The next 11 months
Somewhere over the rainbow, happy little bluebirds fly and troubles melt like lemon drops. In morose America, however, frustration is accumulating like steam in a boiler.
Voters wonder: How did the nation saddle itself with a selection process for presidential candidates that has produced this?
Here is how.
In tumultuous 1968—war, urban disorder, assassinations—two Democratic senators, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, competed in primaries for the nomination that would be conferred at the convention in Chicago. But as rioters battled police in Grant Park, the nomination was won by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had entered no primaries. (There had been only 15.) He came, however, within a whisker of winning in November.
Determined that never again would nominations be decided by professional politicians in “smoke-filled rooms,” the Democratic Party (with the Republican Party following it) democratized the nominating process by the proliferation of primaries: “The people” would decide.
So, in 1972, the reformed process nominated George McGovern, who in November lost 49 states, winning just 37.5 percent of the popular vote.
In 1920, the phrase “smoke-filled room” entered America’s political lexicon when Republican politicians in a Blackstone Hotel room two blocks from Grant Park bestowed the nomination on Ohio’s Sen. Warren G. Harding. His 26.2 percent margin of victory in the popular vote is the largest since widespread popular voting began in the 1820s. Evidently “the people” liked the candidacy hatched in the smoke.
This year, Republicans might, for the first time, give a third consecutive nomination to the same candidate. The GOP is a plucky party, undaunted by the fact that its hero has lost the popular vote twice, the second time by 7 million votes as he was losing six of seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—all but North Carolina, which he carried by 1.3 percent.
Time was, contested states were more numerous. Michael Barone, principal author of the “Almanac of American Politics,” has noted: “In 1960, 19 states went for one candidate or the other by less than 5 percent of the popular vote and another 13 states by between 5 and 10 percent. The corresponding numbers in 2020 were 8 and 6 states.”
In 1960, 19 states, with 248 electoral votes, were targeted by both candidates. In 2020, the eight targeted states had 123 electoral votes. If the immediate future resembles the recent past, this year in 42 states the presidential campaign will be of anesthetizing boredom. Lucky them.
Donald Trump is playing the Republican nominating electorate as skillfully, if not as melodiously, as Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello. With a chip on his shoulder the size of a cello, Trump has transformed the GOP from a party for optimistic strivers into a gloomy conglomeration of cry-baby conservatives.
It is wresting from Democrats the role as the woe-is-me party of victims who feel put upon by society’s big battalions (Big Tech, globalizing manufacturing corporations, manipulative media, the education establishment, etc.).
Today’s Democratic Party says it must save democracy from Trump in November. (If Democrats cannot save it by getting the Supreme Court to permit states to ban him from their ballots.) The party might, however, try to save democracy from him next January if, in November, democracy produces a result offensive to democracy’s Democratic saviors.
Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi, blogging for the Volokh Conspiracy, wonders: Suppose Trump again wins an electoral vote majority while losing the popular vote. Would a Democratic-controlled House count Trump’s electoral votes? Many of its members will consider today’s Supreme Court illegitimate and will regard the Electoral College as an affront to democracy.
Although it is unknown which party will control the House on Jan. 6, it is probable that Kamala Harris will be Senate president. Would she do as the Senate president (Vice President Mike Pence) did on Jan. 6, 2021? Would she, against the passions of her party, count the electoral votes as they are certified by the states?
The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 clarifies that the Senate president performs a merely ministerial function. But is obeying the ECRA more important than “saving democracy”? Harris should be asked, now.