Posted on 05/02/2019 5:57:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Democrats and progressives have been throwing temper tantrums about Donald Trump's election to the presidency since election night 2016. In years past, Democrats may have taken electoral losses on the chin, determined to do a better job persuading the electorate to support their candidate(s). But the present generation shows neither the same pluck nor the same reverence for the rules of the game. If today's Democrats cannot win elections playing by the rules, then it's time to change the rules.
First on the chopping block? The Electoral College.
The Electoral College has thwarted Democrats' presidential aspirations twice in the past two decades. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore lost the Electoral College, despite winning the popular vote by just under 600,000 votes. Gore won the state of California with 5,861,203 votes to Republican George W. Bush's 4,567,429. Under a popular vote election system, that 1,293,774 margin would have been more than enough to push Gore over the top.
Before 2000, the last election in which a president won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote was in 1888. But in 2016, it happened again. Hillary Clinton lost the election with 227 electoral votes to Donald Trump's 304 but received 2.87 million more votes than Trump. As was the case in 2000, California was the source of the popular vote differential; Clinton received 4,269,978 more votes than Trump in that state.
If asked, Americans might not think that California should decide the presidential election. But plenty of Democrats are calling for the elimination of the Electoral College, including Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California, and current presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke.
Advocates for this play on Americans' ignorance of our history. Buttigieg, for example, has stated that the Electoral College has "made our society less and less democratic." Whatever one might want for American society, the American form of government is a democratic republic, not a pure democracy, which the founders rejected. In 1787, James Madison wrote in Federalist 10, "Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
President Trump's ability to nominate federal judges -- including and especially U.S. Supreme Court judges -- also has Democrats' knickers in knots. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh -- both viewed as conservative -- have been confirmed since Trump took office. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's age (86) and poor health signal her possible departure from the bench -- if not before 2020, then almost certainly thereafter. Another four years of President Trump would virtually guarantee at least one more appointment to the Supreme Court, which would translate to a 6-3 conservative majority for a generation.
Conservative Americans have endured liberal Supreme Court decisions for decades. But Democrats -- increasingly dependent upon the courts to impose by fiat what they cannot obtain through the electoral process -- cannot risk such a result. So they're floating the idea of "packing" the Supreme Court with additional justices. (Although, according to progressive talking points, it's not "packing"; it's "reform," just like when the Supreme Court holds that conservatives have First Amendment rights, it's impermissible "judicial activism." But when the court finds a right to abortion or gay marriage in the Constitution, it's long-overdue recognition of basic, fundamental matters of human dignity.)
As long as we're contemplating changes to the way we elect the president, or to the number of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, let's not exclude the legislative branch from the party.
But I'm not proposing that we reform Congress. I'm arguing that we should abolish it.
At this point, why do we need it? We have plenty of independent agencies, statutes and regulations; we don't need any more. We don't need any more taxes. And as for confirmation of federal judges? Each state can send two state senators to do the job that the U.S. Senate has done. They surely could not behave worse than what we saw with the Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
Numerous congresses in a row -- under Republican and Democratic leadership -- have been unable or unwilling to tackle our most serious problems, like runaway illegal immigration (recent studies estimate the illegal population of the U.S. at over 20 million) and a spiraling national debt (now over $22 trillion). They let the president legislate via executive order. They don't declare war; they let the president send troops wherever he wants. They issue subpoenas, conduct investigations, hold hearings and then do absolutely nothing when those subpoenaed refuse to show up, fail to produce records or lie under oath.
Mutilating one-sixth of the U.S. economy with the abominable Obamacare wasn't enough. Now we're told by congressional representatives and U.S. senators that they intend to put all insurance companies out of business; impose an economy-destroying "Green New Deal"; and eliminate livestock farming, internal combustion engines and air travel, among other spectacularly unconstitutional usurpations of our American liberties.
None of these megalomaniacs pays the slightest heed to the principle that Congress' powers are limited. In 1791, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
Congress has either ceded or overstepped its constitutional authority since long ago. Would we really be worse off without a federal legislature?
The judicial branch is making plenty of laws. Who needs Congress?
And no more lifetime federal gigs. Give them a decade to make a difference, because beyond that and all they do is sleep on the job. They're useless once the passion dies.
Oh, and reign in SCOTUS. With the fag marriage debacle they created new law, and that's not within their purview. They simply are to clarify existing law.
Yeah, the system is broken, for sure.
Congress? I don’t need no stinkin Congress!
No government employee unions, anywhere.
Those that choose to live at the largess of others cannot vote.
None of them for the past decade has protected nor upheld the constitution!
Why aren't Hussein, and his enablers behind bars and on trial?
“These old fools who are past their “use by” date by about four decades need to go.”
