Republicans and Low Information Voters: Trump, COVID-19 and Hydroxychloroquine

Let me start off by saying, I'm not a doctor.  I'm a lawyer.  I don't have an expertise in medicine.  Please don't take medical advice from me.

I also want to say that I sincerely hope and pray that we find a treatment that is effective against COVID-19.  If that turns out to be chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, well that would be just great.  But Republicans, and Donald Trump in particular, are pushing this drug as a miracle panacea for COVID-19.  They're doing this based on very little scientific evidence.  That is, Republicans are trying to convince low information voters that it is ok to end state-imposed restrictions on the economy because we now have a miracle of modern medicine that will protect us all.

Why?  Well, they really need a miracle cure, or the thought of a miracle cure, to support their policy choices.  Specifically, they don't like the fact that we have had to shut down the economy to fight the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  Trump believes that his re-election prospects are tied to the economy.  History tells us that Presidents who face re-election in the midst of a recession generally lose.  In addition, the Republican's strongest supporters, big business, can't stand the idea that their quarterly reports are being spoiled by slowed sales.  Trump needs to convince you that re-opening the economy in the face of a new contagious virus taking its toll on the public is a good idea.  So, he has to convince you that something, anything, is a miracle cure that makes re-opening the economy less risky.

The logical policy right now would be to discourage unnecessary contact to slow the spread of the virus so as to alleviate the pressure on our healthcare resources, at least until we can find an effective treatment or vaccine.  Because this involve encouraging large portions of the economy to close down, it may also involve the Government assisting those hurt financially from enforced isolation through direct payments to allow people who can't work to pay their rent, pay for their health insurance, and feed their family.

Yet, some Republicans conveniently become deficit hawks when it means criticism of policies championed by Democrats.  Funny, Mitch McConnell wasn't that concerned with the federal budget deficit when it came to tax reform, and providing big corporations with nice tax breaks.  But when you have the need for social distancing and stay-at-home orders, coupled with an attempt to try to alleviate the economic impact on regular people with the so-called "stimulus checks," McConnell suddenly becomes a deficit hawk again.

This is why Trump and his supporters are so desperate to have the states lift their stay-at-home orders.  He and his supporters need to have the economy restarted before November.  They honestly don't care about the potential death toll that could result from re-opening the economy too early.  If Trump can convince his followers that there is a miracle cure, then he can manipulate low information voters to act against their own interests.

It's funny.  I actually believed that we had put the chloroquine debate to rest.  We had that study from National Institutes of Health that followed patients in the Veterans Administration hospitals.  The study indicated a correlation between the use of chloroquine in COVID-19 patients, and a higher mortality rate.  Keep in mind, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.  Plus, we must consider that the use of chloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment has only bee approved as a palliative measure.  That means it has only been approved to be used when other treatments have failed, and the patient is close to death.  So, you need to consider that when evaluating this study.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration currently cautions against the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment outside of a clinical trial, due to the potentially dangerous side effects, such as how it could affect the heart.

Nonetheless, the NIH study is still a more comprehensive study than the French one that the chloroquine peddlers have been pointing to.  That study involved less than forty patients, and was not a randomized clinical trial.  To be blunt, the French study didn't use currently accepted scientific methodology.

And that is key.  Real science takes time.  You have studies that document experiments.  Experiments need control groups for a valid comparison.  You need the right number of participants so you can show that your results aren't random, and that they are statistically significant.  And then, you need the studies to be reproducible.  They need to be peer-reviewed, which means other doctors and medical researchers need to examine the methodology and the results to make sure no mistakes were made and that the results are accurate.  Why?  Because there is a lot at stake.  The Hippocratic Oath that doctors take says, first, do no harm.  And when you are putting chemicals in your body, there is a potential that these chemicals can affect your health in a bad way.

That's why studies take time. That's why it normally takes years for vaccines to be developed for newly discovered viruses.  Sometimes, vaccines aren't developed for a particular virus.  Think about HIV.  We have nown about this virus and how it causes AIDS for about forty years now.  We still don't have an AIDS vaccine.  Why?  In part, because once we eventually took notice of the suffering that AIDS caused, we discovered some effective treatments.  Also, with appropriate safeguards, the transmission of HIV can be prevented.  But, the point remains, we don't have an HIV vaccine.  It is possible that we may never develop a vaccine to counter the novel coronavirus.

And rushing a vaccine can prove ineffective.  During the 1918 influenza pandemic, for example, the first attempts to rush a flu vaccine into production failed miserably.  We don't want that to happen here.  That's why valid scientific methodology is so important.

But many Americans don't understand science, and this is where Republicans and their allies in the media try to manipulate low information voters.  They were promoting stories of individuals who said that they took chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine and got better.  This is called anecdotal evidence.  It is the weakest evidence a scientist can rely on.  Remember how Rush Limbaugh addressed it?  "Anecdotally, it worked," is what Rush proclaimed.  To the uneducated, you hear these stories, and you might conclude, hey this seems like a good idea.  But, anecdotal evidence presents several problems.

First, you need to verify the anecdotes.  Did it really happen?  Then you need to know all of the facts and circumstances of the particular anecdote.  Was there something about that particular case that made it special, or calls into question the conclusion?  You need to remember, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.  The result could be coincidental.  Maybe the body's own defenses finally kicked in just as the patient began taking chloroquine.  To reach the right conclusion, we need to know all of the factors involved.  It's complicated and the process takes time.

But right now, time isn't on Trump's side.  He needs to restart the economy now.  He needs the states to re-open so we aren't in a recession come November, science be damned.

So, on Monday, May 18th, he revealed a very astonishing fact.  He revealed that he had been taking hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure.  He's testing negative for COVID-19.  He has no symptoms.  He claims that he has been taking the drug anyway.

Now, we need to take this news with  grain of salt.  Trump's penchant for lying is documented and notorious.  Nonetheless, his assertion still raises a number of questions.

Why now?  We haven't heard him peddle chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for weeks.  Well, intellectual giant, Laura Ingraham, has been pushing a study.  It's a study that say chloroquine can inhibit the infection and spread of the SARS coronavirus.  She's pushing this study, and retweeting it, claiming "the left" has not been doing its research.

There are just a few problems.  First, the study was published in 2005.  We're facing a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus.  The word "novel" meaning that the virus is new.  The current virus didn't exist until 2019.  A study from 2005, then, is not directly relevant because it could not have involved the same virus that is currently causing the pandemic.

But, she's counting on the ignorant and uneducated getting confused by the terminology.  The term "coronavirus" refers to a family of viruses.  It is a generic term, that refers to the shape of the virus.  Coronaviruses generally look like crowns.  Because something is a coronavirus doesn't mean that they all have the same DNA or RNA make-up.  They just look alike.

