2016 race takes us toward banana republic status

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2016 race takes us toward banana republic status 

By

LeRoy Goldman

 The Charlotte Observer

August 8, 2015

The GOP has won the popular vote only once in the six presidential elections since 1992. That occurred in 2004 when President George W. Bush was reelected with a scant 51 percent of the vote over Democrat, John Kerry. Yes, Bush also won in 2000, but he lost the popular vote in an election that was decided by the Supreme Court. Other than 2004, the Republican nominee has not won more than 47 percent of the popular vote. Nothing suggests 2016 will be any different.

The Democrats have a significant structural advantage in amassing the 270 electoral votes it takes to win. Over the past six elections the Democrats have won 18 states and the District of Columbia every time, netting them 240 electoral votes. The Republicans have been able to carry only 13 states every time. Those states netted them a paltry 102 electoral votes.

In order to break this pattern the Republicans must nominate a candidate who can carry some of the states that routinely vote Democratic, and they need to be states with more than a trivial number of electoral votes. The obvious targets are in the Rust Belt – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which together have 46 electoral votes. That’s more than enough to change the outcome of the presidential election. A Republican who can’t win in one or more of these states will be another loser. And that rules out virtually all of the occupants in the current GOP Presidential Clown Car.

1. GOP thriving

However, in May Sean Trende and David Byler published an excellent analysis of party strength in Real Clear Politics, and it shows that the GOP is the strongest it has been in decades in Congress and at the state level. Let’s examine this strange, but real, disconnect between a party that can’t win the White House, while reigning supreme everywhere else.

Trende and Byler’s analysis shows the 54 Senate seats the Republicans now control is their second-best showing since 1928. Their 247 House seats is the best since 1928. There are 31 Republican governors, and the GOP controls both houses of the legislature in 30 states.

From 1954 until 1994 the GOP was a permanent minority in the House of Representatives. The picture was almost as bleak in the Senate. During most of that time a Republican was president. And the government worked. The American people wanted the two parties to negotiate with one another to reach compromises, which is exactly what they did.

2. Health care revolt

In 1994 everything changed. The Republicans came out of the wilderness. They gained 54 House seats and eight Senate seats. And in 2010 and 2014 they struck again, first retaking the House and then the Senate. Why? Hillarycare and Obamacare. Virulent opposition to Hillarycare triggered the Gingrich Revolution in 1994, and Obamacare reignited intense voter opposition to the president’s health program and the partisan manner by which the Democrats rammed it through.

Many of these newly elected Republicans are radicals, unwilling to compromise. Both sides bear major responsibility for paralyzing the federal government. Neither side will back down. Trading in Hillary for Obama next year is a certain recipe for more of the same.

Both parties deserve the public’s contempt. Yet voters continue to perpetuate the impasse. Banana republic, here we come.

Goldman worked on Capitol Hill and at the National Institutes of Health. He has retired to Flat Rock and can be reached at:  EmailMe

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Big quake threatens high court

 Big quake threatens high court

By LEROY GOLDMAN

Our Guest columnist

Times-News 8-2-2015

BlueRidgeNow.com

It’s not hard to imagine the contours of the bitter and divisive 2016 presidential campaign that’s coming. The Democratic nominee, probably Hillary Clinton, and the Republican nominee, probably a conservative man, will relentlessly launch salvo after salvo at each other.

The distortions, dirt and cash invested in this slugfest will disgust most Americans.

For Hillary, the principal line of attack will be aimed at energizing three demographics: women, Latinos and African-Americans. Her stealthy subliminal message will be: A Republican man in the White House ensures your continued subjugation.

For the man bearing the Republican standard, the principal line of attack will be aimed at energizing one demographic: white voters. His stealthy subliminal message will be: Had enough? Take your country back.

Neither campaign camp will talk much, if at all, about the Supreme Court. But when we get to 2024, assuming, as is likely, the 2016 winner is re-elected in 2020, it may well be that an earthquake will have occurred under the high court. Earthquakes produce catastrophic damage.

Each of the past three presidents has successfully nominated two justices to the court.

President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. President

George W. Bush nominated Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. See a pattern?

Today’s court is precariously and closely balanced. To oversimplify it some, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan are liberal. Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Alito are conservative. Roberts and Anthony Kennedy are unpredictable.

2 of 3

And, although there are cases where the court’s rulings are unanimous or where the justices rule in ways that do not align neatly with their political philosophy, it is also true that, in major cases that have commanded riveting national attention, this court has frequently sorted itself out based upon political ideology.

We can see this pattern of bloc voting by the four liberals and three conservatives in eight major cases since 2012.

Three such cases involved existential challenges to Obamacare concerning the individual mandate, reproductive rights and subsidies. They were National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., and King v. Burwell.

The other five cases, all equally controversial, involved Equal Employment Opportunity and university admissions policy, Schuette v. Coalition to defend affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County v. Holder, congressional gerrymandering, Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, the Clean Air Act, Michigan v. EPA, Obergefell v. Hodges over same-sex marriage.

The only divergence from this repetitive pattern of liberal/conservative bloc voting in these eight cases was in Schuette, in which Breyer broke from the liberals and joined the conservatives. However, in so doing, he made it clear that he did not adopt their reasoning. Thus, his outlier vote amounted to a distinction without a difference in the basic pattern of ideological bloc voting.

It’s naïve to assume this pattern of bloc voting is random. If not, it raises the question with respect to whether these seven justices decide major cases based upon their political philosophy and then simply reason backward in their written opinions in order to disguise what amounts to an a priori opinion.

