of Trump running again in 2024, and I still believe he doesn't have the attention span to run again in in three-and-a-half years. There was a lot of talk about Hillary Clinton running again in 2020 and she didn't. She is a damaged good and her chances of winning were slim. I think the same can be said of Trump.

How much further should the "punish Trump" train go? Investigations in New York, Georgia and possibly Washington, D.C., could lead to more indictments of Trump. Of these, I think the Georgia attorney general’s fraud investigation of Trump’s call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has the most legs, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking Trump is going to face a prison sentence for it.

Several congressional Republicans have also let me down. I have enough experience with party politics to never expect legislators to impeach or convict a president from the same party. But this last impeachment was all kinds of weird. It is clear that Trump’s actions after last November’s election resulted in the Capitol insurrection and threats to the health of duly elected officials and the vice president. And let’s not forget the five people who died from it.

Key to the Senate’s lack of a two-thirds vote to convict, and the reason Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, gives for voting to acquit is whether it was constitutional to try a president after he is out of office. I wish the U.S. Supreme Court had been compelled to weigh in on this; It is a burning, relevant constitutional question and Chief Justice John Roberts turned a deaf ear, declining even to preside as judge of the trial and turning that duty over to senior Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. When will our government start working for us?

I voted for Trump in 2020, and I still stand by that vote. I do not believe in Joe Biden, and so far, his governance is exactly as I expected. I liked a lot of Trump’s policies, but I did not like Trump's tweets and the uglier aspects of his personality. But I could never vote for him again. Those who stood up and voted their conscience on this impeachment (Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, etc.) deserve a second look (and boy, was I excited about Mitt Romney back in 2012 -- I was waving campaign signs for him every night).

We need principled leadership now, more than ever. Cheney and Romney are the only two politicians I think currently fit that bill, and their chances of going anywhere right now are nil. I’m going for a walk.

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•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
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Founding Fathers Rejected the Filibuster

By Chase Wheaton

The legislative filibuster in the Senate is probably one of the least understood aspects of our government, especially in a historical context, but is simultaneously the most significant obstacle to tangible governance and progress that currently exists in our legislative branch. And now that Senate Democrats are being forced to pass President Biden’s American Rescue Plan through budget reconciliation so that Republicans don’t use the filibuster to stonewall COVID relief for millions of Americans during a national crisis, it’s time we have a better understanding of the thing that’s been responsible for so much gridlock in Washington over the last 50 years.

In the original iteration of the Senate, there was no such thing as a legislative filibuster, and for good reason. On its surface, the legislative filibuster might sound like a tool to allow for sufficient debate before legislation is voted on, or even as a tool to prevent a majority party from simply ramming their agenda through Congress. Upon closer inspection, however, you’d see that the legislative filibuster creates a Congress that our founders explicitly wanted to avoid when they formed our government. The existence of this filibuster essentially means that, while passing most legislation only requires a simple majority of 51 votes, ending the debate on legislation to actually vote on it requires a super-majority of 60 votes. The way our Senate currently operates, you need more votes to end debate about a piece of legislation than you do to actually pass it. The result? A seemingly endless stalemate that hurts the working-class American voter more than anyone else.

This form of legislation is precisely what James Madison, one of the principle authors of the Constitution, warned against in The Federalist Papers, when he said that if super-majority voting requirements became routine in our legislative body, “the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority.” Sadly, this is exactly how the filibuster has been used more and more frequently since its inception in the early 1800s. It has allowed legislators representing a minority percentage of the country to halt legislation from being passed by the majority party, and for no other reason than because they care more about power and their own party than they do about progress and our democratic institution. And while this procedural component of the Senate may feel like an unavoidable truth of legislating to some, the wonderful truth of the matter is that it doesn’t have to be.

One of the fundamental rules of both legislative bodies of Congress is that each gets to determine its own rules and operating procedures at the start of each term. This means that, if Senate Democrats so chose, they could end the legislative filibuster and open the doors to sweeping change and progress for our country, arguably at a time in our history where it’s needed now more than ever. Now is the time for bold and progressive legislation and governance, and to fulfill the campaign promises that Biden and the rest of the Democratic party made to the American people last year, and there’s no way to do that with the filibuster in place. Even if Republicans were to retake control of the Senate in two years and use the absence of the filibuster to their own legislative advantage, at least we’d know that Senate Democrats did absolutely everything in their power to help and serve the American people during this time of widespread tragedy and devastation, rather than simply roll over and accept an otherwise avoidable fate.

