A to-do list for repairing US democracy

 

If we're lucky enough  not to spiral down into dictatorship during this fall's Presidential election in the US, we need to have a ready-made to-do list for repairing democracy.

To start off a conversation on that, here's my current thinking…

Draft Proposed “Freedom Amendment” to the US Constitution

(Rationales, in green, are informational, not part of the amendment.)

In order to solidify and preserve democratic rule within these United States, these changes are hereby ordered to all United States policies and procedures:

1. Voting

1. No Electoral College. The Electoral College is hereby dissolved. Presidential elections shall henceforth be determined directly by majority vote of all United States citizens who are eligible to vote.

2. No commercial interference in elections. No for-profit corporation or company, nor any non-profit corporation or company that as their primary business offers products or services for commercial sale, may contribute to campaigns or other activities that could reasonably be seen as trying to affect election. (The ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is vacated.)

3. Restore the Voting Rights Act. The ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that voided section 4 is hereby reversed, restoring this Act to its full form and asserting full Constitutional backing to the Act. Preclearance is hereby required for all 50 states equally.

4. No “gerrymandering.” The practice of gerrymandering while drawing district boundaries at the federal and state levels is hereby disallowed.

5. Ranked-choice voting. All federal elections shall be handled via a ranked-choice voting process.

2. Ethics & Oversight

1. Supreme Court Ethics Code. The Supreme Court shall henceforth be governed by the same ethics code that binds all federal courts.

2. Congress and the Supreme Court shall be subject to term limits.

   1. Senators may be elected to no more than 3 terms.
   2. Representatives may be elected to no more than 5 terms.
   3. Supreme Court Justices may serve no more than 18 years.

3. No one is above the law. Elected members of all three branches of government are subject to all laws, just like any other person, even though prosecution of such a person for crimes must wait until that person leaves office. In cases where immediate prosecution might be important, impeachment is an option.

4. Senate impeachment votes are not optional. If the House impeaches someone, the Senate must immediately perform all business necessary to assure a timely vote on that impeachment; this process is not optional and may not be postponed. Once an actionable concern has been raised that a public official might have committed a crime, the public has an interest in swift resolution.

5. House and Senate impeachment votes are temporarily private. Impeachment votes by both House and Senate will be recorded and tallied privately, preferably electronically, with only the aggregate result reported immediately. Individual votes will be held securely in private for a period of ten years, at which time all such votes will be made a public part of the historical record.

6. Public office is not a refuge to wait out the clock on prosecution. Any clock for the Statute of Limitations does not run while prosecution is not an option. This applies for all elected persons for whom indictment or prosecution is locked out due to participation in public office, but in particular for POTUS. It may be necessary to the doing of orderly public business not to prosecute a President while in office, however public office is not a refuge in which someone may hide out until the clock runs out on otherwise-possible prosecutions, whether that clock began before or during time in office.

7. Pardon power is subject to conflict-of-interest (COI) restrictions. It is necessary to the credibility of all public officials in a free society that there be some reasonable belief that rules of law do not create options for corrupt officials to abuse the system. Presidents and other state and federal officials embued with the pardon power may never apply such power to themselves, their families, or any other individuals with whom there is even an appearance of conflict of interest. No such person may solicit any action by anyone on promise of a pardon. Any single such action, attempted action, or promise of action where there is a conflict of interest that is known or reasonably should have been know to the party exercising pardon power is an impeachable offense and a felony abuse of power subject to a penalty of ten years in prison.

8. Independence of Department of Justice. The head of the Department of Justice shall be henceforth selected by a supermajority (2/3) vote of the House of Representatives, without any special input from or deference to the Executive.

   Rationale: Assure DOJ operates independently of the Executive, its mission being to fairly and impartially uphold Law, not to be a tool of partisan or rogue Presidential power.

9. Independence of the Supreme Court. Justices of the DOJ shall be henceforth selected by a supermajority (2/3) vote of the House of Representatives.

   Rationale:

   1. When SCOTUS must rule on the validity of Presidential action, a conflict of interest is created if those Justices might be appointed by that same President or even a majority party.

   2. Since the Constitution requires a supermajority to change its intent, an equivalent degree of protection is essential for choosing those will will interpret that intent. Recent history has suggested that it was easier to change the Court than to change the Constitution, with catastrophic effect decidedly unfair to the majority of citizens.

   3. A President is more than Appointer of Justices, yet that singular capability is so powerful and lasting that it often dominates election campaigns. Citizens need to be free to hire Presidents for other reasons more unique to the moment, such as good judgment; logistical, management, or negotiating skill; expertise in technical or scientific matters; or even just empathy with public issues.

3. Rights of People

1. Corporations are not people. Corporations are legal constructions, nothing more.

   Rationale: To say that they are independent people, is to give some actual people (those who own or control them) unequal, magnified, elitist, or otherwise distorted power over others. There is no place for this in a democracy that purports to speak of all people being created as equals.