If so, the court not only undermines the legitimacy of its being, it also fosters the polarization of the process by which nominations to the court are made by the president and acted upon by the Senate.

3 of 3

Regardless of what accounts for the justice’s voting behavior, you can be sure that the next president will be clear about how the court has ruled in high-profile cases, how closely balanced the current court is, and how crucial future nominations are.

Assuming the next president is re-elected in 2020, by 2024 Ginsburg will be 91, Kennedy and Scalia will be 88, and Breyer will be 86. Thus, the next president is likely to nominate at least four justices to the high court.

It’s the opportunity to recast the court in ideological concrete for decades going forward. The temptation for the next president and her/his allies in the Senate to go for broke will be irresistible. This danger of overreach is considerably more likely if Hillary Clinton is elected president and the Democrats regain control of the Senate, which is a distinct possibility in 2016. The handwriting is already on the wall.

In 2013, the Democratic Senate employed a controversial procedure known as the “nuclear option” so it could confirm all judicial and executive branch appointments, other than those to the Supreme Court, with only 51 votes rather than the 60-vote supermajority that still applies to most legislation and to nominations to the high court. Thus, expanding the nuclear option to cover nominations to the high court would be the next logical step for a Democratic Senate with Hillary Clinton in the White House.

At Georgetown University in February, Ginsburg was asked when there will be enough women on the court. She said, “When there are nine.” I’m guessing she meant nine who think and would vote like her, Sotomayor and Kagan.

Can you hear the grinding of the tectonic plates under the Supreme Court? It’s an ominous sound, one that holds the potential of eviscerating the court. If it happens, the Supreme Court will have been a willful enabler, not a bystander, of its own demise.

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Can an effective president emerge from this pack?

Can an effective president emerge from this pack?

By

LeRoy Goldman GUEST COLUMNIST

Citizen-Times 7-31-2015

Surely the American people agree that it’s better to have an effective president. Effective is the key word. It’s not the same as experienced, brilliant, campaign savvy, conservative, Republican, liberal or Democrat.

To put a name on it, Harry Truman was an effective president. He did not seek either the vice presidency or the presidency. He had to be talked in to accepting the vice presidential nomination from FDR in 1944. He didn’t graduate from college. He didn’t seek wealth or fame. But Harry Truman was a hell of an effective president. And he had to deal with an oppositional Republican Congress leading up to his stunning election in 1948.

This nation has had too few superbly effective presidents. There are numerous rankings of America’s 43 presidents. My own take in analyzing those rankings leads me to the conclusion that we’ve had 13 highly effective presidents, 14 adequate presidents, and 16 who stunk up the White House. Think of them as “A” students, “C’ students, and “F” students.

Thirteen out of 43 leaves way too much to be desired. This is especially the case, given the fact that since Lincoln, there have only been six highly effective presidents. The last one, Eisenhower, was elected 63 years ago. Sixty-three years isn’t a dry spell, it’s a drought.

The question is whether the 2016 election will provide the American people with an opportunity to break that drought. There are sixteen Republicans and five Democrats seeking the presidency.

Fifteen of the GOP contenders are gasping for air as they scramble to cope with the narcissistic bloviator, Donald Trump, who has surged into the lead and who commands virtually all of the media’s attention. For the Democrats it’s the ever clever, ever secretive, Hillary Clinton, versus the four dwarfs who have relegated themselves to nipping at her heels.

Let’s look at each group and see if in either of them there lurks anyone who could win, and who could break that 63-year drought. A word of warning, given the extreme polarization of the American electorate over the past 20 years, the pickings are slim — mighty slim.

If we allow history to be our guide, the GOP should win the White House next year. After two terms in office the voters usually give the White House back to the opposing party. It happened in 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000 and 2008. But the dramatic polarization of the electorate has worked to the disadvantage of the GOP in the way in which electoral votes for president are amassed. The Democrats have a virtual lock on 247 of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the election. The Republicans have a virtual lock on only 191 electoral votes.

That means that the nominee of the Democratic Party only needs 23 of the remaining 100 electoral votes in the 8 swing states to win.

Alternatively, the GOP nominee needs to sweep virtually all the swing states. Doing that requires winning the moderate and independent voters in those states. And that’s the GOP’s Achilles heel. A hard right-wing conservative Republican can’t win those voters in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. For them, those crucial voters are a bridge too far.

And that lets out most of the 16 Republicans seeking the nomination. The three it does not let out are Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, also of Florida. If elected, each of them has the potential to be an effective president.

Hillary Clinton’s nomination appears inevitable. Assuming she wins both the nomination and the White House, might she too be an effective president? Forget it, not a chance.

Whether anyone likes it or not the Republicans will continue to control the House of Representatives until at least 2022 when House districts are redrawn. So 2022 would be the 6th year of Hillary’s presidency. That fact guarantees gridlock. Clinton knows that. She doesn’t care. For her the quest is to win, and then to be re-elected. The rest of it, the governing, is basically background noise.

One final point. Although it’s counterintuitive, the surge in popular support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump largely comes from the same wellspring. Both men, their dramatic philosophical differences to the contrary notwithstanding, are blunt spoken, truth tellers. Voters get that, and they like it.

They hate the duplicity of most of the others. If Kasich, Bush or Rubio could tap that energy, they would have lightning in a bottle.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was a member of the federal government’s senior executive service for many years. 

The Shadow Welcomes Comments

He can be reached at:  EmailMe