The Oath!

 "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

On January 20^th, our once-and-new president will take an oath of office. It is short, specific, and traditional. He will affirm his intention to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. That’s it—full stop.

There are some other duties outlined in the Constitution. The President is Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy (it was written before we needed an Air Force or a Space Force). S/He also commands the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the U.S. For those who take an “originalist” view of the Constitution, one might remember that in the late 1700s militias were made up of the local gentry. Because the Framers wanted a “well regulated militia,” they gave people the right to keep and bear arms.[i] Presidents also appoint heads of executive departments, members of the Supreme Court, and other important officials, with advice and consent of the Senate. We know this. We learned it in the eighth grade and again in Civics and History courses, but it’s worth repeating.

When a President-Elect chooses his/her Cabinet they have at least two choices: Competent people who are loyal to the President or loyal people who are competent or not so much. At face value, President-Elect Trump’s choices are in the not-so-much category. Selections based on loyalty to him are the first criterion. He and his MAGA movement scored the trifecta of the electoral race: the presidency, and a majority in both houses of Congress. There is a highly conservative majority in SCOTUS that leans in his direction.

It presents an opportunity for good or bad. If political survival in the majority party of both houses of Congress requires fealty to a president, it messages concern. Montesquieu championed the idea of three separate branches of government. He noted that “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”[ii]

Yale professor Timothy Snyder wrote in 2017 that, “The democracies that arose after the First World War (and the Second) often collapsed when a single party seized power in some combination of an election and a coup d’etat. A party emboldened by a favorable election result or motivated by ideology, or both might change the system from within.”[iii]

The President-elect campaigned on a platform of retribution, politicizing the Justice Department, or using the military against the people of the country. We learned from his first administration that he tends to do what he tells us he will do. Again, his Cabinet appointments seem to be based on loyalty instead of competence, potentially a step toward autocracy in the name of democracy, intended or not.

The President-elect has shown no lack of favoritism for oligarchs. Elon Musk clings to the shirttails of power. Other oligarchs created massive PACs to support the Trump election, as did a few for Harris. The oligarchs own most of the wealth of the nation. Too many of us refuse to acknowledge the reality of the massive wealth distributed among a few dozen people. If they successfully get their claws into the governing fabric of the country, democracy will shrink. You just can’t have a democracy ruled by oligarchs. It never works.

The candidate for Secretary of Defense, for example, isn’t qualified for the job based on his work experience. His appointment is scary because of his disdain for the American system and his call for using the military against citizens who disagree with the neo-nationalism philosophy. He wears tattoos supporting white nationalism. His books call for divorcing red states from the rest of America. If one is less MAGA than he is, they should be concerned: “Whether you like it or not, you are an ‘infidel’ – an unbeliever – according to the false religion of leftism. You can submit now or later, or you can fight.”[iv] He has stated that we are now in a post-Constitution period in our history. If he believes that, one wonders if he will take the oath to support and defend the Constitution.

The danger of one-party rule extends to the states as well. Some states are letting officials determine what is taught in colleges, trying to eliminate tenure for professors. Some states now require schools to teach the Bible and promote Christian beliefs in opposition to the Constitution.

So what is one to do? We know that the nation is exhausted from 24/7/365 politics. They have heard all they want to hear about how bad a person Trump is, true or not. “Woe is me” isn’t especially useful.

We can, however, insist that those who take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution do just that. Whenever someone acts against their oath they should be brought to heel by the press, the Fourth Estate. Individuals can write about it on X, on Facebook, Bluesky, or even Instagram and TikTok. They can write to the local newspaper if they still have one. They can be opposed in the next election.

What can we do about this? We need to pay attention to what our leaders do, rather than just what they say. That applies at the local school board level and at city hall or in the state capitol. Politicians react to citizen reactions. They read their mail; they listen to the phone calls. When they see a trend they move in that direction. Write to your representatives at each level, leave phone messages, write to local newspapers, respond to X messages, join your party’s local committee, and influence it to support your objectives.

Let’s remember that all elected officials at the federal level take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Let’s make sure they do.

It’s about the Constitution. It isn’t about Trump.