We've known about coronaviruses for years.  You may see people who don't know any better pointing to disinfectant labels, and claiming this virus isn't new because the label says that the disinfectant is effective against coronaviruses.  Yes, but there are different types of coronaviruses, and they all act differently.

SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, was a coronavirus that first appeared in 2002.  It was contained, and no known transmissions have occurred since 2004.  The official name of that virus is SARS-CoV1, for SARS, coronavirus one, the first of that kind that we discovered.

The official name of this new virus is SARS-CoV2, or SARS, coronavirus two.  Why?  It causes similar symptoms to SARS.  It's genetically related to SARS.  Much like humans are genetically related to chimpanzees.  But they are different viruses.  They act differently.  They have similar symptoms, but they also have different symptoms.  Just because chloroquine may have been effective inhibiting SARS does not mean it will have the effect on COVID-19.  It may.  It is worth investigating.  But it's no guarantee.

To be clear, the idea is that cholorquine  may affect the pH of the recipient's blood to such as degree that it inhibits the virus from reproducing.  There is some information from India that may support this hypothesis. But, again, these are not clinical studies being conducted using modern scientific methodology.  It would be foolhardy to press for the widespread use of the drug as a prophylactic measure based on such information, without confirming the hypothesis with a study using accepted scientific principles. 

Nonetheless, Ingraham is counting on the uneducated seeing the similarity in names, SARS-CoV1 and SARS-CoV2, and therefore concluding that this must mean chloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19.  Unfortunately, once again, it's just not that simple.

Plus, the President likes to downplay the potential side effects of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.  We have been using chloroquine as a treatment for malaria and lupus for decades.  We know these drugs have the potential to affect the heart.  So, doctors need to careful when prescribing it and in monitoring the patients taking it.  When Trump says, "What do you have to lose," potentially an awful lot.  Like, your life.  Especially, if you take the medication as a prophylactic measure, when you've tested negative and show no symptoms.

Still, Trump has been pushing this as a potential miracle cure for some time now.  And he doesn't tolerate dissent, even if that dissent is based on science.  Rick Bright, for example, is a scientist who was in charge of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA).  He refused to tow the party line, and push chloroquine consistent with the President's wishes.  Bright tried to get his political bosses to pay attention to the risks.  He was ignored.  So, he helped corroborate information on the risks of the drug to a reporter writing about the subject.  When the article was published, even though Bright was an unnamed source, he says that he was demoted.  Bright has filed a whistleblower complaint over his demotion.

So science that goes against the President's chosen course of policy is under attack.  Which is typical of the Trump Administration.

Now, I have to wonder about the ethics of a doctor who may have prescribed Trump hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure, when the President has tested negative for COVID-19 and has no symptoms, keeping in mind the potential side effects.  Remember, first, do no harm.  By prescribing hydroxychloroquine in this situation, the doctor may have violated his ethical rules.  If Trump is telling the truth, then the alternative explanation to the doctor violating the Hippocratic Oath is equally troubling.  That would mean that the doctor is giving Trump a placebo marked as hydroxychloroquine, just to placate him.  That possibility also raises ethical concerns for me.

When it comes down to it, I honestly don't care if Trump wants to risk his own life by taking hydroxychloroquine.  His body, his choice.  And if his core followers want to take that risk, and wind up harming themselves, well that's their own fault.  But, I do worry about the low information voters who are scared, who follow the President's lead, not truly understanding the risks, or that the evidence supporting its possible benefits is sketchy at best.  This is where Trump really has a responsibility to be careful in what he says.  The voters he targets are vulnerable.  By manipulating these voters and valuing his re-election strategy over the health of the American people, he shows his moral failing.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

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There Has to be a Better Way to Choose a President

Twelve people stood on stage last night, each trying to explain why they should be the next President of the United States. But after yet another three hours of back and forth between a dozen candidates, have we learned enough to choose a president?

We were in a similar situation four years ago. At that time, we were fairly certain that Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, the Republican race, with its multitude of characters, seemed like a farce. No one really stood out. At the time, Donald Trump has a substantial following, but not a majority of Republican voters. He gained his support mostly do to name recognition, and turning the Republican debates into Jerry Springer-like events, that many found entertaining.

Over the next few months, as primaries and caucuses were held, the experienced politicians in the Republican field found that they could not put their egos aside, and Trump racked up the delegates, based on name recognition and his entertainment value. By time the dust settled, and the two major candidates selected, many in the electorate asked, is this the best we could do.

That questions haunts the process of selecting a president to this day. Is this the best we can do?  The process is easy to criticize. It takes too long. It’s tiring for potential voters. It’s superficial. It’s too expensive. It’s too divisive. It gives a small minority of people way too much power in influencing the outcome. And in the end, it is just way too possible for the choice of most American voters to be ignored, as the person losing the popular vote can still wind up being the president.

It’s no mystery why in many elections, voters complain that they are choosing the lesser of two evils.

Surely, we can do better.

While the Democrats were engaging in their debates here in the United States, a fascinating crisis of leadership unfolded in the United Kingdom.  A new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has failed to convince fellow members of Parliament that leaving the European Union without concluding a deal upon which both the U.K. and the E.U. could agree would be a satisfactory outcome of Brexit. As a result, Johnson lost vote after vote in Parliament, and even saw enough of his party’s members defect to the opposition to rob him of a majority in Parliament. There was discussion of holding an election to choose a new Parliament. What was astonishing was that no one in the United Kingdom even questioned that such an election could be completed in five weeks.

Five weeks to choose an entirely new government in the U.K.; meanwhile, the campaign to choose a new president in the United States persists for more than two years. How can that possibly be?  Do we really need all that time to make a reasoned decision?  Some might even argue that the U.S. presidential campaign is never-ending. Indeed, President Trump continued to hold political rallies almost immediately after being sworn into office.

Is this really the best we can do?

Richard Nixon once said of running for president, that first one had to run to the right as far as he could to court Republican voters to nominate him. Then, during the general election, that same person had to run to the center as fast as he could, to convince independent voters to choose him over his Democratic rival.

It’s no wonder why American politicians are accused of flip-flopping.

To fix the system would go beyond tweaking what the United States already has. Indeed, simply abolishing the Electoral College would not be enough. The problem with the U.S. system includes our primary system, which takes too long, gives too much influence to two states with small populations, entrenches the two party system, and leaves a large number of voters without a voice in nominating the presidential candidates.