   1. No Implicit Rights of Corporations. Any powers and duties of corporations must be explicitly granted to them, as coporations, whether by the Constitution or by legal statute, and henceforth must never be derived from any implication of imagined personhood.

   2. Explicitly Enumerated Rights of Corporations. Long-standing legal powers and duties of corporations such as the right to sign contracts, the right to own property, the responsibility to pay taxes, and any legal responsibility under tort law are hereby acknowledged by express enumeration in support of demonstrated corporate need and are no longer intended to be inferred as part of any preposterous fiction that corporations are just another kind of person.

   3. Non-Rights of Corporations. Alleged rights such as, but not limited to, rights of free speech and religious rights for corporations are hereby clarified to be nullified and without basis. A corporation has no automatic rights of people extending from any metaphor of being person-like. Politics is the province of individual persons, not corporations. Corporations exist for sales, subject to the rules of laws made by individuals, not vice versa.

2. Bodily autonomy right. All mentally competent people have a right to autonomy over choices of medical procedures affecting their own body.

   1. No Forced Pregnancies. From the time of conception to the time of birth, no government nor any other person may have a superseding say over a pregnant person as to any matter relating to a fetus.

      Rationale: This should already follow from the Religious Freedom Clarification, but it is too important to leave to chance. To say that any other person could make such choices would be to allow their religious freedom to infringe the religious freedoms of the pregnant person.

      Also, the term “pregnant person” is used here intentionally to include that adulthood is not a requirement of bodily autonomy. In general, any person who has not been legally ruled mentally incompetent is entitled to self-determination on matters like this. Not even a parent should have superseding control, since a parent will not have to live a lifetime with the consequences.

   2. Fetal Disposition is a Private Matter. Whether a pregnant person wishes to refer to a fetus as simply a fetus, a potential life, an unborn child, or an actual child is a personal religious choice to be made by that pregnant person. No law shall impose a policy on this.

      Rationale: To say otherwise would be to deny the obvous fact that people simply differ on this matter. To assume there were some single right way that everyone must adhere to would be to give dominance to some religious philosophies over others.

      It's a compromise, but the only one that it allows each person the best guarantee of at least some autonomy in a society where not everyone agrees and we are not likely to change that fact by fiat.

      Also, and importantly, some pregnancies are not successful and even in a society where we permit abortion for those who weren't wanting to be pregnant, it would be callous and undignified not to acknowledge the legitimate loss to others who sincerely wanted to carry a pregnancy to term but were unable. It is possible to be respectful in both situations, by feeling the grief of someone who wanted a child and not manufacturing grief for someone else who did not.

3. Right to Choose a Marital Partner. Among consenting adults, the choice to choose who to marry must not be restricted due to race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

   Rationale: This has been accepted already and it is not appropriate to roll that back. It was a good idea anyway, though, because happy families add an extra level of safety net protection to society. Family members try to take care of one another during sickness and other hard times, and this hopefully reduces some amount of stress on public safety nets.

4. Religious Freedom Clarification. The right to religious self-determination is a basic human right.

   1. Religious Choice. All people have the right to explore religous choice on their own timeline and terms. No one is required to pick any particular philosophy, or any philosophy at all, or even to make a choice.

   2. Religious Equality. Religious protections span all religious choices (and non-choices), and hence are accorded equally to all people. No person may be accorded second-class legal status on the basis of their religious philosophy—or lack thereof.

      Rationale: So atheists, agnostics, etc. are still due religious freedom protection. Answers to “Is there a God?” are still due religious protection if the answer is “no” or “I don't know” or “I haven't decided” or “I don't know what that means” or “This is not a binary question.”

   3. No State Religion. The so-called “establishment clause” of the First Amendment is hereby clarified to mean that the United States takes no position that might give the appearance of preferring one religon over another.

      Rationale: We are not, for example, a Christian nation. Nor a Jewish nation. And so on. And yet the US is a nation that intends to treat each religion and non-religion in the same supportive and respectful way, and expects each of these religions to be respectful of others. This is how balance is maintained in pluralistic society.

   4. Religion is not a Popularity Contest. The fact that one religious philosophy might at any given point be more common than another does afford that philosophy a greater or lesser status.

   5. No Bullying in the name of Religion. The freedom of religious choice is not a right to bully or coerce, nor to violate law. Each person's right of religious choice extends only to the point where it might infringe on the equivalent rights of others.

Yes, this could be done by separate amendments. But it would be a lot of them, and the discussion would be much more complex. I say do it all at once because every one of these things is absolutely needed.

If anything, there might be a few things I left out.

 

---

Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This post was catalyzed by a single tweet by me on ex-Twitter, but it has been hugely elaborated since, after all, this venue does not have a 280 character limit.

