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Our Political Moment, in Summary
I feel compelled to say something about President Trump and recent events, but realize that I would merely be repeating things I’ve said in my few most recent posts. So I will briefly summarize, and then move on to other things in 2021.
1. The President did not meet any legal definition of incitement.
2. The President’s claim that the election was stolen has not actually been thoroughly investigated, much less disproven. The narrative — that the courts rejected it so it can’t be true — is nonsense: evidence is examined in trial, not in pre-trial review. We simply don’t know the extent of the fraud, and we don’t know that the President is wrong — nor to what extent.
3. I condemn unlawful riots, regardless of the motivation of the rioters. I condemn the 500-plus riots of 2020 brought to us by a demonstrably false claim that police disproportionately kill young black men and do so with impunity. I condemn the one riot of 2021 brought to us, I believe, by people who believe the as yet unresolved claim that fraud determined this election.
4. If the President has been “unpresidential,” I can live with that: at no time since his inauguration has he been treated in a presidential fashion. Having never been shown the respect due his office, I won’t fault him for his behavior now.
5. And, finally, I think that there is no sense or justice for impeaching a President for making a claim that hasn’t been disproven and may be true or mostly true, and who has committed no crime.
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Powerful institutions silence opposing voices so that they can lie with impunity. The truth can defend itself: being the truth is always its greatest strength, and it will almost always prevail — if it is allowed to speak. This is why tyrants control the press, imprison dissidents, and force confessions.
The gravest injustice this year is not the 501st lawless riot. It is the silencing of so many voices by powerful institutions like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. Be wary of anyone who tells you that depriving people of their voice is in everyone’s best interest.
Published in General
I’ve thought this a million times. Thank you.
Postscript: I also don’t think he has been feeling fantastic since he had the virus. Leave it to the “compassionate” Democrats to not even notice or care.
Jim, we had newspapers. Even small towns had a daily, sometimes two. Big cities had several. But those voices are gone now, as is much of local media. The internet has replaced that.
If car dealers stopped selling automobiles to conservatives and I commented on it, one might as well ask how we managed to get around for 150 or so years without the automobile.
But we do know this: There is a legal process for selecting the President established by the Constitution and various federal statutes. That process was followed and when the EC votes were certified several weeks ago, the president’s legal options expired. There is no way, under current law, that he can remain president after 1/20. That has been true for a long time, well before he called for the 1/6 protest.
I know he thinks he was cheated. He properly brought those matters before the state Courts and the state courts held that their laws provided no remedy for him. Many times over, that occurred. He then, as he had every right to do, sought help with the legislatures of the disputed states. They declined to address his concerns, as they had every right to do. They chose to let their election results stand and to send Biden electors to the Electoral College.
As I mentioned in a comment on another post – people lose in court every day. They lose for procedural reasons, substantive reasons, all kinds of reasons. This often means they lose much more than a 4 year job; sometimes they lose years of freedom, their kids, their money, and on and on. They are very often never satisfied that justice was done. They feel that they weren’t heard, that the never had the chance to put their best evidence forward, etc…Even when there is an agreed resolution the parties often feel they got shafted.
But you know what they do? They accept it because they accept the rule of law. They accept that there is always another side to the argument and sometimes that side prevails. They don’t take matters into their own hands; they act like adults who know that our society depends on people accepting that they must follow the law. They swallow the pain and disappointment, again like adults, like everyone must do sometimes, and they move on.
Trump didn’t do that. He went around telling people he could still win if only Congress or the VP had the guts to deliver for him. He made, or allowed people to, believe he could still legally remain president. He had people demanding that Pence do something that would have clearly violate his lawful duty. That cannot be tolerated. It just can’t.
We have never had, and never will have, a presidential election that everyone is happy with, that everyone agrees was handled correctly, with no fraud and no irregularities. And so if Trump’s behavior were to be accepted, every close election would come down to a contest to bully Congress. Again, that can’t be tolerated.
We’ve discusses this elsewhere.
Constitutional experts are divided on whether or not there was any recourse in Congress on January 6th. Feel free to dispute that, but it’s a pretty low bar for me to cross: I just have to find one for you, and as I’ve heard them speak I know they’re out there.
