I've actually had a related but perhaps converse opinion: it's demonstrated the resilience of our government. A lot of people have been noting his authoritarian tendencies and expressing concern that he might refuse to acknowledge election results, and while that appears to be the case, there's no indication that he will have his way (apart from legal proceedings, which are a perfectly democratic [albeit petulant] way to contest election results). In some countries, a president demanding a stop to vote counting might get their way, but that didn't happen here, and it's good to know that for the endless flack (some fair and some not) America and Americans get, we still have a robust political system.
I agree it has demonstrated resilience, a positive thing indeed. But I think it's good to consider what would happen in other countries should a character like Trump be elected. In Canada, a polarizing character like Trump would be exceedingly unlikely to form a majority government. As a minority government, they would be subject to "no-confidence" votes regularly. When a government passes a budget for example, if the budget does not pass the house, the government automatically crumbles and an election is called. Additionally, as the prime minister is simply the head of the party, his vote carries no more weight than other members, and he can be fired by his own party at any time.
A lot of checks and balances are baked into a multi-party system. One inherent advantage is less polarization, as there are more parties to represent the various views of the people. However, there are of course a lot of improvements that could be made to the Canadian governance system (ditching first past the post for example), but I do believe this style of government is more resilient than the US system.
At the same time, our government has not, and will likely not, be put to the test by someone like Trump. It is commendable that the US system has withstood what many feared could be the start of the downfall of democracy in the US.
We've seen what happens when a Trump figure is elected in the UK: there are no real checks and balances. Once an electoral majority was achieved, anything is possible, including a bill to specifically authorize law enforcement to commit crimes.
On the other hand, Biden has come out backing Ireland. Which is good for sanity and bad for Johnson.
I really wish that a failed impeachment would result in new elections for the House and President. Seems like the only logical conclusion when the democratic chamber of the legislature and the pseudo-democratic executive are at odds.
... and senate above all; definitely. In fact, I'd argue it you had to reelect any one seat of power in the event of a failed impeachment, it should be the senate above the president or house.
I mean, it's never going to happen due to constitutional constraints, but really the very existence of the senate is rather problematic, because it's elections are so very different from those of the house+presidency; the votes are very much non-proportional.
And while non-proportionality is not in and of itself really all that bad - I mean, it's bad in that it's so visibly unfair that it slightly undermines the point of democracy (it makes it look a little hypocritical), but the actual impact of said unfairness (as opposed to perception thereof) isn't really all that problematic; many things in the world aren't 100% fair.
No, the real problem isn't the non-proportionality, it's the gridlock that arises from having so very different electoral systems. That gridlock exacerbates issues with partisanship, because it makes it attractive to play brinkmanship games; and of course gridlock isn't harmless anyhow. The system would be more stable if house, senate and presidency had similar elector biases; regardless of fairness.
Really though, parliamentary systems are in this regard simply better. Having the equivalent of the president serve at the mercy of parliament doesn't make the job at all irrelevant (just look at other democracies), but it does put to bed nonsense like failed impeachments - because it's not about crimes, even in the US; it's simply about political support - and it should be clear whether the president has it, or not - and the current system is almost designed to turn it into a nasty political battle that's simply divisive.
The only situation in which impeachment in the current system is not divisive is when house, senate and president are in the same parties hands - and hey, that's basically a parliamentary system right there!
But why should Senate have to be reelected? This would give opportunity to a House controlled by one party to force reelection of Senate which might be controlled by the other party.
I don't think reelection should be forced, impeachments are not done often and I feel there is no need to protect against it (it wasn't a big deal this time around).
US is in a strange situation where a sitting president is almost impossible to unseat, but that may be seen as a positive characteristic. It allows US to be much more focused and stable in its foreign policy.
Let's be clear this is all an extreme hypothetical, right? And there are all kind of reasons not to do this; to be sure - I don't want to claim it's somehow a good idea to do this; just that in the context of discussion at this point - i.e. given that you retain the current structure of power separation, and the current voting schemes, and decide to call for fresh elections on a failed impeachment, then that there is a case to be made to reelect the entire senate as opposed to president or house. However, that precondition is an extreme hypothetical.
The reason to favor the senate over the president is clear: if they truly believe the president still should retain political support, the president isn't the you should force into a new election.
The reason to favor the senate over the house (if forced to pick just one by this hypothetical) is that the senate is the odd one out here in electoral support, and to make it harder for them to play political games with this choice; i.e. it's in their interest to pick a stance that is supported by voters, because if they don't they'll answer to them. It's also the most impactful reelection to force, because those elections are otherwise spaced the furthest apart. Essentially: by giving the house more power and the senate less, you're inching closer towards the greater stability of a parliamentary system, and additionally it has the most impact because the senate is the least frequently reelected normally. The house really should have supremacy over both senate and president; and it's OK to check that supremacy with voters to make an unleashed house suffer the consequences (because a house that really did abuse this power is still up for reelection quite quickly, and results from the senate election would be very publicly visible).