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Click on Forum for a new commentary by Stephen Macaulay

Kill the Legislative Filibuster?

By Todd Lassa

Before last November’s election, Joseph R. Biden punted on the question of whether he supports killing the Senate legislative filibuster. It’s a move Senate Democrats have been considering at least since it won a majority by the slimmest of margins, with Vice President Harris the tie-breaker for when legislation is split down party lines

The issue is not the first priority with Senate Democrats, who are moving President Biden’s $1.9-trillion coronavirus relief package via the arcane reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority vote rather than the 60 votes – including 10 Republican senators – necessary when the potential of a filibuster is involved.

The question is, how much legislation can Biden’s Democratic allies in the Senate pass in the next two years without eliminating the legislative filibuster, which means most bills will require those 10 Republican votes? After January 2023, Democrats either will lose their wafer-thin Senate majority, or will build on it, though it is unlikely either party will gain at least 10 senators in the November 8, 2022 mid-terms.

Filibuster reformation seems to come up every four years with the presidential election, if not every two years.

In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, rallied Democrats to end the filibuster for federal judicial nominees and executive office appointments. Spiking the filibuster, called “the nuclear option,” requires only a simple majority vote.

Republicans warned that triggering the nuclear option on appointing federal judges would come back to bite Democrats whenever they inevitably lost the Senate majority.

And they were right. In 2017, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, led a majority of his party to end the judicial filibuster for U.S. Supreme Court nominees, paving the way for President Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch as replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Adding hard-core partisanship to injury, Gorsuch’s Senate approval came the year after McConnell prevented a vote on Obama’s nominee late in his term to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland, who now is Biden’s nominee for attorney general.

In the end, Trump saw his three Supreme Court associate justice nominees get Senate approval in his four years in office, compared with Obama’s two associate justices in eight years.

The question for Democratic senators now is, how much more of Biden’s agenda could the Senate pass in the next 23 months if just 51 votes were needed? And would it be worth weathering the inevitable Senate and White House flip somewhere off in the future?

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Click on Forum for a new commentary by Stephen Macaulay
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Not Carthage, But Important

By Stephen Macaulay

On January 26, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tweeted, "I made clear that if Democrats ever attack the key Senate rules, it would drain the consent and comity out of the institution. A scorched-earth Senate would hardly be able to function."

He was talking about the filibuster. The Senate cloture rule calls for a supermajority, or 60 votes, to cut off debate. The Democrats, who hold a simple majority, would prefer that is all that is required to end debate; odds are, with Vice President Harris as president of the Senate, they would end all debate on subjects and get right to the voting, which they would again, as bill passage depends on a simple majority, come away as victors.

While “scorched-earth” may be a bit of an exaggeration — after all, we’re not talking the Third Punic War here and the salting of the ground upon which Carthage once stood — but a point of trying to uphold what the Senate should be about: being a deliberative body (it would be hard to put “greatest” in front of that term). To deliberate means to debate. To debate, when done properly, means to have an exchange of ideas, of opposing viewpoints.

In one regard it is somewhat ironic that I open with a tweet from McConnell in that it seems too many political issues are now being dealt with in 280 characters, rather than with an open, fulsome, spirited debate.

The Senate structure, as you know, is one where each state has equal representation. (The House, of course, has a structure predicated on population.) The point of the way the Senate is put together is to protect, in effect, the minority, meaning that California and New York can’t step on Wyoming and Vermont.

The Senate cloture rule does the same thing by requiring that there be two thirds, not one half, of the body in agreement that debate ends.

Of course, there’s the question of whether this is too high a bar, if getting cloture is some sort of impossibility. Perhaps that was once the case (or Senators just tended to be more loquacious back in the proverbial day) because from 1917 to 1968 cloture was invoked just eight times.

In 2019-2020 it was invoked 270 times (a record).

