Yvette Harrell's Vote Against State's Rights

 I received this email yesterday, as did many other voters in CD2, offering an explanation for Harrell's support of a preposterous last-minute move in Congress on behalf of President Trump which contributed in no small part to the violent insult to democracy that occurred in the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday.  Normally I wouldn't bother to reply; congresspersons frequently make foolish decisions, many of which should be forgiven in consideration of Potomac fever and, now, the coronavirus blues.  But since the stakes are very high, I am including a copy of her email and my reply.

Late last night, I kept my promise to object to the certification of the Electoral College tallies from the two states for   which votes were permitted: Arizona and Pennsylvania. No other objections for any other state, including New Mexico, had the required backing of at least one U.S. Senator that would have allowed a vote on the House floor.

The unconstitutional election changes in numerous states disenfranchised my constituents in New Mexico. I hope that by joining so many of my House colleagues in objecting we can shed light on the problems with the 2020 election and move towards solutions that restore integrity and confidence to our electoral system.

As President Trump said this morning, there will be an orderly transition to the new administration on January 20th. I  will continue to work on behalf of the people of New Mexico's Second District to support our shared values of limited government, free markets, and Constitutional rights.

 

My reply:

 

Your explanation is unacceptable.  You pay lip service to limited government and markets and constitutional rights, but your actions have violated the Constitutional mandate for states to determine the outcome of their own elections.  Your assertion that electoral actions in other states (which you feel expert enough to deem unconstitutional) "disenfranchised my constituents in New Mexico," is just gibberish.

 

You took it on yourself to use your position as a congresswoman from New Mexico to stick your nose in Arizona's business and Pennsylvania's.  How would you like it if Chuck Schumer objected to your victory at the polls last November, and was able to use his clout two weeks from now to get half the Senate to publicly cast doubt on the legitimacy of your standing as a congresswoman, based, let us imagine, on rumors from progressive leaders in New Mexico, that you rigged some of the votes in Doña Ana County, in spite of sworn testimony from the relevant officials (Democrats and Republicans alike) that the votes were counted faithfully and accurately?

 

When you were in the NM House I asked Mary Kay Papen to offer me her opinion of your character, and her positive response caused me to respect your judgments.  Same thing with Harvey Yates.  That respect has ended.  You are now complicit in this assault--including the shameful events at the Capitol last Wednesday--on the rule of law, which is the foundation of our democracy.

Don't Expect Calls to Action from Nancy or Chuck:  They should step up, but don't expect it

Their Silence Suggests Democrats Need New Leadership in Congress

It is well past 12 noon in Washington on January 7 and we haven't heard anything from Pelosi or Schumer about impeachment.  I don't expect it.  After four years of wringing their hands at the "dreadful" actions of the President, including treason, illegal financial actions, racist actions implemented as policy, atrocities on the US-Mexico border, etc., but taking no actions, this is unlikely to change, even in the face of the violent insult to the American creed we witnessed yesterday.  The public is far ahead of our political leaders today.

Nancy had to be dragged into an impeachment process against her will last year, and only after everyone who had access to a television broadcast had heard the damning evidence multiple times and the general public was insisting on national leadership in the face of treason.  And, of course, Nancy understood that McConnell would treat impeachment as an insult to his intelligence. There was no cost, no risk, in going through the motions.  It even gave congresspersons a chance for free television face time, and then we could go back to pretending our political system remained normal, and hoping voters would bail them out even as enemies of democracy, abroad and at home, were plotting to make a shambles out of our elections.Everything she did was tactically correct but morally without compass.

Chuck and Nancy have been safely re-elected to their leadership positions under a Biden administration, and they can't wait to get back to the minute but passionless details of complicated legislation, responding to the special interest needs of their legislative followers and negotiating with the other side behind closed doors.  The tragedy of American politics, the ICU condition of American democracy, yesterday in full naked view, it would seem, are mere distractions for them to the art of legislative negotiation.

Sometimes this kind of leadership is desirable.  It works well when you have both parties pretty much in agreement about the major contours of the public agenda, and you need knowledgeable specialists to hammer out the messy sausage of legislation everyone will be reasonably happy with.  That was long ago, from about the mid-1980s until the 20-teens, when neo-liberalism was an umbrella, however skewed toward the rich, everyone who needed campaign contributions could live with in bipartisan happiness.

But when the agreement is gone, and brute force, legal or illegal, becomes the currency of the land, it is time for a switch to a different kind of leadership--one with a passion for making things right, one that instinctively fights back to protect the common good against foes who have the needed passion to destroy what it has taken centuries to build.  Twenty four hours later, I don't see that person emerging in the Democratic Party.  The Republican Party is probably too shell-shocked, heading for cover, to do much more than slough off  their wounds with soundbites written by professional spinners.  Do not trust the leadership of either party in Congress with your democracy.  They have already failed to protect it.

Expect the political system to shift attention to a celebration of the triumph of democracy in the coming swearing in; to shift attention to investigations of security system reform at the Capitol, to analyze the profiles of ringleaders of the mob, to reveal legislative priorities for the new administration.  We need a new generation of leaders to fix a broken system.  Right now we have more of the same.

 Do the US Constitution's Provisions for Impeachment Imply a Bottom Line?

Does Article 25 of the Amendment to the Constitution Have a Bottom Line?