The first big contest of the nomination season is the Iowa Caucuses.  Iowa represents less than one percent of the total U.S. population. Yet, presidential candidates flock to Iowa early every four years to court the state’s voters. Especially when a candidate trails in the national polls, if that candidate can somehow convince Iowa voters to choose him or her, that candidate can experience a huge burst in popularity and news coverage. At times, a win in Iowa can create enough momentum to propel a candidate to the nomination.

Similarly, the first primary election takes place in New Hampshire, where the population is roughly one-third that of Iowa. An victory in the first election of the primary season can be as equally powerful, especially for a dark horse candidate.

But why do states with such small populations have such a big influence over the major parties’ nomination?  The short answer is tradition. Other states have tried to schedule their contests before Iowa and New Hampshire. But each time, the major parties threaten to discipline those states if they do so. For example, the major parties have threatened not to recognize any delegates selected in contests that occur before Iowa and New Hampshire.

The argument is that small states would otherwise get lost in the shuffle, if states with larger populations, such as California and Florida, have all of the influence over the nominations. But why is that a good thing?  Some may even argue that giving states with lower populations so much influence over the presidential nominations goes against the democratic principle of majority rule.

Moreover, the current nomination system is built around the assumption of two major parties: Democrats and Republicans. Democrats, of course, tend to lean left, or liberal, in their political views, while Republicans lean right, or conservative.  But in the last few decades, the number of U.S. voters who identify themselves as either Democrats or Republicans has fallen. A 2017 Gallup poll showed 31% of Americans identified themselves as Democrats, 24% as Republicans, and 42% as independent of any political party. Confining the nomination process to just the Democratic and Republican parties means an extremely large percentage of the U.S. electorate has no say in that process.  Moreover, because each party has a definite leaning on the political spectrum, this means the more extreme voters in each party have a disproportionate say in who gets nominated. The nominees, then, tend to be more liberal or more conservative than the population at large. Centrist candidates are at a big disadvantage in the current system, even though most American voters tend to be more moderate than liberal or conservative.

It’s no wonder, then, why there is often wide-spread disappointment in the two major nominees for president.

Those who may favor third party candidates get ridiculed. A nominee from the Libertarian or Green Party has no chance to win. So why waste your vote on a third party the argument goes. And so, independent voters, who make up the largest block of voters, are the ones who have to compromise the most when choosing between the two major parties’ nominees.

Why does it have to be like this?

Of course, the final blow to democratic principles occurs when in the end, the choice of most U.S. voters is ignored, and the loser winds of becoming the president. This is the result of the Electoral College. To summarize, the reality of the presidential election is that there are 51 separate elections, one in each state and one in the District of Columbia. Each state is given an amount of electors equal to the number of senators and representatives that states send to Congress, with the District of Columbia receiving three. The result of this system is to give voters in states with smaller populations a greater say in who becomes the president. Thus, the loser of the popular vote can still become president provided he or she can win in enough states. This has happened five times in the history of the United States. But the last two times have happened within 16 years of each other.  With Republicans having appeal to many of those smaller states, they have something of an advantage in the Electoral College system. Therefore, what was once thought of as a rare oddity of the American system threatens to become the norm in elections to come.

In sum, for a country that prides itself on being a democratic republic, its method of choosing a chief executive goes against many democratic principles.

In recent years, there has been a growing cry to eliminate the Electoral College. Some states have passed laws to give their states’ electors to whomever wins the national popular vote. The problem with concentrating on the Electoral College is that it fails to address all of the issues with the entire process.

A far more satisfying approach is to do away with the entire nomination system and Electoral College. The United States should adopt a system much like Louisiana’s non-partisan primary. In such a system, two elections are held. The first is a primary, in which every candidate runs, regardless of party affiliation. If somebody receives a majority (greater than 50%) of the vote, then we have our winner and the second election is cancelled. But if no one wins a majority in the primary, then the top two candidates face each other in the general election, held about one month later. Several countries, such as France, employ a system like this.

Such a system cuts down on the length of the presidential campaign, thus ending the non-stop campaigning we have today. Because it is a national election, no one region would have greater influence over the others. Because it is non-partisan, centrists and third party candidates have a greater chance of winning, meaning voters can freely vote their conscience, instead of choosing the lesser of two evils. It is a more democratic system, and likely to result in candidates that reflect the views of a larger proportion of the U.S. population.

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Trump’s Narcissistic Need to be the Expert is Troubling for the Country as a Whole

Admittedly, I am no psychologist. I can’t diagnose psychological disorders, and I would not try. As I discuss narcissism in this writing, I do not do so as an official psychological term. I am merely discussing a personality characteristic that appears to plague our current President. 

With that being said, let’s talk about narcissism. Narcissism is essentially an extreme form of self-love. It’s more than just a case of healthy self-esteem.  It’s a case of thinking so highly of one’s self that it interferes with other personal relationships. 

One aspect of narcissism that is particularly troubling is the need to feel like the expert on all subjects. It interferes in a person’s ability to analyze a problem properly, to take advice from someone who actually is an expert in the field, and to decide on a proper course of action. In this sense, narcissism can also cause a person to assign blame for a problem inappropriately. 

This is one of the problems narcissism has caused for President Trump. Often, when addressing a serious problem, Trump must feel like the expert. In doing so, he interjects criticism that is unwarranted, and suggests courses of action that can be downright inane. 

Retired Admiral William H. McRaven, who was the commander in charge of the Navy SEAL raid that executed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has been critical of Trump, particularly over Trump’s willingness to use security clearances as a weapon against those who oppose him. When Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director William Brennan, McRaven accused Trump of engaging in a McCarthy-like witch hunt. 

McRaven continued his criticism of Trump over the weekend, this time focusing on Trump’s abusive relationship with the press. A prime example of that being when the White House revoked the press pass of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, without giving Acosta warning or an opportunity to defend himself. It was a move that caused US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, to issue injunctive relief to CNN and Acosta by ordering the reinstatement of the press pass. McRaven warned that Trump’s treatment of the press threatened the Constitution. 

Because a narcissist can not tolerate criticism, Trump lashed out against McRaven. Aside from accusing McRaven of being a supporter of Hillary Clinton or Barrack Obama, Trump tweeted that the United States should have gotten bin Laden long before the Navy SEAL raid. Trump even noted that in one of his books, he criticized President Bill Clinton for not addressing Osama bin Laden during Clinton’s term, when Sudan allegedly offered custody of bin Laden to the United States. 

But Trump is no expert in military tactics or anti-terrorism. Trump never served in the US military. He has never been involved in planning a military operation. When he attended a private military academy, he was criticized for the self-centered way in which he treated the cadets under his leadership. Indeed, Trump has yet even to visit American troops since becoming Commander-in-Chief. He has no knowledge or experience to formulate intelligent criticism of the timing or implementation of the military raid that led to bin Laden’s death. 

