The Old Bait and Switch

The Old Bait and Switch
The View from the Middle

During the 2018 mid-term elections, Democrats focused primarily on two issues – Health Care and Immigration. While I don’t support Medicare for all (it would actually be more like Medicaid for all), I was looking forward to a debate that might actually address the issues of access and spiral costs within our current Health Care system. When it came to immigration, I actually had hope that we might be able to work together to fix an issue that we have allowed to fester for over 30 years now. But now that the Democrats have taken over the House of representatives and Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker, what have they been focused on? Investigations, eliminating the Electoral College, dramatically changing the Supreme Court and changing the voting age to 16. Where did all this come from? Was this their true agenda? Let’s take a look at all of these topics to see if this is a worthwhile agenda.

As far as the investigations are concerned, I thought the Mueller Special Counsel report was going to shine the brightest of lights on the Trump administration’s sins before and after the election. Now that it appears that Mueller will not indict the President for collusion (which isn’t even a crime anyway) or obstruction of justice, Democrats promise a two year long political, economic and moral colonoscopy on the President to ensure that he is as distracted as possible and gets nothing accomplished for the American people. This may be a good strategy for the 2020 elections (or maybe not) but it certainly in not in the best interest of the country and hardly a campaign promise.

Isn’t it just a little ironic, also, that the party that was concerned that Trump might not accept the results of the 2016 elections now wants to change the rules of the game to gain an advantage by eliminating the Electoral College, even if it violates the very principles of fairness built into the Constitution. The framers feared “the tyranny of the majority” and thus created a bicameral legislature and the Electoral College to give power to all states, not just the behemoth population centers.

Alexander Hamilton may have expressed it best in his Federalist paper #68. Hamilton suggested that each state offered value to the union beyond just the bodies within their borders. Farming states like Indiana and Iowa have different issues and maybe even different values than populace states like New York and California. Mining states like West Virginia and Colorado face different challenges than the heavily populated states. The Senate and the Electoral College were designed to give all of the original 13 states a voice so that states like Georgia, Delaware and Rhode Island wouldn’t be absolutely dominated by states like Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Today, we don’t want New York and California to control the 47 states in between them (and Alaska too, of course). We don’t want the city slickers in New York and Los Angeles to be controlling the lives of the farmers and minors in fly-over country. Our President must govern all the people and all the states and the Electoral College insures that he or she must understand and address all of their concerns.

Donald Trump has already named two justices to The Supreme Court that will probably influence the court for 30 or 40 years and Democrats pray nightly for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health. They are also still smarting from the Republican’s rejection of Merrick Garland (and I can understand their frustration there). But their answer to their fear and anguish is to change the rules of the game and completely overhaul a process that has been in place for 150 years. I’m willing to have this discussion, but this not a plank in their platform in 2016 or in 2018. This whole debate is a distraction at best. Get back to the things you focused on during the election.

Finally, the Democrats are pressing to move the voting age down to 16. In my opinion this is a blatant and self-serving attempt to include a group of people who they think will support their emotionally driven platform. Winston Churchill famously said, “If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, (but) if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.” When we are young, before we have had to wrestle with the corruption, ineptitude and complexity of government, our vote is dominated by emotion. We can be lured in by images of a utopian world, which will never exist, and by promises that will never be fulfilled. Later in life our positions are tempered by real world experience.

I could just as easily make the case that our military and law-enforcement men and women should get two votes each election. After all, they put their lives on the line every day and deserve a bit more say on how our country is governed. You would tell me that this would be a self-serving idea from conservatives, and you would be right. Hopefully we can all see the same motivation behind the move to a 16-year-old voter.

The bad news in all of this for the American people is that the Democrat Party is not addressing the real needs of the country (healthcare, immigration, the economy), and I really hope they change direction. The good news is that all of these ideas (other than the investigations) will take amendments to the constitution which as arduous process that requires two thirds (67%) vote in both houses of Congress and three fourths (75%) of the state legislatures. Since all of this is so unlikely, why not focus on the things that actually can actually happen and move the country ahead? Anyone?