The odd graphic of the scales of justice under repair was created by Abacus.AI's ChatLLM facility, using Claude Sonnet 3.5 and Dall-E and the prompt:

Draw a picture of a grayscale statue of a woman holding the scales of justice in one raised hand and a small wrench and a pair of needle-nose pliers in the other hand, lower, at her side. part of the statue should include a toolbox next to her feet that is open and presumably where she's taken the wrench from. the woman should be wearing a flowing gown, as is traditional for this kind of statue, but she should have a pair of goggles on her head, as one would use in a metal shop to protect one's eyes. The woman should have a pair of protective goggles, like one would use for metal working, over her eyes.

And, yes, I'm aware I did not get the needle-nose pliers got left out. And on this iteration I didn't ask for her to be seated, though I had been thinking of requesting she be seated at a work bench to resolve some unwanted aspects of previous attempts, so I went with this as the best of several tries.

American Dictatorship

In a “commentary” piece in Salon titled A candidate, not a president: Jack Smith crafts a simple solution to Supreme Court Jan. 6 roadblock, Norman Eisen and Joyce Vance wrote:

«The Supreme Court’s late-term decision recognizing a dangerously expansive immunity from criminal prosecution for former presidents effectively cut off any chance of the original indictment in the January 6 case against former President Donald J. Trump going forward.»

The article goes on to talk about what Jack Smith has done to salvage the case. Good for him. It shouldn't be necessary to work under the preposterous constraints recently imposed by the Supreme Court, but I'm glad he's up to the challenge. And that's the immediate concern, so it makes sense that Eisen and Vance would focus commentary on something so topical.

But I want to draw back and reshape this same set of observations to highlight a few other things that have been bugging me as the rest of this immediate drama runs its course.

Biden Explains the problem

After the immunity ruling, Biden made a bold statement:

“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America. Each — each of us is equal before the law. No one — no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States.

With today’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. For all — for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.

This is a fundamentally new principle, and it’s a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.”

Wrapping our heads around the problem

Sometimes when there are big statements made (like that a President has “no limits” or is “above the law”), it's hard to see the practical reality that is lost inside. I notice this when trying to excite people about the urgency of Climate Change, as well. Sometimes, instead of saying the world might end, one needs to say that there will be no more Christmas vacations, orchids, poetry, or reruns of Groundhog Day. Something more personal. Because the vast scope of “anything” or “everything” is just too hard for the brain to wrap itself around.

I'll tie this all together in a moment, but first one more quote.

The aforementioned commentary by Norm Eisen and Joyce Vance also mentioned this:

«As a result, Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Department of Justice to his own private ends are no longer part of the case. Gone is the allegation that he pressured the Department to release a letter falsely claiming that the election was marred by outcome-determinative fraud. Gone is the allegation that he sought to use the Department to press state officials to certify his electors, rather than those of President Joe Biden. And gone is the allegation that he attempted to install his now-excised co-conspirator, Jeffery Clark, as the Acting Attorney General to implement his scheme when other officials resisted.»

So, yes, as Biden noted, Presidents will be above the law. But as the reduced indictment implies, included in the President's broad immunity, which SCOTUS has made up out of nowhere, are the following truths:

• It isn't a crime, just a routine day at work, when the President perpetrates a fraud on citizens of the US, or solicits those who work for him (including DOJ) to do so.
• It isn't a crime, just a routine day at work, when the President meddles in state or national elections.
• It isn't a crime, just a routine day at work, for the President to solicit state officials to do his bidding in ways that would be illegal for others.
• It isn't a crime, just a routine day at work, when the President organizes conspiracies against the United States government, in violation of his oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

Smith is doing what he must do in order to get this past a corrupt Supreme Court. But what they are asking him to accept as a premise is just utterly preposterous. The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

Forget the fact that we're talking about crimes that probably happened. Forget that it's Trump. Just ask yourself: If you were designing a nation, would these be intended consequences of your design? Can you even imagine our founders intended this? Keep in mind that these are the people that brought us the Declaration of Independence, which said, among other things:

“… The history of the present King … is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. …
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. …
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone …
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation…”

Independent of the prosecution of Donald Trump, independent of the sweeping nature of presidential immunity, these specific truths that we already know from the mere fact that Jack Smith felt it necessary to remove them from the indictment, and which are only the tip of a very ugly iceberg, are not suggesting a positive direction for our nation's future. I would like to live in a country where Jack Smith did not have to fear prosecuting such things would be cruelly laughed out of Court.

We must drive stakes in the ground to keep the Overton window from moving.

Dictatorship vs democracy

Democracies have a lot of problems. The back and forth of democratic decision-making can be messy, processes run slowly, and outcomes are not always pretty. Democracies are said to offer the best of worst case outcomes, not the best of the best. For example, they are supposed to resist capture by a single individual. They are supposed to have checks against becoming dictatorships.