Given that, it can not be said that Trump must have known better.
I don’t think that’s true. There is a robust appeals court system. And there are countersuits galore out there.
I know a local Democrat who consistently asked for recount after recount after every local election.
And there’s the entire Innocence Project.
There were many convictions overturned years ago when it was discovered that a major factor used to determine arson proved to be inaccurate.
The Fells Acre Day Care Center case.
We are supposed to be seekers of the truth, not of expediency. We are supposed to follow the evidence, wherever it takes us.
Its absence meant that it could not be used against us, just like media and communications technology made totalitarianism in the 20th century more viable and effective.
I know, and I’m sorry to harp on it. It’s a compulsion, but the issue bothers me.
You can always find someone who will tell you what you want to hear. Every field has its charlatans and quacks. There are lots of “constitutional experts” who love cute sophistry, and you can listen to them too if you want. But this is not a close legal question.
Yes, all of these people are following the well established legal recourses available to them. They’re not demanding that anyone act outside their scope of legal authority, which is what Trump did. By the way, the vast majority of appellants lose their appeals. Should they be encouraged to resort to other ways to get what they want?
D.A., I think that you’re wrong about the statutory language.
Dang, where was that phraseology 2 or 3 years ago? I would have used that a lot.
I would only change the word “inauguration” to “election”.
DA, I understand both the compulsion to respond and the point you’re making. I get it. But here’s what sticks in my craw. In his belief that the Congress could suspend the electoral vote count to allow for an investigation, the President can reasonably claim that people who know something about Constitutional law had told him it was a possibility. Whether he was right or wrong, he couldn’t be expected to know the correct answer.
So I’m quite willing to acknowledge that he might have been mistaken. I’m not willing to conclude from that that he was knowingly asserting a falsehood. And that’s a big deal, when we’re talking about an allegedly impeachable offense.
By the way, as far as I know there’s no time limit on how long the Congress has to review and investigate challenges to the votes. I don’t know if the challenge process would have allowed an actual investigation of specific allegations of fraud to be launched.
Lastly, Ted Cruz, whatever one thinks of him, has actually argued cases before the Supreme Court, occasionally successfully. That alone might lead a reasonable person to assume that there was some reason to be hopeful. And that’s sufficient, I think, to serve as a defense for President Trump’s actions.
PS And I don’t agree with your closing comment, characterizing the matter as trivially obvious. I don’t believe it is.
I don’t have the energy to go through the details again. The summary is: the statutes provide that Congress can only reject EC Votes if they weren’t certified or regularly given, or if more than one slate was received from a certain state. 3 USC 15. All the EC votes here were given according to the regular procedures, and no state submitted more than one slate. There was no accusation of forgery, or coercion or duress, etc…This refers to the EC votes, not the state elections to select electors.
The statutes, specifically 3 usc 5 and 3 usc 6 hold that state resolution of controversies in selection of electors, whether legislative or judicial, are considered final by the certain date established. In this case, the states had resolved these controversies, to the extent they existed in any formal setting, i.e. outside of just what people were talking about on the internet or on tv, by that date.
This scheme clearly puts the burden on states to resolve internally the controversies surrounding the election of electors and tell the Fed. Gov. how they resolved them. This is in keeping with the Constitution’s requirement that states select their electors. To use PA as an example, all three branches of state government, directly or indirectly, signed off on the Biden electors. PA, as expressed by it’s government, clearly chose Biden.
I really don’t want to get bogged down in this, but I’ll mention it one more time. 3 USC 6 and 3 USC 5, referenced by 3 USC 15, mention that the selection of electors and resolution of disputes must occur in accordance with state law. Given that a major component of the dispute is that some states followed neither their own state law nor Constitutional mandates in choosing their electors, I think it can at least be reasonably argued that the terms stipulated in 3 USC 15 for valid electoral votes had not been met. I’m sure debates can be made about when and how redress might occur, but I very much doubt that it is an open and shut situation.
Remember the standard here. The question is not whether is was likely that the President could prevail, nor even what the dominant understanding of the constitutional law is. Rather, the question is whether the President knowingly made assertions that were unambiguously contrary to the Constitution he was sworn to uphold. Given what I think I know about President Trump, I doubt that’s the case.