Does Congress Have a Bottom Line?  Do Nancy and Chuck and Mitch Have Bottom Lines?

Do We the People Have a Bottom Line?  Do You Have A Bottom Line?

Until recently the attack from Trumpolandia was against the hypocrisies of our political system.  Agree or disagree with the specifics, reasonable people have been persuaded for four years that perhaps our institutions needed a shake-up; if you didn't like it the remedy was the electoral process in 2020.  But we were warned from the beginning that attack was also against the the core machinery of democracy, and possibly against a true count of the votes in 2020.

Today the attack was not just an act of disrespect against the institutions of our government, and against the election machinery which forms the rock-bottom core of our system.  It was an assault on the physical home, and the ceremonial actions of democracy taking place at that moment within that home, which holds the chalice of our experience as Americans.  The breach was seen around the world.  The insult could not be more naked or more pointed.

None Dare Call it Treason

In 1964 a book called None Dare Call it Treason was self-published and widely distributed in bulk, often for free, repeating a right-wing wacko conspiracy fairy tale about the federal government being infiltrated by communists.  Among the malicious absurdities of this fairy tale was this line: "Amazingly, the fortunes of America’s most successful tycoons...have been redirected to finance the socialization of the United States.”

The fairy tale had been taken up in 1949 by Senator Joseph McCarthy and used with no evidence to destroy the careers of many loyal foreign service officers, apparently in an effort to spread hatred and fear among vulnerable sectors of the electorate.  Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, was the first Senator to take McCarthy on, in 1950.  "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny—fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear," she said.  Democrats in the Senate and elsewhere, while complaining in private, refused to take McCarthy on in public, cringing with fear at the notion they might be accused by McCarthy of being fellow-travelers.  President Eisenhower was not happy with McCarthy but there was little he could do and McCarthy continued spewing lies until he died of liver failure aggravated by alcoholism in 1957.

There is a Trump connection here.  Roy Cohn was McCarthy's attorney.  Cohn was a truly malicious man who ended up being disbarred in 1986 for pressuring a dying client to change his will naming him a beneficiary.  He was McCarthy's lawyer in the 1950s at hearings where unfounded allegations were launched.  He represented several mobster bosses.  He was a friend of Roger Stone and represented Rupert Murdoch.  He also represented Donald Trump, and mentored Donald Trump in the art of  malicious trickery, defending him in a lawsuit by the federal government for discriminating against African Americans in 39 of Trump's properties in Manhattan.  Throughout Cohn's career there were accusations of theft, obstruction, bribery, blackmail, fraud, perjury, and witness tampering.  Sound familiar?  The gang of thugs surrounding our outgoing President didn't begin with Trump's election:  They had been practicing their trade, conniving on the fringes of legality for decades, and only the permissiveness of the conservative movement toward their own unscrupulous allies allowed them to maintain a shaky respectability. 

The title of the book None Dare Call it Treason was taken from a political poem written in the late 1500s by a British writer in the court of Elizabeth I. The relevant line is, Treason doth never prosper? What's the reason?  For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.  Ponder that line for a moment.

This past weekend, the President committed another serious criminal act that should elicit immediate removal from office as well as jail time. Once again scoundrels in the US Senate are protecting him, as might be expected.  What is even more alarming, however, for the long-term prospects for American democracy, is the cowardice in the US House of Representatives, led by an autocrat from San Francisco.  

As the President's already-infamous hour-long recorded criminal phone call to an election official, asking him to "find" votes, was being broadcast 24/7 throughout the media world this weekend, the House of Representatives was too busy to respond, preoccupied as it was with the ceremonial niceties of re-electing the president of the club, Nancy Pelosi, to another term as Speaker.  And Nancy, whose national approval rating at one point in 2020 stood at 14%, is well known for her autocratic refusal to allow the people's chamber to take action against the criminal actions of the President. (Isn't "autocratic" the term many Democrats use to characterize Mitch McConnell's use of power?) She had to be dragged into holding a vote for impeachment after universal demand for it following proof the President had offered to bribe a foreign official for his own political benefit.  Her rationale for not taking action until then (gobbledigook about "strategy") was even less intelligible than the laughable rationale offered by an obviously frightened Senator Susan Collins for not voting to impeach the President:  "I think he has learned his lesson."

The rabbit hole of Alice and Wonderland leads to a topsy-turvy world.  Two female Senators from Maine:  one stood up courageously against malicious mischief; seventy years later another cowered in fear.  The same movement that created the fairy tale of treason during the 1950s protects the undeniable reality of treason from the President in 2020, while those elected officials sworn to protect us against threats to the Constitution cringe in fear.  Members of the most democratic institution in the United States ignore the signs of a failing democracy, refusing to place the T-word where it belongs.  House members seem content to cross their fingers, close their eyes, hiding behind the skirts of their leader, hoping for the best against all odds while doing nothing--except wringing their hands--to prevent further damage in the next three weeks.  Do you trust these people with your democracy?

Democracies fall this way.  I spent four decades observing democracies rise and fall in Latin America.  This is nothing new.  Seventy seven years ago Robinson Jeffers offered this line, contemplating the end of American democracy:  Our men will curse, cringe, obey; our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors for bits of chocolate. (We Are Those People)