 

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[i] Second Amendment of the Constitution, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed". Note the placement of the commas. Hamilton argued in The Federalist No.28 that, “For a long time to come, it will not be possible to maintain a large army; and as the means of doing this increase, the population and natural strength of the community will proportionably increase.”

[ii] Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 1748. Noted in The Federalist No 47. He also wrote that “The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.”

[iii] Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Tim Dugan Books, 2017

[iv] The Guardian, Nov. 22, 2024, a report on Pet

 

Wind the Clock!

 Former president Grover Cleveland, nos. 22 & 24 must have been rooting for Donald Trump nos. 45 & 47. They are the only presidents in our long history elected to the presidency twice, but not to consecutive terms. Election night 2024 brought tears of joy and tears of despair to our divided nation. The polls predicted a nail-biter. Reality was a bloodbath.

The election results punctuated the divide between the “educated coastal elite” and everyone else. It is wide and it is deep. It has built over decades but ignored by the degreed and urban bound. David Brooks notes that our education policies pushed people toward four-year college and let vocational training wither.[i] The well-educated migrated to the urban areas where other well-educated worked and socialized, and where they thought well of themselves and not of the under-educated, the working class, and the rural. Brooks said that the sucking sound we heard on election night was the redistribution of respect. Trump heard them, Harris, not so much.

It was the sound of Hispanics moving toward Trump, of men  migrating right, of suburban women sliding right while voting pro-abortion, of Catholics genuflecting to the right without an abortion priority. Ultra-liberal California made a significant move to the Republican side of the ballot in over 70% of the counties. Several congressional districts are too close to call. There was a loud clang for the working class, led by a supposed billionaire.

Ruy Teixeira[ii] laments that today's Democratic coalition is not fit to win. Republicans consistently dominate in rural areas, working-class neighborhoods, and among men and young women. He says it is no longer the party of the ordinary American, the common man, and the women.

Bernie Sanders was not surprised by the Harris loss. He suggests that the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, should not be surprised that the working class  abandoned them.[iii] He noted that 60% of households live paycheck to paycheck and that wages adjusted for inflation are lower than fifty years ago. He is not optimistic that the Democratic Party will be able to understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing. An independent who caucuses with Democrats raised the ire of Nancy Pelosi who is adamant that they are the party of the working class, all evidence to the contrary.

For many, dreams were shattered when a woman wasn’t elected President when a Black woman wasn’t elected, when someone supportive of LGBTQ+ issues wasn’t elected, when a supporter of trans people lost.

The view in the rearview mirror is pretty clear and closer than it appears. A twice impeached, convicted felon and sexual predator, who tried to overturn the last election that he lost, who speaks of being a dictator on the first day and maybe thereafter based on his focus on tearing the country apart won the election overwhelmingly. He won the predictable red states, he won in the blue-wall states, he moved the needle toward red in nearly every state, he captured a large percentage of  the Hispanic vote in Texas, he won the Black men and Hispanic men, suburban women, and the majority of votes nationwide. When referring to the MAGA movement, Americans can’t say,  “That’s not who we are.” It is, regrettably.

The famous essayist E. B. White received a letter from a man who had lost faith in humanity. He responded this way: “Mr. Nadeau, As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness…Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope, And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.” [iv]

Today is the other day. The clocks need winding. How can the decimated and leaderless Democratic Party, or anyone who can’t fathom or tolerate the election results try to bring order and steadfastness to the chaos we are about to experience?

Without sounding too cliché, a little retrospection would be helpful. The nation is redder than at any time in the last few decades. Exit polls confirm pre-election focus group responses. A vast number of people don’t trust our most trusted institutions anymore. They don’t trust the government. Large unions failed to endorse the most pro-union party. At least one pundit has suggested that Democrats need to go county by county and talk to the people who didn’t vote for them. They need to learn why.

