Trump's 'Gifts' to America could spell impeachment

One great “gift” that Donald Trump has given "We the People" forces us to break the mold on how we think about political divisions in this country.

In the weeks ahead we will forget Republicans and Democrats and the seemingly rigid divide between the two, particularly in Congress.

We will forget Liberals and Conservatives.

And yes, with time, we will even be able to put aside “Red” and “Blue” states.

The last to fall will be our growing class, racial and educational divisions although our history tells us that those will be a long, long time coming.

(Note in passing: we have already forgotten Hillary Clinton. That clears the air and leaves Trump to be judged free of Clinton baggage and fake news “distractions.” )

So what will end these divisions?

Two words: Donald Trump — but not in the dictatorial way he would imagine.

The answer to the question brings us to Trump’s greatest gift. The realignment is going to be over the values of Trump (if they can be called that) versus the bed-rock values of the large majority of Americans.

Trump and initially his Russian friends are forcing us to rediscover and defend our values.

Welcome to a world divided into pro-Trump versus pro-democracy. Pro-dictatorship versus Pro-Freedom.

And finally: Pro-Lies and pro-Truth.

The first place the divide will become obvious will be in the confirmation hearings in the Senate. The Senate is packed with people with very large egos who have been deeply and personally offended by the President-elect. One does not forget insults to one’s military service, to one’s wife or father or the size of one’s privates.

Those senators, all of them Republicans, have not forgotten.

And so we have Lindsay Graham and John McCain stepping up.  Can Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio be far behind? If they and a few of others join in, initially on concerns about national security and Russian subterfuge, we suddenly have an anti-Trump majority in the Senate.

Knowing Trump, he will proceed with further ad hominem attacks. Expect the anti-Trump Senate majority to grow and solidify, possibly killing the whole Trump agenda and rejecting virtually all of his cabinet nominees.

That will only infuriate the self-obsessed Trump more. He will dig his hole deeper and deeper.

Did anyone say “Impeachment”?

America's inequitable Constitution

One of our Oregon Senators, Jeff Merkley, has been trying to put a stop to Senate filibusters that block up or down votes on key legislation.

I signed his on-line petition, but we have a much bigger problem with the Senate. It's well outlined in Robert A. Dahl's book "How Democratic is the American Constitution?"

The short answer is— not very.

And the U.S. Senate is about as undemocratic as can be. The book uses the 2000 census, but nothing has changed since then in terms of the inequity in how the Senate is composed and operates.

Civic's 101 tells us that each of the 50 states, regardless of population, gets two senators.

How inequitable is that and how hard would it be to change the Constitution to rectify matters?

I'll let Dahl, who teaches at Yale, explain using the extremes of Wyoming, the least populous state, and California, the most populous. Their populations differ by a factor of 70. Each has two senators, which means that if you live in Wyoming your vote has the power of 70 California votes in a senatorial elections and deliberations.

Among all federal systems found in 12 countries, only Brazil and Argentina have greater unequal representation, Dahl reports.

Because it would take Senate approval to amend the Constitution, reform can't happen, writes Dahl. The system is inherently rigged against reforming itself. It's a closed system.

Thirty-four Senators from the 17 smallest states — with a mere 7.28 percent of the population — could block an amendment to reform the Constitution.

So Senator Merkley is fighting a tough skirmish in a larger, hopeless battle.

Dahl's book is as fascinating as it is depressing. For more about it go HERE.

One small ray of hope is that he believes moderate changes to make our government at least somewhat more democratic can start at the local and state levels.

An example are two states, Maine and Nebraska, which have voted to apportion their electoral college delegations by the same proportions as the voting results, not winner-take-all. If all states did that, we'd be a lot closer to avoiding debacles like the 2000 election in which the majority of voters elected Al Gore but the electoral college gave the White House to George W. Bush.

If we did that, candidates would campaign in all the states, and so democratize the campaigns.More voters might choose to participate.

The results of these constitutional failings is shameful. Among the world's 22 well-established democracies, the US is in the bottom third in women's parliamentary representation, in the ratio of rich to poor inequity, in energy efficiency, in welfare, in social expenditures, in voter turnout (we are next to the bottom), in incarceration rate (ours is the highest) and in foreign aid (in which we are dead last).

And just think, this is the Constitution we are asked to pledge our support to. It's enough to give one pause — and then some.