You keep asserting this, and I’ve never seen you even quote the relevant statute. I find the statutory language to be unclear.
I condemn the one riot of 2021 brought to us, I believe, by people who believe the as yet unresolved claim that fraud determined this election.
The only part of your post I disagree with. I think it was a successful operation run by the opposition. Michael Yon has described Agents Provocateur leading gullible Trump supporters, including Ashli Babbitt, to invade the interior of the Capitol. There is also video evidence of Capitol police opening doors and allowing demonstrators into the Capitol, especially statuary hall. Perhaps they were sympathetic, as the police man who died, was. Trump was led into a trap by incompetent or malicious staff work. The accounts by other eyewitnesses agree with Yon’s observations. I wonder if we will ever learn the truth ?
Too many people confuse “presidential” with “condescending elitist”. I don’t need condescension from my politicians.
I surrender, Henry.‘I’ve got to let this go. I appreciate the good discussion.
I know I quoted it at some point, but I can’t remember when or what thread. I’ve been beating this drum for days, which is on me. It’s a tedious statute, for sure, but I stand by my comments on it. Like I said to Henry, I’ve got to let it go. (Just like Trump should have! Aright now I’m done.)
The moment the networks declare the Dem the victor then all counting must stop and the rule of law starts.
I’m paraphrasing from the Constitution.
Phillip Kline, former attorney general of Kansas, posted this message on January 6th – “Congress should pause 10 days to have state legislators meet as a body and debate and vote on certification. America deserves 10 days to let the Constitution work and for legislators to do their duty. Many blue state officials have prevented them from meeting since 11/3.”
It seems to me that there were more than charlatans who believed there was still a path.
More Constitutional paraphrasing –
The selection of electors and resolution of disputes shall be determined by the candidate with the most lawyers, determined by weight. Said lawyers may make changes to election procedures until 5 days after the official election date if approved by a judge in the state most recently admitted to the union. Rich oligarchs may add votes to the candidate of their choosing by donating money to local election officials. The total of votes shall be the size of the contribution divided by the cost of a sheep. The losers must swallow pain and disappointment, excepting that one of them should desecrate the desk of the Speaker of the House, at which time the First Amendment is suspended and impeachment proceedings are to begin. Should a Senate trial, after impeachment, not be completed prior to the President leaving office, the leaders of the Senate shall hold hands and skip in a circle beneath the rotunda of the Capitol.
This is a problem in an otherwise reasonable discussion that I’ve been following–dismissal of person who disagree with your perspective in an ad hominem fashion without even knowing who the person or persons are. The sin would appear to be disagreeing with you.
So, Americans actually did have a voice even before the internet. That was my point.
This is fair criticism. Guilty as charged. I retract it.
Of course they did.
But I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make. Can you expand on it for me?
Henry, in the paragraph that I quoted from your OP, it seemed to me that you were saying that without Twitter, Facebook, etc., we were in danger of losing the ability to communicate.
To your later comment, I think it’s clear that the reason we no longer have the great variety of newspapers, especially locals, it that they have been largely replaced by the internet. That seems to be the free market in action; the internet is apparently doing a better job in meeting consumer needs (or desires). I don’t participate in any social media (unless that’s what Ricochet is), but apparently many folks rely on it.
I would much prefer a daily paper, but they are all so far to the left that nothing in them really interests me, except the Jumble, that Cryptogram, and occasionally the crossword puzzle.
Jim, it’s certainly true that the internet has displaced older media. I don’t think that’s good, but I do think it’s irreversible and so we’ll have to deal with it.
It’s of course true that people can find ways to continue communicating. But it’s also true that a handful of tech giants can dramatically limit that communication if they wish. There’s obviously a tension here between free markets and the ability of a free people to stay informed. I love free markets, but I also love a functioning democratic republic. I’m willing to see tech behemoths broken apart in order to prevent a concentration of control over communication.
More like leave it to the “compassionate” Democrats to take advantage of the opportunity his weakened condition gives them.
Henry Racette, this post perfectly puts into words what I was thinking and couldn’t say. Thanks for writing it.