About one week earlier, Trump similarly felt the need to weigh in on an important subject of which he had no knowledge. In now infamous tweets occurring on November 10th and 11th, Trump blamed the destructive fires in California on gross forestry mismanagement. It was a move that drew criticism from firefighters and California’s leaders alike. Specifically, the heads of firefighting unions and associations chastised the President for being insensitive to the feelings of the firefighters on the ground and the people who had lost their homes.

Yet, Trump continued with his theme of forestry mismanagement when he visited California over the weekend. Trump claimed that he had spoken with Finland’s President, Sauli Niinisto, about Finland’s national forest. Specifically, Trump recalled speaking to Niinisto about how the Fins regularly rake the forest floor as an effective means of fire prevention. Niinisto, however, replied by publicly stating that he had no recollection of ever talking to Trump about raking. 

Once again, due to his narcissistic leanings, Trump felt the need to be perceived as an expert.  He needed to show that he knew better than the people on the ground handling the situation. 

This narcissistic need to be the expert creates practical problems for Trump, his Administration and the country as a whole. First, it makes Trump less willing to seek and follow the advice of people who have more knowledge than he does on a specific subject. Why listen to climate change experts, for example, when raking can just solve the problem. Second, it demoralizes the very people the country needs to address complex problems. The Navy SEALS who raised bin Laden’s headquarters have a reason to be proud that their work as they very likely saved lives by preventing future terrorist attacks. They do not need to hear the current Commander-in-Chief chiming in on his displeasure of the timing of the action years after bin Laden has been dead. Likewise, firefighters do not need to hear their President’s criticism of the cause and extent of the fires, when Trump has no training or experience in firefighting or forest management. Finally, by pretending to be an expert, and assigning blame without a true understanding of the situation, Trump could make inadvisable personnel decisions, firing those who are true experts in favor of those who accept Trump’s personal assessment without question. This can only lead to poor policy choices. 

A true leader understands that he or she is not an expert in everything.  He or she understands the importance of getting advice from people with the appropriate training, knowledge and experience. Decisions based on a narcissistic need to feel like the expert do not serve the country well. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

President Trump May Have Done DACA Recipients a Favor

It may not look like it now, but by announcing an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, president Trump may actually have done its recipients a favor. 

DACA was a popular program, with many people denouncing the president for announcing his intentions to end it. DACA allowed young people, who were not born in the United States but brought here illegally by their parents, to come out of the shadows and become productive members of society without fear of deportation. 

But relying on the continuation of DACA was bad policy. 

First, DACA was of questionable constitutionality at best. DACA was not created or even authorized by legislation. Instead, President Obama took a small piece of executive authority meant to address situations where the application of immigration law was harsh on an ad hoc basis, and turned it into a huge program. DACA is based on presidential authority to grant deferred action. This is nothing more than a promise not to seek the removal of a person who is otherwise in violation of immigration law. It is not directly authorized by Congress. Rather, it stems from the theory that the person who is enforcing the law has the discretion to choose not to come down with the full force of the law when there is a violation. Think of a police officer who witnesses a minor crime, but chooses not to arrest a person. 

The problem is that by taking this small piece of executive discretion and creating a full program out of it, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, President Obama infringed on the role of the legislative branch. That is, he essentially created law without Congress passing legislation. This can be seen as a violation of separation of powers. 

Several states saw it that way. Citing the extra expenditures the states believed they were incurring on people who were present in the country illegally, these states threatened to sue the federal government to end DACA. These states had been successful in shutting down a similar program that granted deferred action to foreign born parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents by filing suit in the Fifth Circuit. If the states had filed a lawsuit over DACA, there was a real danger that the program could have been ended by the courts and declared unconstitutional. 

Second, DACA was a very weak solution to the problem.  DACA did not grant the young people who applied for it a legal status. That is, the program did not give the recipients a legal right to stay in the United States. It only gave the recipients a promise not to seek their removal. As a creature of executive discretion, this meant that the promise could be broken by the same executive who granted it. DACA did not lead to permanent residency. It did not lead to citizenship. All DACA did was to keep the young people who applied for it in a holding pattern. Going back to the separation of powers, this is because the president does not have the authority to create legal status, only to ignore the consequences when a person has violated the law. 

Third, the continuation of DACA permitted Congress to remain lazy. While DACA was in place, the young people brought to the country illegally but raised as Americans were not going to be deported. They were given legal authority to work and pay taxes. Even if there was no path to citizenship, there was no immediate pressure on Congress. Why, then, should Congress act?  Just pretend that this non-solution was working and let things continue as is.

Ending DACA is now forcing the issue with Congress. If Congress believes these young people are deserving of relief, Congress must now pass real legislation to protect them. Presumably, this legislation will include a true legal status instead of a mere promise not to deport. Perhaps Congress will even create a method for those who merit it to earn true permanent residency and eventual citizenship. Then, these young people who were brought up to be Americans will truly become Americans. 

Finally, DACA has made these young people more sympathetic. It is easy to say enforcement only and illegals deserve to be sent back, when you haven't met a hard working and moral undocumented individual. But DACA allowed these young people to work openly. It allowed them to win the respect of professors, fellow students, bosses and co-workers alike. When you met a person just making an honest living because of DACA, it was hard not to like them. 

And that sympathy will turn into political pressure. People don't want to see their neighbors, co-workers, friends deported. Businesses, including industrial Giants, will not want to see valued employees suddenly unable to work. Congress will be under pressure to create a real legislative fix. 

The termination of DACA may yet result in a better future for young people brought to this country illegally by their parents. If Congress acts, it could result in a more secure legal status and a path to citizenship. If Congress doesn't act, it will give the American public yet one more thing to add to the list of congressional failures and reasons to vote members out of office. 

William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

The End of DACA; Forcing Congress to Act

DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was a popular program. DACA was meant to help people who were brought to the United States as children, due to no choice of their own, who were raised as Americans, but who lacked legal immigrant status. 

Despite having been raised here, having gone to school here, and identifying the United States as their home, these children could not hold a job legally. Often, their ability to go to college was hampered by the lack of legal status. Despite being raised as Americans, they had to live in the shadows, avoiding government attention and working in the underground economy. 

DACA recipients were sympathetic. They were stuck in their situation due to now fault of their own. Many were highly talented and very intelligent. If allowed to live and work openly, DACA recipients had great potential. 

To address the situation in which these children found themselves, President Obama created DACA. But the program was imperfect as best, and unconstitutional at worst. 

DACA is an exercise of deferred action. Deferred action is not a legal status. It does not give a person the legal right to stay in the United States. It is really nothing more than a promise; a promise not to seek the removal of a person, even though that person is present in the United States illegally. 