And, let's be honest, a benevolent dictatorship might sound better. Someone who knows good things need to be done and can do them efficiently. But the problem is that there is no such realizable system as a reliably benevolent dictatorship. Even if it started out that way, it would risk in every moment becoming malevolent. And if that happened, and it would, there would be no protection.

So, as Churchill is often quoted as saying, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

But at the same time, Jefferson wasn't wrong in saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

We've been too trusting in the US for too long and have allowed, little by little, for various changes that have weakened our democracy's safeguards. We have seen them burrowing in at democracy's weakest points, and instead of responding aggressively by filling observed gaps, we have let them drive a wedge.

So, at this point we find ourselves preparing for an election that many have described as having placed democracy itself on the ballot, because Donald Trump has promised that if elected, he will be a dictator. Just for a day, he says, but not everyone is Joe Biden. The history of power is that people do not step back from it easily. If Trump achieves any approximation of dictatorship, expect him to decide he likes it and wants to keep it that way. And the Supreme Court seems poised to back that.

After all, he seems to think he can be a dictator on day one if he wants. But the Supreme Court has not said anything that distinguishes any day from any other. If he has the power to be a dictator by his own choice on day 1, he has the power to be dictator by his own choice on any day. The Supreme Court seems to have made that pretty clear. That he's hinting only about a single day has no predictive value. His promises are worth nothing. He changes like the wind. The only consistency he has is his narcissism.

Meta-dictatorship

But, wait a minute, why does the Supreme Court get to decide these things?

Well, that's just their role and always has been. They are charged with making decisions that are true to the Constitution, but who polices that? They do. Or they don't. But, either way, no one else can tell them they're wrong.

Pardon the use of technically precise language here, but they just say shit, and it becomes true, stink and all.

They don't exactly make law, but they tell lawmakers what laws are OK to make. They don't exactly enforce law, but they tell enforcers which laws may be enforced. That's a lot of power. Too much.

They are, effectively, a team of meta-dictators. That's kind of always been there, just waiting to rear its ugly head.

A President is suddenly a king. How? That wasn't previously true. The Supreme Court says so. So we believe it. They claim the power to say that someone is a dictator, above the law and immune to question. How do you do that if you're not already a dictator yourself?

So why are we talking about a future world that only might have a dictator after the election. The problem is real, and here, and now. We have a team of dictators already—a weirdly constituted team that has a minority voice that's like an ignored conscience, unable to have an effect but still able to speak out, alerting us to danger. In spite of that, collectively, they are dictators.

Nothing has recently changed about the power of the Supreme Court other than its composition. It has been a potential dictatorial mob for a while, just awaiting two things to align:

• the right composition, to take advantage of the power that was there.
• the death of shame, so they won't be embarrassed doing it.

Now that those conditions are met, the Supreme Court's danger, a danger that has been there all along, is starkly visible.

In a sense, the story of the US Supreme Court is the story of a dictatorship that started out benevolent and decayed before our eyes, just as I was saying one should expect from any such attempt. As soon as we get the chance, we need to correct its structure so that it has much stronger protections. In the past, our various Congresses and Presidents have seen the Supreme Court's design as something sacred, that works well, not realizing they were simply relying on luck. Democracy must be built upon firmer stuff. It needs solid checks against corruption. Nothing less will suffice.

Leave it to the United States of Capitalism to bring on dictatorship fashioned in its own image, as a board of directors, not quite dictating directly, but freely controlling who is allowed to be the country's CEO and under what parameters they are permitted to operate. It's a bad look. But it's what money has bought.

 

---

Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

For the flag logo, I tried to generate an image at Abacus.ai using various models and Dall-E or Flux.1, but all of them made a complete mess of simple instructions, so finally I asked just "make a simple black and white logo in the style of a clenched fist. make sure the fist has 4 fingers and a thumb" (because many times it gives too few fingers), and I had to edit it onto the flag myself, using a public domain image of a flag downloaded from publicdomainpictures.net.

Edit: The penultimate paragraph in the main article above, beginning “In a sense, the story of the US Supreme Court…” had been intended originally but ended up lost due to editing. It was added back the day after initial publication when its absence was noted.

The Pace of Political Evil

US politics has lost its civility. Civility kept progress on the Conservative agenda slow, and it created time and opportunity for opposition response. In recent years, this pressure has intensified in speed and scope, making it hard to respond effectively in any civil way.

Trump is not the only player in this. Others, working patiently over decades, laid a foundation that was ripe for the arrival of someone like him. The system has been weakened over time. Gerrymandering, the Citizens United ruling, and the stacking of the Supreme Court are examples.

But Trump has been a definite innovator in the sociopathic governance space. His two primary innovations, either one of which would be sufficient to explain the reverence of the rich and power-hungry, have been:

1. 