There is a feeling that we “must get things done.” A bunch of droning Senators doesn’t seem to be the way that can or will happen.

But McConnell does have a point, with the point being that before important things get done there needs to be sufficient support — by both sides — for its execution to have the positive effects anticipated by its existence.

To simply have a situation that says, in effect, “OK. We’ve had enough. Go back to your desk and put your head down,” isn’t going to be particularly beneficial.

This is not to argue that McConnell is an exemplary politician. He has proven himself over the years to be more of a tactician, a man who makes moves to benefit his, and his party’s, interests.

But there is something to be said for the ability of the minority to be heard in a fulsome manner.

And McConnell ought to know that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is far from being Cato.

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Click on Forum for new commentary by Stephen Macaulay

Our Left Columnists Want to See a Third Party

Spoiler Alert

By Stephen Macaulay

There is something that we seem to like about binaries. For example, Coke/Pepsi. McDonalds/Burger King. Republicans/Democrats. Take your pick.

But reality isn’t like that. Or at least reality is no longer like that.

Take Coke/Pepsi. While they are admittedly number-one and number-two in the carbonated beverage market, realize that Coca-Cola, which has plenty more than Classic Coke in its portfolio, has about 44% of that market and Pepsi (ditto, number of beverages-wise) is back at about 24%. Keurig Dr. Pepper is third, at 18%, so the delta between it and Pepsi is far closer than Pepsi and Coke, and arguably all three have viability in the carbonated beverage space.

Then there’s McDonald’s and Burger King. In 2019 McDonald’s had sales of some $40.4-billion. Burger King was back at $10.3-billion. And leaving out Starbucks, which is actually number two in the fast-food market, it turns out that Chick-fil-A outsold Burger King, with sales of $11-billion.

And there are plenty more examples. Remember when in mass market audio it was Sony vs. Panasonic? Not only did the Apple iPod put the Walkman out of existence, but now the iPod is nearly extinct.

Or “American” luxury cars were either Cadillac or Lincoln. In that case one could argue that Acura is actually a U.S. brand, as that is where its models are sold and most of them made. In 2020 Lincoln sold 105,410 vehicles, Cadillac 129,495 and Acura 136,983.

The whole notion that there could be a third political party seems to be one thought of only in the context of being a spoiler. Well, Acura is certainly spoiling the sales of Cadillac and Lincoln and seems like the cow on billboards that encourage people to “Eat Mor Chikin” has done its job.

It is fairly clear that there is no longer the “brand loyalty” that once seemed to exist. So the notion that there are just two parties that matter* is a vestige that could be going away—sooner, rather than later.

And arguably, should be.

*Yes, there are more, like Libertarian, Green and Natural Law, but they lack the visibility and voice of the Republicans and Democrats. For now.

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Republicans Should Tell Us Who They Really Are

By Jim McCraw

The United States of America has a history littered with the remains of short-term, single-issue and reform political parties. It is part of who we are and what we do politically. War. Segregation. Income tax. Prohibition. Whigs. Bull Moose. Know-Nothings. Greens. Peace. Ross Perot.

Now we are faced with more new opportunities, and I think that is a very good thing. If there are enough real honest-to-God Republicans out there who, after sober reflection, have decided that Donald John Trump was a very bad idea for America and for the future of their party, then it is perhaps time to unite or reunite behind the image and the philosophy of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. This would be the new party of the real Republicans.

I think it is high time that the real Republicans come out of the dark and murky shadows created by the self-aggrandizing, power-crazy Trumplicans like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Josh Hawley and the new kid on the block, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Even McConnell despises her.

They should tell us who they are and what they believe as 21^st Century Republicans, so the Democratic Party can fight them fair and square on real issues, not nonsense like stolen elections and Jewish space lasers. It’s time the old people, the crazies, and the Nazis were shown the door in favor of younger, saner, true Republicans. Democrats will beat them either way, but new blood would be a lot more fun to beat than these old, tired, wacky powermongers.

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Third Party Blind?

By Todd Lassa

If there was any chance that the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill by a pro-Trump mob would clarify the future of the Republican Party, such hopes have been smashed against the temporary gates erected around the Capitol since the inauguration.