If you search the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, you will find that there is no statute that defines deferred action. There is no direct legislative authority for it. All there is in the statute is a reference that those who have received deferred action are eligible to apply for a legal right to work in the United States. 

At best, then, deferred action is indirectly authorized by law. But nothing in the law establishes it parameters. Nothing establishes to whom deferred action may be applied, or under what circumstances. 

Prior to DACA, deferred action was used mostly as an ad hoc fix when immigration law was imperfect. In many cases, deferred action was applied on a case by case basis, for humanitarian purposes when immigration law had harsh results. On occasion, deferred action was applied on a larger scale but on a temporary basis when an immigration program came to an end.  Special protections were granted by law to Liberians in the United States, for example, during the twenty year civil war in their country. When those legal protections expired, President Bush applied deferred action for one year to permit Liberians who had lived in the United States for a long time to adjust to their new situation. 

But before DACA, deferred action had never been used to create a program of immigration relief on such a scale. Indeed, the argument is that President Obama overstepped his constitutional authority as chief executive by creating a program that was legislative in nature. In this case, the president had no direct authority from Congress on creating such a program. No criteria was set by Congress on who would qualify for the program. No parameters were established on how long the program would last. President Obama created DACA whole cloth, establishing his own set of criteria for eligibility and his own judgment with respect to the length of the grant of relief.

To be clear, from the moment President Obama announced the creation of DACA, there were serious questions concerning whether he had violated the separation of powers provisions of the Constitution. The constitutionality of DACA was further called into question when the President created similar programs, one aimed at granting deferred action to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and one that was an expansion of DACA, which were defeated in federal courts in the waining years of the Administration. 

Why then, did President Obama use such an imperfect tool to grant such relief?  After all, it was temporary. It granted no legal status. It gave no path to citizenship. It was nothing more than a promise that any succeeding administration could break. It was arguably unconstitutional. 

The answer lie in congressional inaction. Legislation had been pending since 2001 to address the situation of children who had been brought to the United States by their parents illegally. It was called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or the DREAM Act. Despite originally having Republican support, the DREAM Act died in May of 2011.  When the DREAM Act failed to pass Congress, President Obama forced the issue by creating a program where this who would have received relief through the legislation would be given deferred action. 

President Trump, who publicly expressed support for DACA recipients on numerous occasions, now seems to be on the verge of ending the program. He is doing so despite pleadings by Republican lawmakers, such as Paul Ryan, to give Congress the chance to pass legislation to address the problem. In doing so, he has raised the ire of many in the public who find DACA recipients sympathetic. 

The question now is whether President Trump's actions will finally force Congress to enact a legal solution to the problem, or whether DACA recipients will simply be forced to return to the shadows to hide from being deported from the only home they've known. 

William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

For Those Expecting an "Electoral College Miracle," You've been Well Played

"It's a Christmas miracle!"  If you're familiar with American TV, you've no doubt heard this phrase numerous times in your life. Typically in the plots around Christmas time, something has got the protagonist down. Maybe it is a loss of faith or hope. But by the end of the show, something unexpected and improbable happens that lifts everyone's spirits, and restores hope to the protagonist. 

Judging from my social media feeds, many of my liberal friends expected the Electoral College to deliver such a Christmas miracle. 

It started with the so-called "Hamilton Electors."  Several news articles proclaimed that there were Electors ready to cast a ballot for some reasonable candidate other than Donald Trump. I remember at least one of my friends on Facebook expressing excitement in November that this rumor was an actual thing, as an article reached the mainstream press. 

Then there was the call for intelligence briefings for Electors in the wake of accusations of hacking by the Russians from the CIA.  Electors have a right to know if a foreign power influenced our electoral system, was the rallying cry. Again, many of my liberal friends in social media expressed real hope that the Electoral College would "do the right thing."

And then December 19th, the day appointed for the Electors to meet in their respective state capitals, came and Trump received enough votes to be elected President of the United States. Indeed, while those wishing for an "Electoral College miracle" needed more than thirty Electors pledged to Trump to defect, only two actually did. 

And thus, many of my liberal friends took to social media and expressed disappointment; some using the harshest of profanity over the result. 

The fact is that they, along with anyone else who expected a more dramatic result, were played. They were played by a propaganda gambit from their very own party, the Democrats, assisted by willing accomplices in the press. 

The fact is that stories of possible Electoral College defectors were drummed up by Democratic political operatives. The press then reported the stories in a way that hid the political leanings of the perpetrators as well their true intentions. 

Let's first consider the so-called "Hamilton Electors."  These were Electors supposedly ready to vote for any reasonable candidate other than Trump. News stories trumpeted the fact that there had been "faithless Electors" in the past; Electors who voted for someone other than the candidate who vote the popular vote in their particular state. There were some news stories that announced that numerous Electors were taking advantage of legal advice offered for free from a certain law firm concerning the legal consequences of breaking a pledge to vote for the winner of their state's popular vote. Surely these were all indications of a potential Electoral College revolt. 

The problem was that the press failed to report that these potential faithless Electors were all Democrats pledged to vote for Hillary Clinton. 

In the end, there were a total of seven faithless Electors; the most of any presidential election. They voted for candidates like Collin Powell, John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders and even Faith Spotted Eagle, an American Indian tribal leader opposed to the Dakota Pipeline. But only two of these Electors were Republicans pledged to vote for Trump. Five were Democrats pledged to vote for Clinton.  This means that the so-called "Hamilton Electors" of  which the press trumpeted were very likely Democrats pledged to vote for Clinton all along. There never was any pending revolt of Republican Electors ready to "dump Trump."

Concerning the demand for an intelligence briefing over the alleged Russian hacking, media reporting was misleading in several respects. First, the press did its best to bury the fact that the push came from Democratic Electors, not Republicans. It would take a savvy reader some effort to discover that the originator of this demand was Christine Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter. Indeed, of the fifty five Electors demanding the briefing, only one was a Republican.  Hiding the affiliation of the Electors demanding the briefing gave the impression that Electors were ready to bolt from voting Trump. In reality, there was never really any danger in that happening. 

Second, the press willingly reported the so-called Russian hacking scandal in such a way as to exaggerate what the factual allegations were. The press used descriptions such as "hacking," a "foreign power" attempting to "influence the election," and the "integrity" of the "electoral system."

In fact, there has never been any allegation that the Russians ever attempted to hack into any of the state electoral boards and alter any vote count. But, by using such vague but inflammatory descriptors, the press was more than willing to have the general public conclude that the alleged hacking put the vote count in jeopardy. 

What has been alleged is that the Russians hacked into the email systems of both the Democratic and Republican National Committees to steal emails. It is alleged that the Russians leaked embarrassing emails about Clinton and her staff through Wikileaks. 