   The outright shredding of shame, and the important social safeguard that shame had previously provided. Prior to this, there were a great many things no politician would dare try because of fear of being found out; Trump showed that fear to be a waste of time. Far too many voters are willing to turn a blind eye to shameful behavior that comes from a politician that otherwise serves them, which has allowed the GOP to very rapidly morph into the Party of Machiavelli.

2. The observation that massive numbers of voters don't check truth or consistency. Prior to this, politicians feared injuring their own supporters, which led to a natural reserve in how nasty a policy could be; Trump has shown that it's a productive strategy to create policies actively hurtful to one's own base, who will notice the pain but not bother to find out where it comes from, preferring to just be blindly angry, without direction, and to just wait to be told by tribal leaders who they should be angry at.

The consequences of these shifts are legion, far too numerous to discuss here in detail, but they include corrupt behavior to acquire and keep office, and the open incitement of and condoning of political violence, even to include outright insurrection. These also include ever more blatant acts of judicial activism by a questionably seated and plainly corrupt majority of the Supreme Court. Openly scornful of any suggestion that they be bound by an ethics code, they are apparently bent on taking a buzz saw to long-standing readings of the Constitution in favor of uglier ends—probably to include the present trend of the Republican party toward White Christian Nationalism.

The basic problem is that the founders did not anticipate this speed and scope. The safeguards they built in were few, and the presumption was that the system would be self-correcting, patching small holes on a one-off basis as they came up. The Supreme Court was designed for perhaps a challenge or two per Presidential term. Even if it was still functioning in a properly ethical way, it would not be up to the present onslaught of challenges—as I had warned about in a tweet on ex-Twitter a month before the 2016 election:

"Trump…involved in a startling 3,500 legal actions".

Visualize 3,500 Constitutional challenges by a #bully #President flexing his muscles. https://t.co/6HffNXKA7y

— Kent Pitman 🌎 (@KentPitman) October 13, 2016

 

---

Author's Note:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

The graphics were created at abacus.ai via its ChatLLM facility.

The prompt for the paperwork graphic, created by FLUX.1 was "create a black and white graphic that shows someone with a xerox machine that is rapidly spewing out legal documents in the direction of a model of the supreme court". I'm not sure what I expected as a result of that. A smaller court building, for one. But I guess this was sort of responsive.

The prompt for the shame graphic, created by DALL-E, was "create a simple black and white graphic sketched graphic of a man whose face is vaguely like donald trump, but feeling shame with one hand over his face and the other hand extended into the foreground, palm up and out, in a stop gesture intended to hold nearby people at bay." You can see it ignored parts of my request.

Kamala uninterviewed?

This will be a gripe of short-lived relevance, but I still wanted to say it out loud because there are other themes implicated that have more enduring nature.

About the Harris candidacy, I keep seeing:

“Harris has yet to give an interview…”

As if that's some kind of gotcha that shows weakness, fear, or lack of validity.

She's not exactly hiding. Barely more than a month ago, she was advocating for Biden. All of a sudden, she is thrust into a situation that was not anticipated. She has done extraordinarily, being at once a Vice President and a candidate, charged with assembling a team, approving preliminary messages, selecting her own Vice President after numerous interviews, syncing up on messaging with Walz, preparing presentations for the convention, and surely meeting with a zillion people who have competing theories of how she should spend her very limited time.

I don't know about you, but that's more than I get done in a month.

Not to mention the fact that her job up until now has not been to make policy but to support Biden's policy. It will probably take her a little while to work out how to articulate a strategy of her own, and how to present it in a way that is respectful of the fact that she's still Biden's VP.

All to say it doesn't look to me like ducking anything. It looks like walking straight into a firehose. While it will be interesting to hear an interview, I write off any delay as saying there are only so many waking hours in a day. Few people have assembled a campaign at all in that time, much less one with this amount of momentum. I think she's doing great.

But it's equally reasonable to note that an interview is really not going to shed any more light. It's a form of outreach to be sure, but there aren't secrets that are likely to be uncovered in that way. The people who are against her are hoping there will be a gotcha moment, but I think her policies to the extent that she has them formed yet, are on display. At this point we are trusting values, because that is what this election is about.

I am not a Democrat, but an Independent. By that I mean that I don't vote on anything or anyone just because I'm part of some tribe, I think things through. And I would be writing this same essay if it was Liz Cheney running and she had not sat down for an interview. I know enough about her and her values from what she stood up for in the Jan 6 hearings to know Democracy would be safe under her. I would be unwaveringly saying the same thing as I'm saying about Harris right now: democracy is on the line, and that matters more than anything.

So if you know anything about me, and there's no reason you should—I'm just a random guy with an opinion, you know that climate is in fact my top priority. And that I disagree with Kamala on some really material things about climate, mostly urgency. And she used to be against fracking and seems to have moderated. That's not great. But it doesn't change my unconditional support for her one iota.

