Of all
the Democratic tactics being employed to win this election, the most cynical is
the effort to sow chaos across the country, especially in swing states, with
unnecessary changes to election rules.
There is no apparent purpose for these sudden vote-by-mail schemes other
than to enable cheating and widespread post-election litigation. Out of the confusion, Democrats hope to
cobble together an electoral victory.
Nothing
would give me more pleasure than to see this attempt backfire. It is being reported across the country that
Democrats are signing up to vote by mail at three times the rate of
Republicans, but the procedures vary from state to state and many voters are
finding the process confusing. For
example, there are posters all over Philly urging people to “PLAN YOUR VOTE,”
which makes me think they are already worried Biden voters will screw up their
ballots. After all, you never had to
“plan” to vote before. All you had to do
was show up at the polls on Election Day.
The
possibilities are reminiscent of Bush—Gore in 2000, when the Democrats were
reduced to arguing, in federal and state courts, that black people were too
stupid to vote correctly. This time
around, Democratic lawyers might have to assert that pretty much anybody who
tried to vote for Biden by mail was an idiot.
We are
told (incessantly!), that this is a winnable election for Biden. How deliciously ironic it would be if Biden loses because of the cheat-by-mail scam,
but we learn he would have won if the Democrats had played it straight.
*
If the
Democratic Party comes out of this election in control of the Presidency, the
Senate and the House of Representatives, a top item on the Democratic
legislative agenda will be to “pack the Supreme Court” by mandating at least
four new seats and appointing leftist lawyers to fill those seats. No prominent Democrat denies that this is the
plan. There are many reasons this will
benefit them, but the most important is that it will enable them to eliminate
the Electoral College as the way we elect presidents.
The
legal basis for the Electoral College is found in Article II, Section 1 of the
Constitution. This means that the only
way the Democrats can achieve their dream of a presidential election decided by
the popular vote is to amend the Constitution, which is a very difficult
process. Under Article V, any amendment
to the Constitution must be “ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of
the several States….” Three fourths is
38 states, an impossible number to achieve for such an Amendment. There are simply too many Wyomings and
Mississippis and Montanas out there, and they will never agree to turn over the
selection of all future presidents to California, Texas, New York and Florida.
But
with a packed Supreme Court that will cast its blessings on any legislation
passed by a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president, there are two
possible ways to eliminate the Electoral College without amending the
Constitution.
The
first method is already underway. This
is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), a campaign that began
in 2006. States that adopt the NPVIC
agree that their electoral votes will be given to the presidential candidate
who wins the nationwide popular vote.
The Compact will be triggered when enough states have joined so that
their combined electoral votes total 270 or more, thus ensuring the Electoral
College victory of the popular vote winner.
Currently, 16 states (all blue or purple), have joined the Compact, with
total electoral votes of 196. Efforts
continue to secure the additional 74 electoral votes needed.
Article
I, Section 10 of the Constitution provides that any such interstate agreement cannot
be effective unless it is approved by Congress.
Presumably, that would not be a problem so long as both houses of
Congress are controlled by the Democrats.
There are also constitutional problems with the NPVIC, however, and
these would need to be decided by the Supreme Court.
For one
thing, there is something fundamentally dishonest about using a method like
this to destroy the Electoral College system we have used since the founding of
the nation. There is an explicit
amendment process in the Constitution itself, and the NPVIC is simply a clever
way to circumvent it. A larger issue may
be the argument that the compact would completely disenfranchise all the states
that did not sign up. Once the NPVIC
achieves its 270-vote trigger, the Electoral College votes of all the states
not participating would be meaningless.
Packing
the Supreme Court would ensure that the compact would somehow be deemed
constitutional.
The
second way Democrats might destroy the Electoral College system would be more direct. They might enact legislation requiring that
presidents be elected by popular vote.
Once signed by the president, the law would be attacked as
unconstitutional since Article II, Section 1 mandates the Electoral College.
The
Democrats’ defense would be that Article II, Section 1 was superseded by the
passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868. The 14th Amendment has been used
by many politicians, scrupulous and unscrupulous, for many purposes, but it has
been recognized for some time as the source of the idea that the right to vote,
and the principle of “one-man, one-vote” are recognized by the Constitution. This was the finding of Justice Rehnquist in
1974 in Richardson v. Ramirez. (In fact, there is no explicit guarantee of a
right to vote.)
In other
words, the argument would be that Article II, Section 1 and the 14th
Amendment are in an irreconcilable conflict, and the popular vote legislation
was passed to resolve that conflict. A
newly packed Supreme Court, willing to rubber-stamp any radical Democratic
idea, would agree. And the Electoral
College would be history.
*
The one
thing that has been crystal clear for at least a year is that Joe Biden, should he prevail in the 2020 election, is not mentally competent to serve as a “real”
president. This has raised the puzzling
question of who would serve as president if Joe beats Trump. Would Biden simply be removed and replaced by
his vice president, Kamala Harris, or would he serve as a figurehead, with some
committee of Democrats (Pelosi, Schumer, Sanders, etc.), actually doing the
governance for the Executive branch?
When Biden was locked away in his basement for months and was only
displayed under tightly-controlled circumstances, we didn’t know if he was even
capable of serving as a pantomime president.
The
significance of the two Trump-Biden debates and of Joe’s real ability to attend
occasional campaign rallies has answered the question.
It is
now clear that Biden is able to appear in public, for short periods of time,
and say what has to be said and do what has to be done. At least for the time being, he is capable of
attending state dinners, placing medals around the necks of heroes, and smiling
appropriately at the Easter Egg Roll.
This means that unless his deterioration markedly accelerates, he can
serve as a show president for some significant period of time while the secret
Democratic politburo runs the executive.
Kamala Harris, an extremely unpopular Democrat who had to drop out even
before the primaries, will not be needed to play any significant role.
The
realization that they don’t need Kamala is probably why her campaigning has
been cut back so drastically. She was
chosen as VP solely for her sex and skin color, and the Democrats don’t want
her out in public more than she has to be.
Now she doesn’t have to be.
Copyright2020MichaelKubacki
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