Thus the so-called influence was nothing more than an attempt to have an effect on the opinion of voters. Given the myriad of factors involved in the presidential campaign, it is highly doubtful that the release of embarrassing email communications had much of an effect on changing voters' minds. Quite frankly, the news emanating from the Wikileaks releases during the campaign was that there was nothing really ground-breaking from the emails. In the end, the email leaks were more hype than substance. 

Surely the news of the hacking should result in an effort to bring those responsible to justice for violating criminal laws. But, it is hardly a reason to overturn a presidential election. 

In fact, the news of how easily the Russians hacked into both the DNC and RNC email systems should emphasize why it was such a scandal that a sitting Secretary of State used an unsecured private server to communicate classified information. It placed such information at a high risk of being intercepted by foreign governments. 

So what was the purpose of these stories which dominated the news prior to the Electoral College vote?  First, there was a hope that more than thirty Republican Electors would be influenced to switch their votes and deny Trump an Electoral College victory. But that hope was misplaced. The parties choose the slate of Electors. They are chosen because of their strong loyalty to the political party. They are not chosen because they tend to be independent thinkers. 

Even if the campaign to influence the Electors succeeded, the race would simply be thrown to the House of Representatives, voting by state delegations, to decide. With Republicans in control of the House, the end result would likely have still been a Trump victory. 

The more important reason for the campaign to influence the Electoral College was to create a sense of illegitimacy of a Trump presidency. Trump didn't win the popular vote. He only won because of the disproportionate power given to small states by the Electoral College. Now the Electoral College failed to receive intelligence briefings of Russian interference and influence. And a record number of Electors were faithless Electors. Therefore, the stage is set to rationalize aggressive residence by the Democrats of the Trump agenda. 

What is comes down to is the fact that the public was played. They were played by the Democrats eager to paint the Trump presidency as illegitimate. They were played by a press, already biased against Trump, and willing to carry the torch for the Democratic Party. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

This Election Has Shown It Is Time to Strengthen the Electoral College

Guess what.  The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee the right of the people to elect their president directly.   As any middle-schooler can tell you, our system is based on a College of Electors, selected by each state, who in turn have the authority to cast the first ballot for president.  In fact, the Constitution does not even guarantee the right of the people to select their electors.

Section 1 of Article 2 of the Constitution provides, “Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors . . . .”  (Emphasis added).  Although the Electoral College has been modified from time to time through amendments to the Constitution, none of those amendments explicitly guarantees the right of the people to vote either for the president or for an elector.

Put simply, the Constitution establishes a system where each state chooses electors to send to the Electoral College.  The number of electors is equal to the number of Representative to which that state is entitled in the House of Representative, plus the number of Senators.  In addition, the District of Columbia, which is not a state and is not entitled to any representation in Congress, is provided with no more than the same number of electors as the least populous states.  The electors meet in their respective states and vote, in separate ballots, for president and vice president.  The results are transmitted to Congress.

A person must win a majority of votes from the Electoral College to be elected president or vice president.  If no candidate wins a majority of votes for president, the House of Representatives has the task of choosing the president.  But, the House votes by state.  Each state is given one vote, and the Representatives can only for one of the three top vote getters from the Electoral College.  In the Senate, if there is no Electoral College majority for vice president, Senators vote for one of the two top vote getters. 

Why did the Founding Fathers establish such a system to select the chief executive of the United States?  As with many of the structures created through the Constitution, the Electoral College was created out of a fear of concentrating too much power in one person or one group of people.  To put simply, the Founding Fathers had just fought a revolution to break away from the rule of a tyrant. 

But as John Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, tyranny could include an “overbearing majority.”  Madison warned that a group of citizens, “whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole” could unite to push “some common impulse or passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”  Madison recognized that people are fallible and selfish, and that this would cause differences of opinions and interests.  A group of people, to whom he referred as “factions,” could join together to pursue a common zeal over their particular opinion or even of a particular leader.  And thus divided into different parties, they could develop “mutual animosity” and attempt “to vex or oppress each other” rather than “to cooperate for their common good.”  Madison’s driving point was that the tyranny of a majority could work to oppress and infringe on the rights of a minority.  For these reasons, he, and other Founding Fathers, opposed pure democracy.

Instead, Madison argued for the creation of a body of people chosen by the citizens through which the views of the public could be passed.  The hope was that by choosing wise representatives, the good of the public as a whole could prevail over parochial interests and passions.  That is, Madison argued for the creation of a republic.

Yet, through the Constitution, the Founding Fathers did not create a purely parliamentarian form of government.  That is, they did not create a government where the legislature chose the person or group of people who would execute the laws.  As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 88, the Founding Fathers wanted to make the chief executive officer, that is the president, independent from the legislature.  That is, they wanted the president to be free of any taint or influence from a pre-existing body.  It was thought that if the president were chosen by Congress, the president might be tempted to suppress his duty to pursue the good of the whole to the temptation to please Congress in order to preserve his tenure in office.

Putting the two fears together, that is the fear that a majority can itself be tyrannical, and the fear that an executive who is chosen by the legislature would be dependent upon the legislature and thus sacrifice the pursuit of the common good, the Founding Fathers devised a system whereby the people would choose a group who would come together only once for the sole purpose of selecting a chief executive, and then be disbanded.  The hope was that this smaller group of people, which we call the Electoral College, would give serious deliberation to the qualities needed for leadership, and choose a wise and virtuous leader.

In that way, the Electoral College was meant to protect the new republic from the dangers of demagoguery.  That is, a charismatic person could influence the general public by inflaming passions instead of reason.  Once in power, a demagogue could then trample on the rights of the minority.

Under the system envisioned by the Founding Fathers through the Constitution, the role of the people was no to select a particular person to be their president.  Rather, they were to select a group of people wise enough to select a person to be the president.

Unfortunately, in practice this is not was happens.  Through tradition, over time, the states have mostly chosen to hold popular elections where that state’s entire delegation of Electors would go to the winner of the popular vote.  In all but Maine and Nebraska, the states have chosen a winner take all approach. That is, each candidate nominates a slate of Electors, and the winner has his or her chosen Electors named to the Electoral College.  Thus, instead of choosing a group of people, individually, to in turn select our president, we vote for the person we want to be president, and the state’s Electors go to that person.  This turns the presidential election into nothing more than fifty-one different elections.

This system, which has grown out of tradition and not out of any constitutional requirement, has some unintended consequences.  First, it makes political parties indispensable.  Second, it distorts the popular vote.