Amen. Exhibit A: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in yesterday’s hearing. No one can say that this man is still fit for the job, but until they carry him out feet first, he will be in office. Apparently, there is no one in Vermont who can do better.
Better yet abolish the federal government altogether. In the old days we had federalism so the states pretty much ran the show anyway. They can do so again. We just need to either get rid of the federal government or revert back to the prior system when the federal government was tiny and the states ran the show.
This is a good idea.
We can take a page from the left, and instead of going thru the motions of a Constitutional Amendment to ban congress (either thru Congress or a COS), we just take it to a friendly federal court and get Congress declared Unconstitutional.
Alternatively, we get individual states to pass the NbCV, National ban-Congress Vote, where if enough states pass it, Congress will just be ignored and irrelevant.
All we need to do is enforce current laws. Pass all the laws you want. If people think they can go around them somehow, they will.
If a Congressman leaks secrets to the press, 10 years and $10,000 per leak. The leaks will be greatly reduced.
If we keep a Congress, let it be made up of donkeys and elephants. They are cheaper, make less noise and the mess they make is easier to clean up. All it would take is a change to the Constitution, removing the word “person” as those eligible to be elected.
Totally for it.
Get rid of both the house and the senate.
To Hell with these people.
Bureaucrats too.
Empty that Godforsaken sh!thole town, and never, ever fill it again.
Especially that latter point. Whenever we started allowing people to vote, people who have never owned anything, people who have never contributed anything, that was a huge mistake. These people have no vested interest in the country.
The King dissolved Parliament and sent them back to Coventry.
England has plenty of history where various forms of command-and-control schemes have been tried, and this had a great deal to do with how the American Experiment was formulated and applied.
And yes, often as not, the fault lay with the Parliament as much as it did with the King. Egos that refuse to compromise in the least butted heads and locked horns on a regular basis, which is why the reins of government were divided up into the various branches, with different objectives and different responsibilities.
England finally compromised a little on the powers of the King, making it mostly a ceremonial office, with limited power, which was then vested in their version of the chief executive, the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister, in turn, served at the pleasure of the Parliament, divided between the House of Lords, again largely reduced to ceremonial duties, and the House of Commons, which is subject to mercurial changes in prevailing opinion and momentary fashions of discourse, which switch back and forth at a whim. Thus, the Prime Minister is very much at the mercy of prevailing opinion of the House of Commons, and governance can be a dicey thing for Great Britain today.
The King/Prime Minister function is combined into the office of President in the United States, and the President serves as the Executive for a set number of years, with enforced retirement after completion of two full terms in office. The Congress, the somewhat truncated version of Parliament, has only very limited power to affect the election or the performance of the President, but may only attempt to stall the actions of the President through various acts of legislation, or failure to act on legislation.
The Judiciary, which in England was represented by the King’s Court, was once a function delegated directly by the King, and magistrates served again only at the pleasure of the King. This power has been wrested away largely by Parliament, and the entire law code is hampered by the fact that Great Britain has no written Constitution, on which there may be a basis of appeal for some really wrong-headed legislation. Rights of appeal is much less emphasized in Great Britain than they are in the United States, and most litigation hangs on what Americans would consider to be rather arcane points of the law.
In the US, the Judiciary is supposed to review the legislation if once challenged and reconcile it with the words of the Constitution. What has happened is that many instances of virtually rewriting the duly approved legislation have occurred, and at times, the plain language of the Constitution to which this legislation is subject, is simply ignored or explained away with what only be described as sophistry and odd constructions of the law in an obscure application of “one-eyed logic”, which ignores many mitigating circumstances and perfectly obvious misapplications of the purposes of the original intent of the law.
America has strayed far from its original mission statement.
The day we abolish the Electoral College will be the day that California ‘finds’ 100 million voters within their borders... 90% of whom vote for Democrats only. They’ve already stolen multiple congressional seats via the ‘popular vote’.
“...But I’m not proposing that we reform Congress. I’m arguing that we should abolish it....”
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SOUNDS LIKE AN ABSOLUTE SPLENDID, GREAT IDEA TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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TRUMP.45! FOREVER!
GunnyG@PlanetWTF?
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The Judicial branch writes the laws? Wow I didn’t know that. I learn something new every day. /s>
The President does have the constitutional authority to adjourn Congress.
I’m not sure what the point of your sarcasm is. The Judicial branch has, indeed, embarked on a long-running program of writing and rewriting laws. Consider that the homosexual marriage case (Obergfell?) invalidated all marriage laws that specified marriage between a man and a woman. However, SCOTUS wrote their decision in a way to have people re-interpret the law that plainly states heterosexual to include homosexual pairs.
CONgre$$ long ago went off the deep end. The concept of governance by consent, Gone!
Every vote counts these days, even the dead’s and you can be doggone sure when Dems say they are as patriotic as anyone, it ain’t the good old red white and blue they are saluting.
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