To be clear; it's just a hypothetical. It'd be better if the senate were simply dissolved, or relegated to a more advisory role as it is elsewhere, or merged into the house, and better if presidents were elected by congress, not directly - but given the hypothetical of just one releection to force, I think there is an argument to be made that a senate relection would have the most impact on the impeachment process.
To be clear: I don't think the US president being hard to unseat is a feature; that's a design flaw. Other democracies have stable foreign policies to, even when just a simple majority in the equivalent of the house is enough to immediately unseat the equivalent of the president, with no recourse to the senate at all. In fact, other democracies seem to have a more stable foreign and domestic policy, because there's less infighting and less need for hyper-speed policy making in the rare moments without gridlock; none of that "but we can't approve that deal because currently the house or the senate aren't in the hands of the same party as the president". The decision-making capability of a parliamentary government isn't perfect, but it's less likely to gridlock for long periods of time.
It also means there's no hope of any party of trying to blockade the other should they lose, so there's more incentive to seek consensus beforehand because they simply won't be able to force anything should an election ever go the other way. And there's more potential cost for reversing previous governments policies, because what's to stop a future government from playing that same game? As it is currently, a party can risk being quite confrontational, knowing that a trifecta isn't all that likely in general. There's a good chance any controversial policy made will stick around simply because there's a good chance future governments will be gridlocked for a good while; worth risking that gamble. If governments knew that a future government could reliably overturn any policy they made, they'd be more careful choosing partisan pet projects, especially those without clear popular support.
It's hard to answer everything so I'll just focus on a few key aspects.
Wouldn't forcing senate reelection in case of failed impeachment allow the party that controls the house to force that reelection?
Let's say Party A controls the house while Party B controls the Senate and the Presidency. If Party A wants, they would be able to send impeachment to trial without real reason and then by the fact that Senate didn't convict you would get a reelection of Senate.
Way I see it, this would allow manipulation of the election process. In my mind, it would be much more logical that the House has to be reelected as they pushed forward an impeachment that was not convicted upon. This would make it so that House would not bring forward frivolous impeachments as they would have their own positions on the line.
About unseating a president, I understand your point. I agree to a degree. A sitting president can be limited in power by the fact he doesn't control the legislative branch. This may seem less optimal but it has a couple of advantages. Executive branch can keep on working within the confines allowed to them, without having to juggle for political support in the parliament. This allows the President to keep working with little regard to losing his position. This is especially good for military or foreign affairs as they can work on this with little to no political support.
Right, but that's a plus - that's more how it works in other democracies; the equivalent of the house having the upper hand; essentially impeachment at that point turns into a milder form of a vote of no confidence. It's still milder than in other countries, because the senate gets a vote at all.
Framing this as if any of the legal constructs (house, senate, presidency) is reasonable, and thus needs to perhaps be punished for abuse of power is I believe pointless. Impeachment is not about right or wrong, it's about political support (I mean, just look at those almost completely party-line votes in house and senate recently!)
For American democracy to start working again - which has nothing to do with fairness, mind you - the power hierarchy needs to clearly weed out obstructionism; and where obstructionism is possible or even valuable as a kind of common sense sanity-check, either side involved needs to be elected or appointed on the same electoral basis (because the other option is political powerplay, rendering the whole point of things like impeachment moot, as it is today).
Pick two: A government that can govern, or elections with differing structures (essentially ensuring various branches will fight simply as a form of party politics, not based on merit), or equal branches of government, where one (plain majority) cannot remove the other.
You can't have all three.
Aside, the idea that the presidency is stable because it's decoupled from congressional support is not born out by simple comparison to other countries. Quite the opposite: by splitting powers like that, foreign actors need to consider internal US politics to a large degree. Stability would be greater if a simple majority in the house had the ability to appoint a new president at a whim - not because whims are stable, but because that shapes the back and forth of political powerplay, and thus renders the house responsible for the presidencies errors, which is how it works in other countries. Countries don't tend to reappoint prime ministers all that often, especially if a coalition is involved, because not only is that likely to be punished by voters, it's quite hard to form coalitions if you break support like that. That's not to say that a coalition of microscopic parties would be a great idea for the US by the way; just that small steps in that direction would increase stability.