Because if Trump is elected, there will be…

• no discussion of science,
• no chance for climate at all,
• no civil rights,
• no protective government agencies,
• no part of government, nor property entrusted to it, that is not for sale,
• no safety for anyone gay,
• no safety for women,
• no safety for people of color,
• no freedom of religion,
• no dignity for the elderly,
• no respect for injured or fallen heroes,
• no respect for people with disabilities,
• no real safety for anyone who is not straight, white, male, young, and rich,
• no safeguards for the environment,
• no workplace safety,
• no employment safety and fairness standards,
• no sane public health policy,
• no chance for fair elections in future elections.

Whatever I might think about Harris—or even Cheney in my hypothetical—and her policies, seems small compared to worrying that democracy is secure. And, believe me, I would disagree with Cheney way more than Harris. But my point is that small partisan matters are not the issue right now, and even large partisan matters are dwarfed by the threat to democracy. Partisan reasons are not the reason to cast a ballot one way or another. Not this year.

Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. There should be no higher priority than making sure he does not become US president.

We'll be lucky if the cancer that Trump has planted does not cause a bunch of people to challenge election results without basis and then have the morally compromised Supreme Court that he has stacked approve such antics, completing a procedural coup.

Serious damage has been done to our democracy, and it is limping along as it is. A strong showing for Harris and a Democratic Congress is a chance to have enough time to mend some things.

Otherwise, it's probably game over for US democracy, and a short road from there to game over for the world against climate change as petro-state dictators gain an edge at a terribly bad time.

Any attempt to suggest that Harris needs to sit down and discuss something in more detail completely misses the point and makes no sense to me.

• Democracy, not autocracy.
• Hope, not fear.
• Joy, not anger.
• Acceptance, not division.
• Lawfulness, not lawlessness.
• Constitution, not bullies.

Those are the things Harris stands for, and you aren't going to learn anything materially different from that in an interview. It'll be quite interesting to hear what she says in an interview, but she is not derelict for not having sat down for an interview. We have enough information for now, so let's cut her some slack. She should be getting credit for managing priorities well enough to give us the important things first. That bodes well for the future.

 

---

Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This essay originated as a post on Mastodon. It has been edited to fit the richer format of this venue, and somewhat edited to include additional content not in the original post, so you could think of that post as an initial draft.

The image was created by so-called “generative AI” via Abacus.AI and its interface to the FLUX.1 facility via a chat interface. I'm not sure how happy I am about the idea of these tools, but find myself needing to learn how they work, so I figured I'd use this as an experiment to see how they work. The prompt I used to get this graphic was:

“Make a graphic in black and white that shows, in silhouette form, two people sitting in comfortable chairs, facing each other. One of the people, the person to the right as we're looking on, is Kamala Harris in a pantsuit, and the other, to the left as we look on, is a generic news person doing the interview. There should be a coffee table between them, with a coffee cup on each side so that each would have something to drink if they needed it. Assume that the two are being recorded for television, so it is not necessary for there to be a visible microphone or any note-taking material.

And yes, if you're paying attention, it didn't take all of my instructions. The result was not a silhouette, for example. It just confirms that these tools are not as good as people often say. They make mistakes. Sometimes really conspicuous ones. But this was the best I got after several attempts, and was good enough for this very flexible case. I still am not a big fan of these tools, both for their environmental footprint and because they confabulate freely. They don't really understand, just mimic. That it drew anything at all suggests there were probably other things humans had done that were close enough that it could crib from them. But I'll gripe in more detail about all this on another day.

The Sudden Importance of Truth

Out of Context and Out of Line

It is disingenuous and preposterous to nitpick Tim Walz over remarks that weren't even about him but about gun availability. It's doubtful he intentionally lied, hoping to mislead folks unchecked—he's a teacher. He knows that would never stand. But we all say things that don't come out exactly right, and if it's not our focus, we press on.

He did, after all, carry weapons. And there was a war going on. And his remarks here are not trying to suggest he's a war hero, they're trying to say he has sufficient experience and perspective to understand the difference between military need for assault rifles and civilian needs.

It's legitimate to debate the correct interpretation of the Constitution. Some people think that the Second Amendment is a right of the people to have sufficient firepower that they can take down an out-of-control government. I don't happen to agree with that. Taken seriously, it would amount to a right of private citizens to have nuclear weaponry, so I think the idea that citizens can keep parity with the government, if that's what it ever meant, was lost long ago. But it's a legitimate policy debate we could have. Debate Walz on that, if you want to, because that's what he was speaking to. This was not a discussion about his military record. It merely mentioned it in passing, in shorthand, to give context.

Likewise on the issue of when he retired, plenty of people retire at 20 years. It was his right to retire. He received an honorable discharge. That's really all that needs to be said.