After the attacks, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, at first said the soon-to-be-ex-president “bears responsibility for the attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

But in late January, McCarthy flew to the Office of the Former President at Florida’s Mar-a-Lago, where Trump promised to stump for GOP candidates in the 2022 midterms who have been loyal toward him and help mount primary campaigns against those who have not.

Some Republican leaders are threatening impeachment of Liz Cheney, R-WY, for her January 13 vote in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. And while Democrats on Wednesday threatened removal from her committee assignments of controversial freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-GA, after Republicans declined to do so themselves, Republicans have countered by threatening to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN, of her committee assignments because of “past inflammatory statements,” Fox News reports. Greene, who has been associated with QAnon and with social media threats against “The Squad,” including Omar, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rashida Tlaib, D-MI as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Fox News last August that she has “moved on” from QAnon, the cable news outlet reports.

And so it goes.

Both sides of the GOP schism can count early victories in fundraising, Politico reports. Trump’s new leadership PAC, Save America, had raised $31.2 million by the end of 2020. Trump can’t use the cash to support any future campaign of his own, but he can use it to influence 2022 midterm campaigns, according to Politico. Meanwhile, the political news site says, Defending Democracy Together, which includes the groups, Republicans for the Rule of Law and Republican Voters Against Trump, has a $50-million ‘war chest’ for GOP incumbents to fight off primary challengers.

As we approach the week of the former impeachment trial in the Senate, the Lincoln Project has introduced billboards calling on Sens. Ted Cruz, R-TX, and Josh Hawley, R-MO, for supporting Trump in his call for the Senate to reject the Electoral College vote favoring Biden. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told fellow Republicans he would not “whip” them to vote against convicting Trump of “incitement to insurrection,” he voted with the majority of his party against proceeding with the trial.

Just five Republicans voted with 50 Democrats in favor of proceeding with the trial, and a week later, 10 Republicans met with Biden at the White House to discuss a compromise on competing coronavirus relief bills. There is scant chance Democrats will convince 17 Republicans to reach the 2/3 majority needed for conviction, thus eliminating the prospects of following up with a separate, simple majority vote to bar Trump from running for any federal office again.

Which brings us full-circle to the question of the future of the GOP. The Lincoln Project, founded in 2016 by a group of traditional Republican “Never-Trumpers” are complemented by such online publications as The Dispatch, and The Bulwark, the latter a website founded by former editors at intellectual conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr.’s National Review after it pivoted toward Trump early in his administration.

What happens to Defending Democracy Together, Republicans for the Rule of Law, Republican Voters Against Trump and the Lincoln Project if Trump maintains his stranglehold on the modern GOP? If “traditional” Republicans like McConnell find they can’t give up their fealty to Trump, where do such Republicans as Rep. Cheney go?

The answer, and the underlying implication of the formation of these groups, is a third party, spearheaded by those groups. This would be a bloodbath for two right-leaning parties, of course, potentially handing the Democrats a good deal of power in the next four years. Ex-President Trump has intimated he’d take his followers and launch a Patriot party, if he had to, but lately, that doesn’t seem necessary. As of this writing, it’s the never-Trump organizations that will have to break off into a new party.

For this debate post, The Hustings asked right-columnists Andrew Boyd and Bryan Williams, pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay and left-columnist Jim McCraw to weigh in on whether, say, a “Lincoln Party” might be good for modern conservatism, and for the country.

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Please email comments to editors@thehustings.news

Our Right Columnists Do Not

Dedicated to the GOP, Not Any Single Candidate

By Bryan Williams

I voted for President Trump in 2020. I don't regret that vote - still. I have thought a lot about re-registering as "No Party Preference" here in California, rebuking the party I have called a home since I was 18. I stopped and thought further: There are Republicans I haven't voted for since 2012 for one reason or another. In their respective race, I just didn't vote.

I cannot bring myself to vote for a Democratic candidate because of what they stand for. I have voted for Democrats in "non-partisan" races (local city council, etc.), but that's about it.
What about splitting the GOP into two, the MAGA-loving Trumpsters or a "Lincoln Party" comprised of Never-Trumpers? I have a problem with that too.