With respect to political parties, in order to win the presidency, a person must be able to garner a few hundred people who will be loyal and vote for him when the Electoral College meets.  This means that a candidate must have an organization, and it must be on a national scale.  This is why it is virtually impossible for independent or third party candidates to win the U.S. presidency.

With respect to the popular vote, each state is guaranteed at least three Electors.  But, there is no guarantee that population is evenly spread across the states.  Thus, in less populous states, like Montana and North Dakota, voters have a disproportionately large say in who will become president.  It also means that it is entirely possible for a person to receive more popular votes for president, but because those votes may be concentrated in one state, lose the Electoral College count.  This has happened three times in U.S. history.

But, there is yet a third unintended consequence.  This system as it is currently configured is more vulnerable to demagoguery.  Specifically, most people today receive their news through television.  Television is a medium that thrives on images and short messages.  To get a message across, particularly on news programs, images must elicit an emotional response and do so in a short period of time.  Thus, the ten second sound bite reigns.  Television is not a medium conducive to a reasonable deliberation of complex issues.

We see this now in news shows and political fora.  Formats are not meant to encourage an intelligent dialogue as they are to encourage shouting, loud disagreement and entertainment that targets the short attention span.  In order to prevail, a person must look good, and have a catchy slogan.

But it is this manipulation of passions and emotions that motivated the Founding Fathers to create the Electoral College in the first place.  And indeed, this 2016 election has demonstrated the very danger that gave our Founding Fathers nightmares.  Both major political parties have been manipulated by demagoguery, and thus have nominated candidates with which many in the general public are completely dissatisfied.  Name recognition and entertainment have become more important factors in selecting candidates than a serious discussion of the issues that face this country.  Thus, this year many U.S. voters are left with the choice of voting for a candidate they don’t like in order to stop a candidate they hate.

The answer to this dilemma may simply be to strengthen the Electoral College, and have it return more to the roots of what the Founding Fathers intended.  That is, the U.S. public should go back to selecting a group of people who will in turn select the president rather than voting for the president directly.

One way to strengthen the Electoral College would be to eliminate the winner take all system.  Rather than vote for a single person, and all of a state’s Electors go to that person, voters should be forced to choose the Electors directly and by name.  If a state has six Electors, then the voters in that state should select six people to attend the Electoral College.  The names of the presidential candidates themselves should not be on the ballot.

The elections should not permit voters in a single sweep to select a slate of candidates. Each candidate should be selected separately.  Moreover, the candidates for Electors should not be grouped by party or by whom they support.  Indeed, nowhere on the ballot should a political party appear.  They should be listed either randomly or alphabetically.  This would have the effect of having a voter actually research the candidates for Electors, and determine if that person would be wise enough to in turn select the president.  If a person wants to select Electors all from one party, then have that voter research and know that information before coming to the ballot box.

Moreover, election of the Electors should permit vote stacking.  That is, if a state entitled to six Electors, then each voter in that state should be entitled to six votes and use them as they please.  If one voter wants to use all six votes on a single candidate to ensure that a particular viewpoint has a seat at the table, then so be it.

Finally, the Electoral College should not be a single day event where the Electors simply cast a vote.  To the contrary, it should be a multiday affair, where each Elector has an opportunity to say either what issues they find important, what qualities in a candidate they find important, or which particular person they may want as their president.

Yes, these proposals would remove the choice of presidency one step further away from voters.  But that does not make it undemocratic.  Voters will still have choice and a say in their chief executive.  But that choice would be less likely left to the winds of passions, ignorance and demagoguery.  It would instead make the process more deliberative and serious.

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Republicans Are Real Good at Blaming Everyone for Election Losses . . . But Themselves

I just heard Sean Hannity's rant from yesterday's radio show. He really loses it over the possibility that Trump will lose Utah to an independent candidate, Evan McMullin. In fact, it's been humorous to watch Trump supporters seethe in anger over conservatives who cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump. Hannity is now threatening a "reckoning" on November 9th if Trump loses the election. 

One thing that fascinates me about this particular campaign is just how early Trump set up the narrative of blame if he loses. Almost immediately after the Republican Convention Trump claimed that the election was rigged. He targeted the media. He tagged the system as corrupt. It was almost as if he knew coming out of the convention that he was going to lose, and he had to begin blaming someone, something, anything but himself, for the impending loss. 

This is set up to be the third time in a row that the Republicans will lose a national election.  And yet the GOP fails to recognize that it has become its own worst enemy. 

The 2012 election should have served as a game changer for Republicans. The exit polls showed that the Republicans lost in every ethnic group, and in big numbers, except for white men. Rationally, this should have signaled the need to change directions. 

Initially, it appeared that the Republicans were going to do just that. One of the biggest indications of a willingness to change emerged in an effort to address immigration reform in a constructive manner. Finally. 

But something happened on the way to that place. One of the more radical wings of GOP voters, Tea Partiers, discovered just how much pull they now had in the party. 

Republicans, who control a majority of state legislatures, concentrated efforts on drawing congressional district lines to ensure a majority in the House of Representatives for years to come. That is, they used the map and demographic information to concentrate the number of likely Republican voters into safe congressional districts. It's a process known as gerrymandering, which had been around almost as long as the US republic itself. By concentrating conservative voters in a single district, however, Republican state legislatures wound up giving disproportionate power to the more radical wings of GOP voters, namely the Tea Partiers.  The result was that incumbent Republican Representatives had far more to fear about a more conservative challenger in the primaries than a Democrat in the general election. 

Republican leadership then began giving in to the Tea Party more frequently. The Tea Party found it had the power to shut down the Government over a budget fight to defund Obamacare.  With its new-found power, Tea Partiers could then concentrate on defeating any common sense approach to immigration reform, by labeling the proposals "amnesty."  

Tea Partiers got drunk with the power. Any Republican who didn't subscribe to their views completely received the dreaded designation of RINO (Republican in name only).  Suddenly, Republicans known for their conservative leanings, such as Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, found that they were not conservative enough for this constituency. Indeed the hallmark of the Tea Partiers has been the refusal to compromise on any issue. 

So, instead of learning from electoral defeats, the party regressed. Its desperate efforts to cling to a majority in the House only gave power to a group of voters all too happy to alienate the rest of the country. It is this group of voters, with their no compromises attitude, that led to the nomination of Donald Trump. 

And once again, instead of being introspective and examining what is wrong with the Republican Party that it fails to attract voters on a national level, the stage is set for post-election finger-pointing.  If there is to be a "reckoning," it should not be aimed at conscientious conservatives who refuse to support a boorishly flawed candidate like Donald Trump. It should be with that wing of the party that refuses to let go of its outdated and divisive attitude, and that fails to see how its message is driving voters away. 

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr. 

Could the Electoral College Save Us this Year?

