The 2020 presidential campaign will include discussions of many issues, from health care to inequality to climate change to abortion. But it may be that there will be one issue that also will be important: corruption.
This is unusual in a U.S. presidential election. People all over the world admire the United States for our lack of corruption, that in many countries people have to endure, in which every minor interaction with the government requires a bribe and the well-connected rob their countries treasures.
Or maybe it’s not surprising at all. President Trump is being looked at for trying to coerce Ukraine into doing something corrupt on his behalf while he claims that Joe Biden was doing something corrupt by demanding the removal of a corrupt official who refused to investigate corruption.
The fact that all involvement in foreign interference detracts mightily from the pressing issues we have at home was aptly captured in the words of Dr. Martin King:
“Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor”.
“It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty”.
It will be a very different argument depending on who winds up with the nomination, however. While the corruption conversation will inevitably concern the person of Donald Trump, a couple of the Democratic contenders have a much wider critique, in which the problem is not an individual but a system.
Today, if you compare the two candidates that are top the polls, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren. As anyone watching the campaign knows, Biden says that once we elect him, we can return to normal. He sees the current system as a healthy one that mostly requires personnel and policy recalibration. The way to make sure the interests of ordinary people are advanced is to elect someone who cares about ordinary people and promises to work on their behalf.
Warren, argues that the deeper problem is a system that allows people like Trump to use their wealth and power to amass more wealth and power, at the expense of those ordinary people. Income inequality is one of the issues that attacks the values of the NABWMT.
Bernie Sanders makes an argument similar to Warren’s. It is likely that the other candidates will make claims similar to Biden’s, that Trump is the core of the problem.
Furthermore, Sanders released a plan taking aim at money and influence within political parties, national party conventions, and presidential inaugurations. He wants to transform our political system by rejecting the influence of big corporate money. “Our grassroots-funded campaign is proving every single day that you don’t need billionaires and private fundraisers to run for president.”
Although Sanders has spent both his presidential campaigns railing against the influence millionaires and billionaires, this is the first extensive anti-corruption plan he has released.
America is facing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to win game-changing national political reforms that would repair our broken political system.
Who is the real reformer? Who will work with Republicans? Who can actually get this accomplished? Voters don’t generally trust either party on these issues.
We know small donors will play a big role.
The DNC’s decision clearly has its roots in 2018, when the Democratic Party gained control of the U.S. House for the first time since 2010, because of grassroots fundraising armies.
The more that candidates need to stay competitive — and the more insidious super PACs and dark money groups that they need to fend off — the more they will potentially rely on donors who can write thousand-dollar checks, elite bundlers, or outside groups to come to their rescue.
Transformational leadership combined with successful execution are attractive presidential qualities to win both the votes and soul of the Democratic Party. We have seen more than two years of a president who overwhelmingly failed to drain the swamp, and the swamp now needs cleaning up more than ever. The country deserves better and the 2020 election is the perfect stage on which to debate the crisis facing our political system.
I am sure you recall that 2016, the three states that gave Trump his Electoral College majority—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan— were all were decided by less than 1 percent of the vote.That is why we all should make every effort to vote. If the race is that close again, here’s what could happen next by corruption or other shady means.
1. A state legislature decides to buck the electoral vote.
The 2020 election will be fought with a barrage of charges and countercharges about a “rigged” election and that these charges will be especially fierce in swing states. As it happens, those three key states—all have Democratic governors, but their state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. And the Constitution puts the power to choose electors squarely in the hands of legislatures.
Indeed, there’s no requirement that a legislature has to allow the citizens of its state vote at all. In their Bush v. Gore concurrence, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas appeared to muse that a state legislature would be allowed, under the Constitution, to consider the popular vote merely advisory and to allocate the state’s electors to another candidate, in defiance of the public’s ballots.
And. lest we forget, in 2000, as the Florida Supreme Court was ordering recounts, the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature moved to take over the process, scheduling a special session to give George W. Bush its decisive 25 electoral votes.
2. Democrats in Congress fight back.
If furious Democrats object to the swing state legislature’s overturning of the state’s popular vote, Congress intervenes. If one senator from any state and one representative from any state object, the members withdraw to their respective chambers. If Congress renders a split decision, then those disputed votes would count. But if both houses vote to reject a state’s electors—which could happen in the event Democrats keep the House and take the Senate in November 2020—the state’s electoral votes would be discarded.
3. No electoral majority
If no candidate won an electoral majority, the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives, where each state—not each member of Congress—would cast one vote. And in this scenario, Wyoming’s lone House member would have the same clout as California’s 55 members.
So the fate of our NA values are in your hands. Vote for equality and fairness, not corruption and election shenanigans. To assist you please visit our non partisan voter guide at https://nabwmt.org/voter-guide.
This Ken Scott Baron for the NABWMT signing off. You can subscribe to this podcast where you find other great podcasts. We are also at nabwmt.org, Facebook and Twitter.
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Sources: Washington Post, Vox, Real Clear Politics, Politico