Others have suggested replacing all the octogenarian politicians. At age sixty, Harris was pressed into service to represent the new and younger generation of her party. She is at least fifteen years too late. The average age in the U.S. is thirty-five to forty years old, depending on the state in which you live. There are lots of young Democrats in the House and Senate, in the Mayor’s offices, and in the Governor’s offices who can take the reins of a defeated and leaderless party. They need to lead the charge. They have the ideas. They have the ear of the local folks. Many of the current leaders need to get out of the way.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, won reelection to her House seat in a very red district. The 36-year-old mother and business owner told the NYT that “Democratic condescension has to go… It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.” Seth Moulton, a 46-year-old House member from Massachusetts said that “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone.” Both called for a rebranding of the party.

There is plenty of blame to go around in the Harris-Biden campaign organizations. They fell into Trump's trap. He called them names and they called him names. They focused on Trump’s personality and his wild incoherent rants and rambles at his rallies instead of ignoring him and talking about kitchen table issues. Harris never sold whatever plan she had to reduce the cost of groceries and gas, the two issues that mattered. The blue bloods need to provide specific plans for improving the economy.

The current administration did a lousy job of communicating its achievements. Televised focus groups of young men who worked on infrastructure-related manufacturing jobs didn’t know that the funds were part of the administration's infrastructure bill. They didn’t know that their insurance was related to the ACA. They didn’t know that the administration was the most pro-union in generations. They don’t listen to regular TV news or read legacy newspapers. Trump trumped them on X,  Tic Toc, and other social media networks. His interview on the Joe Rogan podcast was viewed by twenty-eight million people in two days. The Dems need to speak to the folks where they live and get their information: TikTok, Instagram, and the other hundreds of websites unknown to forty-year-olds and older.

The media can take some responsibility for the election day outcomes. Daily for the last few years, the press was more interested in Trump’s silly verbal outpourings than in either party’s policies. Harris was an Oh by the way. The media, with few exceptions, is not journalism anymore; Fox News and MSNBC are neither fair nor balanced and they don’t pretend to be. They both carry the stench of partisanship as their mission. They and their ilk are much to blame for the vast divide that streams through the nation. On the other hand, that isn’t where most people get their news anymore. The Dems need to become more astute at messaging.

Lincoln supposedly said that. "Anyone can suffer adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”[v] We have tested Trump's character and found it faulty and lacking grace, yet he was elected by a large margin. But adversity allows the other side to evaluate their character. It must ask itself if this is who we want to be. If not, there is much that can be done to save democracy.

Shakespeare said it differently in Hamlet when the hero laments “The time is out of joint. O cursed spite,/ that ever I was born to set it right!”[vi] So, how to set it right? Democrats need to do several things quickly: Analyze why they lost, develop a modern communications strategy, select national committee leadership and local committee leadership who can go beyond data analysis and get with the people, and quickly hand the reins of Senate leadership to a younger generation and recruit candidates up and down the ticket who are small business owners, tradespeople and others that understand the needs of their neighbors and run on those issues.

Democrats need to listen to the people instead of telling them what’s good for them. Focus group after focus group told the pollsters that grocery prices and gas prices were the kitchen-table issues, both hugely more important than the social issues the Democrats favored.

What the disheartened can’t do is sit at home and fret. That is doing nothing to bring about change. We know that Trump will do what he told us he would do. He will try to deport huge numbers of people, he will tear asunder our public health care system, he will put loyalists in positions of authority instead of qualified people, he will implement the 2025 project without too much noise, he will allow a ban on reproductive rights, he will try to destroy Social Security and Medicare, he will do what he said he would do.

Those of a different view will have to use every tool available to them to ensure that we don’t become an authoritarian country. They will have to convince their neighbor and their uncle that democracy is worth the fight in the courts, in the halls of government, and if needed in the streets.

“Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock."

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[i] David Brooks, “Voters to Elites – Do You See Me Now? New York Times, 11.07.2024

[ii] Ruy Teiseira, The Shattering of the Democratic Coalition, The Liberal Patriot, 11.07.2024

[iii] Bernie Sanders, Statement released 11.6.2024, Burlington, Vermont

[iv] E. B. White, Letter from Mr. Nadeau, 3.30.1973

[v] The quote “If you want to test a man's character, give him power” is commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but it does not appear in any of his documents. The quote is likely attributed to American politician Robert G. Ingersoll, who said similar things when describing Lincoln in 1883

[vi] Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, in the Prologue, Tim Duggan Books,2017