No one's decision to retire after 24 years needs to be questioned. Full credit to Walz for answering graciously pointing this out.

Rules of Engagement

And, just to be clear on the debate rules here, what is the standard for misstatements? How many times does a candidate have to repeat a single ill-shaped, questionably worded, or not-quite-true statement, much less a Big Lie, in order that their honor is put in doubt or their campaign be disqualified?

Asking for a few friends (the US).

Because if there's a sudden renewed interest in the truth here, that is the real story. I was starting to think truth had atrophied from disuse.

Due Diligence

You know where I'm going. The Washington Post estimated 30,573 false or misleading statements by Trump while in office. Is that disqualifying? Is anything like that alleged of Walz?

Are we just talking military issues, JV? Should we talk bone spurs?

Exceptional Vision

Perhaps we should revisit Trump's later remarks about 9/11, as described in an ABC News article (bold mine for emphasis):

Trump Tower is located on 5th Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, a little more than four miles away from ground zero.
…
“I have a window in my apartment that specifically was aimed at the World Trade Center, because of the beauty of the whole downtown Manhattan. And I watched as people jumped, and I watched the second plane come in,” he said then. “Many people jumped, and I witnessed that. I watched that.”

And from that same article (again, bold mine):

At the time, he noted “many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders,” and then claimed, “and I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”

And from an article linked by that one (bold mine):

Trump's claim that he saw television reports of people in New Jersey celebrating the attacks has been discredited. He stood by that claim on the campaign trail last year.

There is probably more I could say if The Washington Post’s “30,573” number is even remotely right. (Will we be holding them to the same precision as you want to hold Walz to, or the relaxed precision you reserve for your boss?)

But maybe we could pause here for a response.

 

---

Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This essay originated as a thread on the ex-bird site. It has been edited to fit the richer format of this venue, and expanded to include additional content not in the original thread.

Conspiring to Contest Key Elections

US citizens and concerned others should pay attention to a segment from last night's Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC (6 minutes):

The story tries to make sense of the fact that Trump has repeatedly remarked in an ominous way that he's not too concerned about whether people vote, as if the plan is to win the election not on votes but court challenges.

She's drawing on excellent reporting from Rolling Stone. From that article:

“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, says Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”

I don't even know why anyone at MSNBC is surprised. I've been worried for now a couple of years that this was going to happen and it was because of reporting MSNBC and others did even back then, saying that the groundwork for this was being laid. That we have taken this long to recognize the threat is distressing.

If Biden does not have a task force in place to counter this threat, he needs to make one.

As I noted in my July 5 blog post Supreme Challenge, before Biden passed the baton to Harris, Biden now has considerable power he's opting not to use but must reconsider using to assure fair elections.

He could, for example, order DOJ to charge every one of these people who are conspiring in advance and without foundation to challenge an election with seditious conspiracy. Such powers, SCOTUS tells us, are absolute and not subject to legal review. Probably there are other actions he could take, too.

My more general point is that we don't have to sit idle and watch misdeeds play out as if there is nothing to be done. Certainly if Trump is elected, HE will use those same powers in exactly the same way but without foundation, hesitation, or remorse, and without the health of our democracy as his goal.

As noted by Marc Elias in the quote above, these guys are not kidding around, they are playing for keeps. The Dems better treat this as the serious threat it is. I'd say the GOP should likewise care, but they're in a hypnotic trance, operating in mindless lockstep, so it's up to those not under the spell to act.

Maybe, too, Kamala can see what Joe might not and use her newfound clout to get him to take the gloves off.

 

---

Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This is effectively a mirror of an essay I wrote on Mastodon earlier today, July 30, 2024. This post is effectively a mirror for easier access, though the original venue has some comments not replicated here, and obviously I've done some reformatting and light editing to accommodate better typography options available here.

About the Kamala Candidacy

I have some thoughts on the sudden shift Sunday from a Biden/Harris ticket to a Harris ticket. I'm just going to bundle them all together here.

An Unusual Transition

I think it's going to be difficult for Kamala to develop a different position from Biden on issues where she disagrees. Her position as VP has required that she echo Joe's position, not make her own policy, but as the Democrats' primary candidate, she must feel free to differ.

It's important that Joe give her express permission to disagree publicly on matters. He can still be the decider for the present administration, but they need to understand that she might differ, so they must be explicit about this.

In some cases, he may want to shift positions. In others, they might need a transition plan. In others still, they should give people a heads up that there will be a difference. This is how democracies work. It's odd, but we should be proud, not embarrassed or ashamed, that there is some complexity to it. That we can do it in a civil way is exactly the kind of thing we want to preserve, and to keep the Republicans from destroying.

Residual Biden Baggage

Biden was not just laggging in the polls because he was old. He had taken other actions that alienated voters that Kamala can get back if she is careful.