See, I'm not a Never Trumper. I voted for him. I liked a lot of what he did. But his obvious character flaws and the events of January 6 changed my views of Trump. So again, I was let down by a person. I wasn't let down by the Republican Party or it's ideals. I imagine you can ask many Catholics how they feel about their church leaders versus what their religion stands for.

I haven't voted for several Republicans in my local elections since 2012 because I don't like them as individual persons. I still believe in Republicanism. And there are lots out there who do too -- Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney to name a few.

So no, for now I won't be joining a "Lincoln Party," or a break-away party of any other name. I am not a MAGA-Trumpster. I am not a Never-Trumper. I am a Republican.

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Chosing Conservatism Over Party

By Andrew Boyd

Every day we make decisions whose first skew is pragmatic or principled. With respect to the grifters that make up the leadership of the Lincoln Project, pragmatism wins every time. On the other, more populist, less swampy and, I’d argue, principled side of the conservative movement are those such as me, who believe the Republican establishment has long since decoupled itself from anything resembling classic conservatism, perhaps not in word but most certainly in deed.

These two factions define the ends of a spectrum that constitutes the fight for the soul of the Republican party. Having said that, I’m not one who subscribes to the notion that political parties, in the pragmatic sense, have any soul at all. That’s why I am more inclined to think of myself as a conservative than a Republican. One is a principle, the other – well, as they say, every great idea starts as a cause, becomes a business and ends up a racket.

When precisely our national political system entered into the racket phase, I’m hard pressed to pinpoint, but we’re in it for sure. There is a deep and abiding cynicism in the body politic, arguably more so on the left than on the right, because as conservatives, we’re more predisposed toward suspicion of all power centers, regardless of ideology, understanding they all tilt toward tyranny. The left, in principal, seems to me to have nothing left to offer but cheap virtue signaling, manufactured outrage, and the diminishing returns of intersectional politics. And based on the news of late, it’s every bit as on-board with crony capitalism as is the right.

Into the fray rises the notion of a third party arising from one or the other side of the conservative spectrum. There are monied interests on both sides, and insofar as a Patriot party is concerned, I completely understand the inclination, as it resides within me. On principle, I’d love to stick it to the man, to say “see, you don’t own my vote, Mitch McConnell, you, swampy old toad!” But pragmatically, we’re a two-party affair. You dance with the one that brung you. There’s no pitching around it, so far as I can see. Any conservative, on either side of the divide, who throws his or her weight behind a third-party movement has essentially decided to take that principal and light it on fire just to watch the damned thing burn, and that’s just nihilism.

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Minority Party Holds on to Power with the Electoral College

By Chase Wheaton

The Electoral College is a relic. A fossil of sorts. An outdated artifact that belongs in history books, only, and an archaic remnant of our original democracy, where the only light came from candles and news was delivered by horse-drawn carriage. And it’s about time we update our presidential election process to be aligned with the 21^st century needs of our country and its citizens.

The original reason for the Electoral College’s existence is not relevant anymore. In the late 18^th century, when the Electoral College was created, it was uncommon for the average American to be fully literate, and the means of communication that existed were much slower and more limited, making it exponentially more difficult for that common citizen to be informed and educated about the candidates running for president. Therefore, our founders deemed it appropriate to establish the Electoral College as a group of upper-class elites that were meant to use their education and knowledge to vote for who they thought to be the most qualified candidate for office. In fact, originally in presidential elections, Americans voted for an elector who was then free to debate, discuss, and vote for whichever presidential candidate they felt was most qualified for office, and it wasn’t until many decades later that Americans were able to vote directly for the presidential candidate of their choice, who then still needed to be formally voted for by the electors of that state. In the 21^st century, however, with national news media, 24/7 access to information through television, social media, and the Internet, and our current education system, it’s absurd to believe this system still has a place in modern-day democracy.

If the history behind it doesn’t convince you, mathematically speaking, the Electoral College simply isn’t fair, and it does away entirely with the principle of “one person, one vote.” Take Wyoming, California, Florida and Texas for example. By doing some quick math with populations and numbers of electoral votes, you’ll find the ratio of people per electoral vote for each state, and you’ll see quite the disparity. Wyoming, for example, gets one electoral vote for every 192,920 people, but California gets one for every 718,182 people, Florida gets one for every 740,690 people, and Texas gets one for every 763,157 people. That means that one person in Wyoming has 3.7 times more voting power than someone in California, 3.8 times more voting power than someone in Florida, and 4 times more voting power than someone in Texas. The numbers don’t lie, and these numbers show us that the Electoral College diminishes the voices of Americans that live in more populous states during presidential elections, while unfairly amplifying the voices of those living in less populated states.