I think it’s a feature that we have one house of Congress elected “fast” and the other house elected “slow”. It permits a following of changes in public consciousness without having the entire federal government banging off opposing poles frequently.
(Un- [or loosely] related, I also think there are benefits from gridlock, forcing a certain level of consensus for those things that have to happen federally but leaving most federal things relatively stable over time.)
Sure, that makes sense! Having a fast and slow cycle isn't a bad idea. The problem is rather that the slow cycle has too much power, and additionally uses a different electoral system from the fast cycle, so it's not just an extra brake on overly-radical mistakes, it's a potentially long-term gridlock.
If at least senate "districts" were equivalent to house "districts" (i.e. all state-based or all more regional, and both equivalently proportional), then it would be very unlikely to have long-term gridlock; instead a senate would simply serve as braking mechanism during electoral upheaval, and that's perhaps a valuable feature.
BBC is reporting that he has already told his staff to begin logistical preparations to hand over to Biden. He disagrees with the results, he will do lawsuits, but it doesn't look like he'll do anything more than that. So far, that proves all the naysayers wrong who accused him of trying to not transfer power when not re-elected.
quietly making preparations doesn't outweigh repeatedly and incessantly lying to public about the operation of and outcome of the election, nor sending his supporters to attack vote-counting stations.
I'll believe it when it's said and done. As of now, nothing has changed to his day-to-day, his life is continuing on as if the election happens. As everything winds down, and it sets in that he will be vulnerable to the investigations from NY along with loans coming due that he simply can't pay he may lash out. I've felt the interregnum period will be the most dangerous for the country, moreso than the previous 3+ years.
I don't think anybody reasonably believed president Trump would have actually not relinquished power if he formally lost the election. What he was accused of however, is trying to play nasty with votes, and trying to undermine the legitimacy of his loss. To put it another way: it's not that he wouldn't transfer power, but rather that he's willing to play dirty to try not to transfer power.
The reason why it was never realistic to believe he wouldn't step aside is simply that he does not have the support to pull that off; it's essentially a kind of civil war but one he (and any other president) would likely lose almost instantly - as long as it's clear he lost the election.
And that's why it's so insidious to undermine the election, because that will eventually pave the way to actually ignore election outcomes. Even today, I suspect in all the partisan posturing some voters may have come away with the honest impression that there really was a stolen election. Since democracy hinges on the losing side accepting that loss, action that undermine that are quite problematic.
President Trump's action so far, both before the election and after, are entirely in line with the accusations against him; in essence: he's willing to undermine democracy to try and hold on to power.
Had the election been closer, it's conceivable he might really have engineered some legal shenanigans to try and steal the election. And if he had been backed in that (which isn't entirely impossible, because some of the toss-up states have republican-appointed courts, republican legislatures, and republican governors, and of course the heavily tilted supreme court now), then things would have gotten dicey. In that situation, just like in other strong-man democracies, the outcome of the election would have been rigged. Would democrats have backed down? Or would they have disputed the elections, even though formally they lost them? That's the kind of thing that breaks a democracy; because both backing down and confrontation are terrible outcomes.
To their credit - because that's how it's supposed to work in a democracy - those toss-up states did not seriously try to steal votes (although the vote-segregation thing is pretty close). And of course we don't know Trump would really have stolen the election, given the opportunity, since it never arose. But we can see that he took all possible steps in that direction at least; and that's something the US needs to deal with in the future for the sake of stability. It ended well this time; it might not every time.
It's really not clear who should have won. There are different outcomes from different groups with different, but reasonable, interpretations of what the voter intended.
I want to live in a country where we accept the results of a democratic process instead of spreading conspiracy theories, and yes, that goes for the Russia collusion conspiracy theories and the general "we're going to burn this mf-er to the ground if the election doesn't go our way" sentiments as well.
The reasoning on the demand to stop vote counts was to delay until they could get legal observers in to validate the process, not a bid to stop the entire process altogether.
That's not true. Regrettably we have the nationally televised words of the president on the matter:
This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. Okay? It’s a very sad moment. To me this is a very sad moment and we will win this. And as far as I’m concerned, we already have won it.
So, so often people only hear what they want to hear. From what we've witnessed over recent times, such thinking is so prevalent that it has to be a part of the human condition.
There were already Republican observers in NV (as per state law) and in PA, including Philadelphia. The argument lawyers are making in Philadelphia is basically incoherent. See the excerpts from the court transcript for PA case.
100% not true. Legal observers were in all places, and Trumps lawyers had to admit it in court when they said a ‘non-zero’ number were present. Most counting places even live streamed the count.