Any middle schooler who pays attention in civics class can tell you that here in the United States, we do not directly elect our president.  Instead, we elect people to sit in the Electoral College, and it is the Electoral College who in turn selects our president.

Our Founding Fathers actually intended for the Electoral College to be an actual group of people, who would meet after the election, deliberate and vote on who they, the electors, wanted to be president.  It was meant to protect the process from demagoguery, and the passions of the masses.

But that is not how it works today.  In every state, except Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who wins the popular vote wins that state's Electoral College delegation.  So in effect, the U.S. presidential election becomes fifty-one separate elections (although the District of Columbia is not a state, it does get to participate in the Electoral College). 

Not all of those separate elections are equal.  Each state gets that same number of electors as the number of representatives that the state has in the House of Representatives, plus two to represent the state's Senate delegation.  The District of Columbia gets three electors.  States with large House delegations get more electors.  But since each state is guaranteed at least three electors, voters in smaller states, like Utah and Wyoming, wind up with a disproportionately large say in who our next president will be.

Every four years, we hear arguments that the Electoral College distorts the popular vote.  It is anti-democratic, and as such it should be eliminated in favor of direct election of the president.  Indeed, twice in U.S. history a candidate has won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote.

This year, there is an outside shot that no one will win a majority of the Electoral College vote, and that an independent candidate could become our president.

The Constitution provides that a person must win a majority of the Electoral College to win the presidency.  If no one wins a majority, the choice for the next president goes to the House of Representatives.  But, the House votes by state delegation, where each state gets one vote.  And, when each state votes, they can only select a person who has won at least one Electoral college vote.

For the most part, the United States has a two party system.  That is, when a person is voting for president, they are mostly voting for a Republican or a Democrat.  As long as only the candidates from the two parties receive votes in the Electoral College, then one of them will likely win a majority.  There are scenarios where the two major party candidates can tie in the Electoral College.  But those are unlikely scenarios.

However, the equation changes if a third party candidate were to win the popular vote in just one state.  If that were to happen, then it could be possible for none of the candidates to win a majority in the Electoral College, and therefore throw the race to the House.

This year, there are a lot of voters who are dissatisfied with both nominees from the major parties.  However, because the U.S. electoral system is rigged to favor Republicans and Democrats, most voters view third party candidates as a wasted vote.  Thus, even if they do not like either candidate, they choose the candidate they dislike more, and vote for the opponent.

But things are a little different this year.  In the latest polls an independent candidate, Evan McMullin, is leading both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the popular vote in Utah.  Thus, there is a realistic chance that for the first time in over a hundred years, a candidate who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican could win a state's entire delegation to the Electoral College.  If the math were to work out in the rest of the states, there is an outside chance that neither Clinton nor Trump will win a majority of the Electoral College.

All things being equal, this would normally favor the Republican candidate.  It would mean that the vote would go to the House, with each state getting one vote.  Even if the Republicans lose the House in the congressional elections, Democrats will likely be concentrated in the populous states, such as New York, California and Pennsylvania.  As far as state delegations are concerned, the majority will likely favor Republicans.

But, whether they say it publicly or not, Republican leadership does not like Donald Trump.  He was the outsider who cashed in on his name recognition and the popular discontent with politicians in general to win the Republican nomination.  His temperament and the perception of his chauvinism has made him a damaged candidate.  Indeed, after recordings of Trump's vile comments on women were released, some Republican candidates, including Speaker Paul Ryan, have refused to campaign for him.  Republican leadership may be eager to throw Trump under the bus if the opportunity were to come and choose a different candidate.

And there is where the Electoral College could save the republic.  If Evan McMullin were to win Utah, and if neither Trump nor Hillary won the majority of the Electoral College, it could give Republican leaders a real chance to reject the two major party candidates, viewed as severely flawed by many Americans, and make a more rational choice.  One could only hope.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Paul Ryan Is in an Impossible Position

I feel for Paul Ryan. I really do. He's in an impossible position. He recognizes that fueled with angers voters in the Republican primaries were conned into voting for a bully and a buffoon disguised as a populist. 

Donald Trump has spent a lifetime perfecting the art of self-promotion. He tapped into the discontent of the Tea Party voters, who demand nothing but complete allegiance from their politicians, and convinced them that he was the outsider ready to take-on Hillary and the big government Democrats. Trump's boorish, crass and vulgar personality was no deterrent; it's what the Tea Party voters wanted. Cashing in on his name recognition, his reality TV experience and the wealth envy of many in the electorate,Trump was able to sweep in and steal the nomination from a GOP pool that was fractured and unfocused. 

Republican leaders knew who Trump was. But by time they realized that his candidacy was a serious threat, they failed to rally around a single, respectable candidate who could challenge him. 

When it became clear that Trump was going to win the nomination, the Republican leadership were not quick to embrace him. But faced with the prospect of a fractured party going into the convention, party leaders, like Ryan, had no choice but to accept and endorse Trump as the party's nominee. To do otherwise would endanger Republican efforts to hang on to the House and Senate. 

But Trump has never had to worry about working well with others. All of his career, he has been able to use his money to bully those around him. He never had to compromise, he never had to be considerate of others. So why should he start now?

And then the video of Trump's lewd and disgusting comments about how a star gets to treat women broke. Look, we all knew Trump was a chauvinist. We all knew Trump values women more for their looks than for their intelligence. We all knew he had no real respect for women. But as long as his chauvinism was disguised as mere comments about a woman's appearance, it could be dismissed. 

There was no disguising his comments to Billy Bish. Faced with this reprehensible attitude on how women could be treated, how he could use his celebrity status to engage in otherwise unwelcome behavior, Ryan took the steps to do the honorable thing and distance himself from Trump. 

Unfortunately, because of his position in the Republican leadership, he does not have the freedom to do what his former running mate, Mitt Romney, could do and completely denounce Trump. Like it or not, Trump is the standard bearer for the Republican Party. Realistically, Ryan cannot outwardly withdraw his endorsement of his party's nominee. 

So Ryan has done the best he could do under the circumstances and distance himself from Trump. His reward has been to find himself in the crosshairs of Trump's irresistible urge to spew his hatred through Twitter. His reward is to find the Tea Partiers hurling the worst insult they can think of at him: RINO (Republican in name only).

In truth, I pity Paul Ryan, a man who was thrust into the national spotlight only four short years ago to shore up the conservative credentials for Romney's candidacy. Now, the man once touted as a conservative policy wonk finds that he is the target of a vitriolic wing of his party's supporters which find him not conservative enough. In the end, when Trump's candidacy goes down in flames, Ryan will be made the scapegoat for daring to put civility and personal principles over voters' hatred of Hillary. 

By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.