Facts and history aside, even public opinion supports abolishing the Electoral College. A Gallup poll released in September 2020 shows that 61% of Americans support amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College and instead use the national popular vote to determine the winners of our presidential elections. Unfortunately, if you dive deeper into the results of this poll, you’ll see a deeply partisan divide that spells out a longer future for the Electoral College than most Americans would seemingly like. While an overwhelming 89% of Democrats wish to abolish the Electoral College, only 23% of Republicans would like to do the same, and sadly, the reason for that couldn’t be clearer. If we abolished the Electoral College and used the national popular vote to select our president and vice president, the current GOP would never again win another presidential election unless they realigned their values and beliefs to be more representative of those of modern-day America.

So, unless we expect the GOP to relinquish its hold on American politics in favor of progress (which seems as likely as fish learning to fly), we can expect to continue seeing the Electoral College rear its ugly head every four years. Still, we eventually transitioned from candlelight and horse-drawn-carriage to light bulbs and cars, so in time, I believe we’ll see the progress that Americans want.

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Click on “Forum” to read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on former President Trump’s ethics policy.

The Lessons of Electoral Reform: Becoming President Should be Hard

By Nic Woods

It seems the Electoral College has no friends these days.

Whether on the left (miffed as popular vote winners have not always become president) or the right (who seem to have forgotten that this system allows them to punch well above their weight, power-wise) everyone seems to want to dump the Electoral College into the garbage and set it on fire, including members of the Electoral College themselves.

Not so fast.

The Electoral College is misunderstood, mostly because we still put so much weight on what the framers of the U.S. Constitution originally intended, but not enough weight on what those framers would not have possibly understood.

Whatever the framers intended, it may not necessarily extend to, say, electric vehicles, as even Ben Franklin had not so much as envisioned horseless carriages or enough available electricity to juice up an electric vehicle, much less a fleet of them.

They may have been brilliant men for their time, but their imaginations were limited to what they knew, so they created systems that could be changed to reflect a future they could not envision.

Americans tend to conveniently forget that.

The Constitution can be, and has been, changed. It is difficult, but not impossible. The parts of the Constitution that address the Electoral College has been changed a couple times – once with the ratification of the 12^th Amendment in 1804, and one other time since, as any book with the actual Constitution in it strikes out part of that amendment.

The first step here is to admit that the Electoral College, as envisioned and even as amended, may still be outdated. Much of the assumptions embedded into it no longer hold true – that suffrage is limited to white male landowners, there are no political parties, that the redistricting process is not gamed by one party or the other to benefit it, that only the best men run for office, and they must rely on regional publishers to promote them, as self-promotion is too gauche.

Despite all that, the Electoral College has only failed to reflect the popular vote four times in our history – 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016 – a pretty good track record for an outdated concept.

Valid arguments say there is no reason to throw it out completely, but there are plenty reasons to drag it into the 21^st Century and make changes that reflect near-universal suffrage and gerrymandering, as well as offset greater partisanship, a national but hyper partisan media landscape, misinformation and disinformation.

While the Electoral College needs to be reformed, most of us do not understand enough about it to know where to start. The next step could point toward raising the bar to become president just a bit higher.

Any Electoral College reform should encourage a candidate to work for every vote, whether it is from an urbanite, suburbanite, or exurbanite, from a swing state or a state that solidly votes for one party or another. This would require states to eliminate gerrymandering. To date, 32 states already have “faithless elector” laws (15 of them with the teeth to punish) that prevent their electors from going off-script. The U.S. Supreme Court has declared these faithless elector laws constitutional, they should be easy to spread to the remaining 18 states.

Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist Papers, advocated for a “vigorous” executive. One way to figure out how vigorous a future president will be is to support a system that will make him work to earn his office.

