Occam's Razor

Before the election in a number of posts I said that the time between Election Day and Biden’s inauguration would be one of the most challenging constitutionally for our country we’ve ever experience. I outlined many scenarios on how it could play out which I placed in many posts. There were too many variables in the election to know precisely how it would play out, but so far, I at least feel vindicated in my general assessment of this interregnum – not that it was too hard to figure out.

We are amidst the curse of living in interesting times. One of the challenges though of times like today is to figure out how to successfully navigate them so that better times (rather than chaos) lay ahead.

I figured we’d be in the streets at the moment, but right now it’s Trump supporters who are in the streets … and in the courts. Thousands of Trump supporters are in the streets of Washington, D.C. as I write, shouting for four more years of Donald Trump. It’s their constitutional right to protest and providing their protesting doesn’t lead to violence they should vent their spleens. They are protesting because they believe that Trump’s loss was stolen from them, even though after fifty lawsuits not one of them has produced any evidence that judges could accept. Just yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision seemed to put an end to it all, refusing to hear a case from Texas asking the court to overturn the results in four key states that voted for Joe Biden.

But of course, that won’t quite be the end of it. Monday the Electoral College votes in the fifty states plus the District of Columbia and certifies their electors. One of my fears is that Trump would put the U.S. military around some of these state capitols to keep the electors from doing just this. We’ll see if this happens. But it’s likely when Congress opens the votes on January 6, 2021 there will be objectors. This ain’t over until it’s over. Like Nixon’s helicopter scene, we won’t really know Biden is president until he is sworn in and a military attaché with the nation’s nuclear codes is by Biden’s side.

But it probably won’t be over even after then. We don’t know yet the results of Georgia’s two senate seat elections, but it’s likely if Republicans maintain a majority of senators that Mitch McConnell will be pressed to obstruct as much of the Biden Administration’s agenda as possible, possibly including refusing to vote on most of his cabinet and other choices. Indeed, Trump is likely to try to run a shadow presidency from Mar-a-Lago or wherever he ends up. I’ve suggested it might be Russia once the lawsuits and criminal charges are filed. Trump will demand attention and it will be up to us and the media to keep granting it to him or not.

Friday’s Supreme Court decision tossing out Texas’s case, joined by more than a dozen Republican state attorneys general and 120 Republicans in Congress, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the bulk of Republicans don’t want democracy and would prefer an autocracy where they are in charge instead. By signing on to this suit, they publicly engaged in sedition against the United States. It is this action that I think must be challenged. An implicit line in the sand was drawn that was stepped over when Republicans joined wholeheartedly in this effort. Now another and enforceable line in the sand should be drawn: The House of Representatives should not seat any member of Congress that seditiously joined in this lawsuit.

It’s been done from time to time. My brother today reminded me that we have a great uncle who wasn’t seated in the U.S. Congress in 1869 after the Civil War because his loyalty was questioned as a Democrat. The House, like the Senate, sets its own rules and it can simply refuse to seat representatives by a majority vote. Most of these representatives are already in Congress and won reelection. All of them, like Donald Trump, swore to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. Their actions of sedition and treachery though prove through their signatures that they didn’t live up to their sworn oaths when it mattered. So, I say, refuse to seat the whole lot of them! Let that be democracy’s line in the sand. Let that be how we rise to the moment.

It can be done. Democrats control the House, even though they lost seats, so if Democrats stay united on this it can happen. The U.S. Constitution specifically allows each house of Congress to set their own rules. The rules for the current Congress have been set, but the rules for the next Congress have not. Refuse to seat them and require that governors of the many states send interim replacements, but only those who will swear fealty to the Constitution of the United States and publicly avow that they will not subvert the will of the people expressed through the voting process.

Of course, I’m not unmindful of the backlash this would cause. It’s hard to believe that it would be much worse than what we’ve already endured. But we need to think of the future and protect the most important thing of all: our republican form of democracy and our constitution and the many laws derived from it, including our freedoms. This is no time to be weenies about our democracy. It’s a time firmly avow by taking all necessary action to ensure nothing like this can happen again. In 2024, it should be simply unthinkable because of the emotional shock that we inflict now.

The most charitable workaround would be to seat those members who publicly disavow their actions at the House podium and promise to never subvert the electoral process or our constitution again. But I wouldn’t want this. I think they should all be permanently unseated. The price of their treachery must be borne. They should feel lucky if the least that happens to them is that they never take their seats. I would hope the Justice Department would look into seeing if any criminal charges apply and if so to go after these miscreants aggressively.