I think this is probably one of the most secure elections ever executed.
cult of personality, attacking the press, denying everything, attacking the legitimacy of our voting system, creating division by refusing to unify people, shouting "law & order" to position himself as the only solution against chaos, inciting young supporters to push his agenda with more violence (akin to hitler youth), etc.
Nearly all of the press and social media companies worked together to fight and censor him and he’s the authoritarian one for calling them out on it?
By creating division you mean sending in troops to end riots that were burning down businesses, beating people, and spreading the virus all in the name of dubious claims of police brutality?
The rioters caused real violence that really happened. What did Trump’s supporters do that is violent on that level?
Trump talks like an authoritarian, but his actual actions have been mainly to reduce the power of a central government, like appointing federalist judges, dismantling federal departments, etc. So the opposite of what an authoritarian would do.
>So the opposite of what an authoritarian would do.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's not entirely right.
Authoritarians aim to centralize power to themselves. By removing other sources of power, their power grows. An authoritarian's ultimate goal in the US is to remove all checks and balances they can.
In comparison a libertarian aims to remove non-centeral government, like laws that effect small towns, schools and police forces in small towns, and so on, though each libertarian voter aims to remove different things, so not to mislead: Not all libertarians want to remove police, or schools, or roads, or whatever else. What you will not hear is a libertarian wanting to remove congress or another form of checks and balance.
That's a good point. Removing centralized laws so there is more autonomy for individual states is one thing, which is not removing checks and balances. I overlooked that on the libertarian part of the comment.
Unfortunately, Trump did not go around removing centralized laws, or any I know of at least. Everything he did has more to do with a power grab as best I can tell.
This is an interesting point, but he's also done and said a number of things that indicate a level of comfort with his supporters committing violence that is entirely inappropriate for a leader of a democracy, and suggests that he wants a paramilitary loyal to him. Those are exactly the actions of an authoritarian. "Stand back and stand by"
There's also been a focus on personal loyalty in high office that is also unseemly in a democracy, and has caused problems for the USA in the past too.
I suspect that his choosing of those judges was a combination of him listening to his handlers when they (rightfully) told him big portion of his base was only in it for the judges combined with the assumed belief on Trumps part that any judges he appointed to show him loyalty in any legal situation (they won't).
The pandemic, if anything, has proved the "authoritarian" diagnosis to be false. Authoritarians love to have an excuse to lock everyone up in their homes and decide from on high which businesses will be allowed to operate. Trump OTOH was like "math is tough; let the states handle it!"
I think that's oversimplifying. The fact that Trump is not a full-blown authoritarian, or is bad at it, is compatible with his expression of a number of authoritarian values.
This is true, but it emphasizes the difference between marketing and reality. Trump's evocation of authoritarian imagery has been uncorrelated with genuine threats of increased authoritarianism in USA. These threats do exist, but focusing attention on Trump has been a distraction from genuinely opposing them.
One particularly scary one is 60 minutes recorded footage of rally of Trump supporters, where many of them on their Trump flags had fascist symbolism. This spiked a fear of fascism growing in America.
In response instead of addressing this growing anti-american anti-democratic minority, instead the news decided to associate anti-fascism with riots, protestors, and other scary negative fear based topics. Now the second anyone raises a concern about fascism, supporters will unconsciously turn a blind eye. I'm surprised such word smithing like that works, and frankly I'm scared it does work. I'm terrified that different conservative groups rallied behind not only fascist movements, but invented a boogyman term for it like antifa as a way to make the topic of fascism partisan and questionable. If that's not anti-democratic and unamerican I don't know what is.
I think the interregnum period will be chocked full of rightwingers lashing out at the country and people in general. People that know Trump supporters know that there was a lot of identity wrapped up in his presidency, and see it cut down to one term is going to set them off.
>America is extremely divided, and I'm not sure that it's going to recover from this
Sadly without re-regulating the news it isn't, or some large trauma that brings the entire country temporarily together.
In the US we historically had similar problems, so something called the fairness doctrine was created. It was a law that required news give equal airtime for opposing views. This way no matter where you got your news you'd get the full truth, not half truths as the current American populous is getting.
Decentralization, and distributed power is key to the US System
People need to remember that, no matter who is in power.
The problem is both republicans and democrats "forget" this when they are in power so they attempt to consolidate it, and believe that consolidation grand the virtuous
Then when they are out of power, the "other side" using that power become "corrupt and immoral"
Just like the irony that in 2016 the US electron system was so fragile that Russia stole it, at least that is what he heard for the last 4 years, but now that democrats have won the US Election system is as strong as Plymouth Rock and unwavering in face of people trying to steal it...
//for the record I do not think the election was stolen in either 2016 or 2020.....
