Big V and Elections -- Trump Related but Also Beyond

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

We were a few years into the Bush Administration when I started this blog. A lot of content about the wrongs of his Administration (and Republicans) could be found in the archives. I also commented a lot over at Slate fray in particular, but that is no longer existing. Clearly, we have much anti-Trump content. But, perhaps not the same level of constant detail and analysis. No longer new. Trump is so blatantly wrong. More places to comment elsewhere.  Still, it is good to remember.

The excerpt above is referenced again in a post along with the death of a professor, who contracted the Big V earlier this year.  Note the time lag: months later, people still suffer, some will die.  A major problem here is that her university did not close shop until April.  New York received some criticism for waiting a week to ten days in March.  The problem is wide. But, yes, there is some special attention warranted for the head of the executive department.  Relatedly, national policy requires passage in the Republican controlled Senate.  They have their own issues, but also must factor in what the titular head of their party is willing to do.

(Stalin says at some point a list of dead is merely a statistic. The "merely" is his gloss and/or implication.  Still, 140K dead becomes more real with individual cases. One recent was Herman Cain.  It seems quite possible he contracted it at a Trump rally.  Or, if the timing is off, he very well might have spread it by being there.  The timing of his announcement that he had it actually might make the latter more likely the case. He's dead now. The state of others he might have infected is unclear, helped by imperfect track and trace policies.)

The President, not being known for thinking through anything, suggests this morning that the presidential election be delayed. Let's run with this hypothetical, shall we?

As noted, Congress has the power to set election dates, so if no one was picked by Inauguration Day, existing law would mean the House Speaker and then Senate Pro Tem  (as might be in place after Congress comes back in session in early January) since we have fixed terms.  In fact, really going with it, we might have a rump Senate with Democratic control.  As noted in comments, over twenty Republicans (including McConnell) are up for re-election in November.  This all is useful for academic interest.

The whole thing seems so stupid that one commentator argued the appropriate path is ridicule.  And, we had some.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo might have passed the buck to the Justice Department, but even Republicans granted we will have elections on time. We did so during the Civil War with treasonous rebels in control of a chunk of territory.  It's true that the Copperheads were not in control of the presidency and Senate, but still.  One Trumpie in comments argued Trump didn't say he personally would delay the election, so this is just him "blue skying" in such a way that is triggering people who don't like him.

He added something about maybe Trump doing it to assure ballots would be counted by November 3.  Found this inane myself, but Mark Field (near end) actually gamed that scenario, arguing the net result could be to depress the vote and taint absentee ballots not actually counted on Election Day, something that is a policy in multiple places.  Note how the results were delayed in the primaries just for this reason.  Still, find that stupid. The thread itself tediously had a "stupid" tangent, including the idea that Britney Spears is pretty smart.  I am not making this up.

The tweet was not some sort of one-off.  Trump has for a long time been arguing that the election will be tainted, particularly because of the increase of absentee voting.  This was the particular nature of the tweet -- maybe we should delay the election, if that is necessary for accuracy. Just saying. That sort of thing.  The idea that only Congress gets to change the election as obvious should not lead us to think Trump knows that and won't try somehow to interfere with the date. It's Trump.

Vague open-ended comments of this nature deserve strong responses.  Plus, there is a general idea that for the "good of the country" or something, executives can do a range of things they don't seem to have power to do.  In fact, courts -- up to the Supreme Court -- has blocked attempts to loose the rules some to deal with the Big V.  OTOH, there repeatedly were major debates on the right path.  The obvious case there is Wisconsin.

Mark Field's comments -- including the important reference to the now Trump led post office -- point to the concerns we still should have about Trump here.  Directly changing the election date is not the only thing he can do.  As I myself said, the basic thing (and the Trumpie in his own fashion showed this in his own words) is that Trump is serving as a chaos agent to de-legitimizing elections.  He has direct powers to do this, or at least to try to do so (his latest is to not count undocumented people for purposes of apportionment), but also indirect means.  Lack of trust in the election system, especially if this election turns on a fairly close count in a few states, is dangerous.  Republicanism includes an overall ethos accepted by the public at large.  And, again, distrust can influence his own actions.

John Lewis (RIP) noted democracy is a state of mind.  It is not just voting, but an ethical state of mind, that has to be developed and reinforced. This also follows from individual liberty. So, liberty is not just majority will, but things that are protected to create republican citizenship.  Justice Douglas spoke of the importance of privacy here (see, e.g., Poe v. Ullman).  An op-ed by one of the people that makes NYT not just a bunch of idiots compared Lewis with Trump, citing an important philosopher:

In “The Ethics of Democracy,” an 1888 essay written while he was teaching at the University of Michigan, Dewey described his expansive vision of democracy. Against contemporary skeptics who saw democracy as little more than simple majority rule by ignorant, isolated individuals, he argued that we should understand democracy as “a form of moral and spiritual association” that takes “personality” — meaning individual potential — as its “first and final reality.” Democracy recognizes the “infinite and universal possibility” within each person and seeks to foster its expression, not for “mere self-assertion” or “unregulated” desire but for “an individualism of freedom, of responsibility, of initiative to and for the ethical ideal.”

Trump is a type of active virus against this sort of thing. He is being a "chaos agent" to chip away at the trust in our nation's institutions.  Trump could and probably should have been impeached for a range of things. But, the House chose to select something specific, an attempt (far from a one-off, and this was specifically noted) to interfere with our election. Relatedly, his interference with congressional efforts to investigate this.   So, though he has a lot to answer for, given his current role, there is something especially nefarious about all of this.