One example is the Gaza genocide. Many felt Biden was complicit in this by continuing to send weapons and not pushing harder on Israel to stop. Frequent references were made by Netanyahu to the idea that it must defend itself, but no rational person thinks you have to kill an entire society, every last man, woman, and child in order to defend yourself. Many have defensibly called this a genocide, even though a formal ruling on the matter will take longer than most of these people have to live. In February, however, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must take steps to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza, and many took this as a clear hint that what they were doing was in range to be considered a genocide.

It is important that Kamala not follow in Biden's footsteps in appearing to be complicit in this, and in fact work with President Biden to make sure the US has taken a hard stance on that even now. Not only is this important for a purely humanitarian reasons, but she's running on law & order, and it's a bad look to be aiding and abetting someone who may later be charged with war crimes.

Moreover, within the US, there have been peaceful protests of the treatment of people in Gaza that have been summarily labeled as antisemitic. Police forces have had a far too strong hand. There is a Constitutional right to peaceful assembly that some say has been intentionally violated. There is a block of voters who are outraged and have been blaming Biden for that. This is a chance for a reset.

Democracy Now produced an excellent video on this matter, interviewing Annelise Orleck, former chair of the women's and gender studies department and the Jewish studies department at Dartmouth College, who suffered a violent arrest and said in the interview "People have to be able to talk about Palestine without being attacked by police." Kamala needs to adopt a more discussion-friendly position, again because this kind of hard line approach is more appropriate to the GOP.

Certainly I have had discussions with people about why it's important to vote Democrat in this election, to avoid a monster getting into office. Rightly or wrongly, there are voters who in good faith have concluded that the policies so far under Biden are those of a monster as well. Trying to discuss degrees of monsterness is not likely to be Kamala's path to success in such discussions.

Democrats need to stand for the idea that political problems are resolved by discussion, which may sometimes involve peaceful protest as protected by the Constitution.

To navigate this, I think Kamala establish some clear guidelines to clarify Democratic policy on this. I suggest at least these rules of thumb, which seem to me to be fair to both sides in this debate:

• Israel has a right to defend itself.
• Genocide goes well beyond mere “defense” of Israel.
• One can challenge Israeli policy without being antisemitic. (A US State Department web page explicitly clarifies “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”)
• Engaging Palestinians in a civil way does not imply one is pro-Hamas or antisemitic.
• Peaceful protest is Constitutionally protected.

Picking a Vice President

Not because he is Jewish, but specifically because (as discussed above), he's taken hard line stances against protesters, Shapiro would not be a good choice of of Vice President. Picking him would not be healing. It would open questions of Constitutional violations and police brutality that would distract from a clean campaign.

I have been swayed by the large amount of support I've seen from others, and the observations that he's an excellent speaker and debater, that Pete Buttigieg is the right choice for Kamala's VP.

I'm not 100% sure that Pete is being considered, though I definitely feel he should be. Among those that the media seems to think are being considered, I see Mark Kelly as my second choice. Mark doesn't seem like a bad guy, but he's not as dynamic and engaging as Pete, who I really think could bring a lot more real energy to the campaign.

Skeletons in Kamala's closet?

At this point I really don't care if there are skeletons in Kamala's closet. She checks enough boxes right now that I'm ready to back her in spite of bumpiness that might come up.

I've seen various claims in news articles and on social media that Kamala's past record will soon be seen by the public as its own kind of baggage, that the Democrats are in a euphoria, not paying attention to her past record, and about to be surprised. I'm not especially worried about most of that, even where I might disagree.

Of course, I reserve the right to complain and to suggest she modify policies I don't like. But that's consistent with my real concern, which is that she stand for civility and especially peaceful resolution of disputes through civil discussion, and for the Constitution as we have traditionally known it before the GOP recently started to challenge and dismantle it.

Democracy is under attack. Honestly, if Liz Cheney had registered Democrat and was Biden's VP with the necessary popular support, I'd probably vote for her. Not because I want her policies. I disagree with most of what I've seen of her taste in social policy. But because right now at this point in history, our biggest concern is to stabilize our democracy, and I know she would reliably do that. Fortunately, I know that Kamala will keep the Constitution safe and will have better policies—even if I might still disagree with a few. Once we're safe from Project 2025, and better safeguards are put in place, we can get back to ordinary partisan bickering.

My biggest concern is Climate Change, but even that has no chance without a functioning democracy. So we have to fix democracy first. Science cannot function without an open exchange of ideas, free of censorship or the injection of propaganda. Project 2025 is putting the unfettered exchange of ideas in severe jeopardy, so we have to definitively stop that.

I do hope we hurry, though, because the Climate Change is not waiting.

 

---

Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

The photo of Kamala is a size-reduced version of the public domain Official portrait of Vice President Kamala Harris at Wikipedia.