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Sources:
“Meet the Electoral College’s Biggest Critics: Some of the Electors Themselves” — The New York Times, July 6, 2020
“Supreme Court Rules State ‘Faithless Elector’ Laws Constitutional” — NPR, July 6, 2020
The U.S. Constitution Explained – Clause by Clause – for Every American Today, Annotated by Ray Raphael
The Constitution of the United States of America
The Federalist Papers No. 68
Heather Cox Richardson’s History & Politics Chat, July 7, 2020
“Beau of the Fifth Column” Let’s Talk about the electoral college, power and Jules Verne

Kill the Electoral College, but Caution with Other Voting Reforms

By Andrew Boyd

The present zeitgeist would seem to insist I tie this discussion of the Electoral College (EC) to the recent and ongoing fervor surrounding the Game Stop short squeeze and subsequent misbehavior of retail stock merchants like Robinhood that we might uncover at the behest of their governmental and institutional overlords, a.k.a the Sheriff of Nottingham (yes, AOC and Cruz, you’re right, we need hearings).

Indeed, the tale of Robinhood speaks to the metanarrative of our time: The struggle between institutional elites and the little guy. The Framers of our Constitution were, in the context of a tyrannical British Empire, the little guys, trying to bind together a fragile union of merry men with competing visions for the future of a nascent republic. Their answer to this challenge involved imperfect compromises, including the establishment of the EC.

The EC and other proposed solutions, including a president chosen by Congress, were also a reflection of their deep distrust of the mob, and associated concerns that unalloyed democracy would lead to mob rule. These men, it could be argued, were elites in their own right, holders of power and property with a real distrust of the capacities of the common man to make wise and informed decisions, held in check, theoretically, by the power of “faithless” electors, which isn’t really a thing any longer.

Lots of stuff has changed, including many things the Framers couldn’t foresee, like the dissemination of information via the internet -- the democratization of knowledge as it were -- or the attempts at oligarchical control of same by an elitist cadre of tech bros whose motivations, I fear, aren’t so much political as they are avaricious.

Just like the Framers, we, as a people, need to contend with the issues of our times with careful regard for how we reconstitute our union in order to preserve its essential and foundational constructs – individual freedom (rights) and individual accountability (responsibility to one another constituted in a law equally applied).

Down to it, then: what to make of the EC in the context of our times? On a mathematical level, the EC would seem to confer outsized power to some individuals based on their geographic location. For example, the 2016 U.S. census estimates California has 26.65 million voting-age citizens, while Nevada had 1.41 million. Dividing those voting age populations by the number of electoral votes in each state (35 and 6, respectively) states yields 716,000 (voting age people/EC vote) for California and 235,000 for Nevada. So, a Nevadan has more than three times the voting power of a Californian. That doesn’t strike me as particularly democratic.

It’s often argued that the EC exists in part to preserve the rights of the minority, which would be the thing you place on the other side of the scale. But is geography, in our age, a reasonable stand-in for minority interests? At a gut level, I don’t see it.

Am I thrilled at the possibility that abolishing the EC will lead to hegemony Democratic power, or that it will subject me to the whims of coastal elitist or worse yet, global bureaucratic, overlords? Hardly. But we stand on principal, or we stand on nothing, and principles built to achieve a desired outcome are not principles at all. On that basis, I can’t honestly mount a defense for the EC.

What I will beg and plead for my more left-leaning but still classically liberal friends to consider is whether the current trajectory of streamlining voting processes, including mass mail-in balloting and increasingly lacking security measures, might be a more pressing danger to the preservation of our republic.

I’ll state emphatically here how abhorrent I found the events in the Capitol on January 6. But the dissolution of clear, common-sense and consistently observed rules and standards for the election of a president is, I fear, the ground in which the more generalized sense of disenfranchisement now grows.

We all have within us some essential sense of what’s fair and what’s not, which is at the heart of this as well as the Game Stop saga and all the great human stories across all human existence. If winning is all, and if the rules of the game can be shaped altogether according to the desires of the victor, the inevitable outcome is a growing resentment and, ultimately, unwillingness to play the game. Proceed with all due caution.

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Click on “Forum” to read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on former President Trump’s ethics policy.