No one seriously disputes the facts. President Trump asked Ukrainian President Zelensky to announce that he had started two investigations that would help Trump politically. When he did so, he communicated to Ukraine that he would withhold almost $400 million in military aid approved by Congress until Ukraine complied. The aid was only released to Ukraine once the story broke in the news that a whistleblower had filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, detailing this scheme by the President. This has been confirmed by the Ambassador to Europe under oath. It has been confirmed by Trump's former National Security Adviser in a book.
No one with any degree of intelligence can dispute that using the Office of the President to extract a personal favor from a foreign government is a crime. Furthermore, no one who is being honest can dispute that seeking foreign intervention in a U.S. presidential election is the exact type of behavior that the Founding Fathers feared when it crafted the clauses of the Constitution that address the impeachment and removal of the President from office.
Yet, we stand on the precipice of the U.S. Senate voting to acquit President Trump after holding a trial where no witnesses were called, and no evidence presented. Why? Because the Senate is controlled by the Republican Party, and President Trump is a Republican. The Republicans of the Senate are banding together to protect a criminal from being kicked out of office, solely to ensure that they protect their party's power.
And why does the Republican Party hold so much power in the U.S. Government? The fact is more people consider themselves Democrats than Republicans in the United States. Indeed, more people consider themselves independent of any political party than Republicans or Democrats. But there are aspects of the U.S. Government that are not truly democratic in nature. That is, there are features of the U.S. Government that are meant to thwart the will of the majority. The Republicans have become experts at manipulating those features.
First, let's consider the House of Representatives. Prior to 2018, the Republicans had held the House for eight straight years. The reason was not because the Republicans were the larger political party. As stated above, it was not. The reason is due to how congressional districts were made up. Republicans worked hard to gain control of as many state legislatures as they could. Then, once the United States held a census, it became time for the states to redraw their districts. Working like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle, Republican state lawmakers found a way to draw those districts so that Republicans had the advantage. This is called gerrymandering.
Next, the Republicans took advantage of the way that the U.S. President is chosen. Pursuant to the Constitution, the President is not directly elected by the people. Instead, the people choose electors to meet in a body called the electoral college to choose the President. Originally, the electoral college was meant to be a deliberative body, that would consider and debate over a number of candidates before choosing who they thought would best run the country. However, the electoral college devolved into a proxy of the state's popular vote. Electors were not chosen individually. Rather, the political parties nominated their presidential candidates, and in most states whichever candidate won the state's popular vote won a full slate of that state's electors.
The problem lay in the fact that the electors were not distributed in direct proportion to the number of citizens in the several states. Rather, each state received the same number of electors as Representatives in the House plus two representing the number of Senators each state has. The additional two electors may create a small deviation from having the electoral college be truly proportional to the distribution of the population in the United States. But in practice, states with smaller populations had an advantage. Their voters had greater weight. Where you have a number of these states voting for the same presidential candidate, they can beat out the states with larger populations, meaning a candidate who loses the popular vote can win the presidency based on the electoral college. Prior to the 21st Century, this had happened in U.S. history. But it was a rare occurrence. Now, it has happened twice in the last five elections. Moreover, there is a danger it will continue to happen in the near future with frequency.
Finally, there is the make-up of the Senate itself. The Senate is the result of a compromise of the Founding Fathers. States with smaller populations were afraid of loosing power to the large population states in the new government. The solution was to create a bicameral legislature, one where the representatives were distributed based on population, and one where states were represented equally as states. That second house of the legislature was the Senate. Each state is guaranteed two Senators, no matter the state's population.
As stated, the reasoning was to represent the states as states. Originally, state legislatures chose the Senators from their states. It was only through the progressive movement of the 19th Century that the election of Senators by the people of the state became the law.
Nonetheless, this means that there is one body of Congress where states has power disproportionate to their population. That is, states with fewer people living in it has the same power in the Senate as states with large populations. To put it in tangible terms, a Senator from South Dakota represents about 429,000 voters, while a Senator from California represents 19 million voters. that means that in the Senate, South Dakota voters possess about 45 times the voting power than California voters. Thus, representation in the Senate works against democratic principles, such as the equality of all citizens. In practice, South Dakotans are more equal than Californians.
As it turns out, voters who oppose Donald Trump tend to live in densely populated states such as California and New York. While sparsely populated states tend to be populated by Trump supporters. National polls show U.S. voters overwhelmingly favoring the Senate trial of President Trump to include witnesses. National polls also show a majority of U.S. voters supporting the removal of the President. But, due to the distribution of U.S. voters, the Senate is in control of a political party that will do anything to protect its leader.
So, it is very likely that the Senate trial will turn out to be a sham of justice, and a very guilty President will be acquitted and permitted not only to finish out his term, but run for re-election. This is despite poll numbers showing the U.S. population supporting the opposite results. President Trump will likely remain in office, but only because of the features of the U.S. Government that go against the principles of real democracy.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
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