Muddling through politics

I’ve been muddling through some thoughts about national politics after the November 5 election. I will no doubt have more, but this week I have one for each party.

FOR REPUBLICANS:

Presidential candidate Donald Trump is already strongly suggesting that if he loses to Kamala Harris, it will be because of election fraud. That’s extremely unlikely. With America’s elections held under the auspices of thousands of state and local election officials, both Republicans and Democrats, the mathematical possibility that enough fraud could take place to “steal” an election is infinitesimal.

But Trump, to this day, continues to talk about fraud as the reason he lost the 2020 presidential election, by an electoral vote count of 306 to 232 and a popular vote difference of some seven million (81 million to 74 million votes).

Republicans filed more than 60 court cases to dispute those results. Some were withdrawn by the plaintiffs before they went to court, and some were thrown out by judges because plaintiffs lacked standing to bring them.

But at least 10 cases in several states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin—went to trial, and in each case the lower court judges (from both political parties) ruled there were not sufficient election irregularities to make any difference in the outcome. Trump and his supporters appealed all those decisions to state appeals courts and/or state supreme courts, and in each case the lower courts’ decisions were upheld. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider further appeals.

Trump and some of his key allies claimed, and continue to do so, that they had evidence that fraud occurred. That “evidence” did not convince the judges. And to date, the Trump group has not produced further evidence, although some of them continue to maintain that such data exists. If that’s so, it’s a mystery why they haven’t laid it out for Americans to examine.

One of the steps Trump took to try to overthrow the 2020 election results was to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to consider alternative slates of electors from several states when Pence presided over the electoral vote count in the Capitol on January 6. He also pressured the federal Justice Department to that effect, and discussed the move with White House advisers. Those efforts coincided with Trump supporters’ assault on the Capitol that day.

Special Counsel Jack Smith brought criminal charges against Trump for pressuring Pence and the Justice Department. The U.S. Supreme Court on July 1 declared that discussions between the President and his federal officials are protected by presidential immunity if they are official acts, even if they break the law, and therefore the President is absolutely immune from prosecution, or else the prosecution must show why he or she is not immune (because a specific presidential action may not be an official act).

But in this November’s election the situation is drastically different. Trump is no longer President, and therefore cannot rely on presidential immunity if he attempts to pressure federal officials. He has no official leverage on which to rely in a quest to overturn the 2024 presidential results. Those powers now reside in President Biden’s hands, if he chooses to use them. And Biden has made it clear he will not interfere with the election process.

So the possibilities for Republican claims of election fraud this year are much reduced. My guess is that if GOP operatives make such efforts, they will do so in states where their party controls the levers of power.

Election deniers after this November 5 should be challenged to put up or shut up. Claims of election fraud should not be allowed to fester for years, the way they have since 2020.

And Republicans who continue to support Trump’s claims about the 2020 election should be asked why they do, other than that Trump says so.

FOR DEMOCRATS:

Ever since the 2020 election, Democrats have chafed under the enormous power of the U.S. Senate filibuster. In most cases it takes 60 votes for the Senate to take action, since that’s the number of votes required to shut off debate on an issue and move toward an up-or-down vote on a bill. For many years both parties have expressed their frustration with the ability of a Senate minority to control the fate of major congressional legislation.

Today Democrats control the Senate and the White House. And the House of Representatives, while under Republican control, is almost evenly divided. The Senate filibuster is all that stands between Republicans and a skein of Democratic victories on a number of key legislative issues.

Many Democrats therefore desire an end to the filibuster. They have considered attempts to change the Senate rules in order to end or emasculate it, but so far have been unable to convince the Senate to do so.

Time is running out. The November 5 election is only a few weeks away, and the new Congress will be sworn in in early January.

Democrats may want to rethink their position.

Polls show that the presidential election is likely to be extremely close. Control of the House may swing to the Democrats, but that’s not a sure thing. And Democrats are trying mightily to protect their slim Senate majority, with several Democratic senators in tight races in states that have leaned Republican in recent years.

If Republicans manage to win a trifecta, with the White House, the Senate and the House all in GOP hands starting in January, the only defense Democrats will have is the Senate filibuster. Unless Republicans win enough seats to beat back 40 Democratic Senate votes, Democrats will have the filibuster and nothing else.

Democrats should decide now whether they would continue their determination to kill the filibuster under those conditions. To turn around and try to protect the filibuster in 2025, after their public vow to end it in 2024, would be pure hypocrisy. Democratic Senate candidates should be asked now what they would do about the filibuster if Republicans were to win the White House and Congress in November.