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.

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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.

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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. 

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GOP's ‘repeal and replace’ is a loser in 2016 election

GOP's ‘repeal and replace’ is a loser in 2016 election 

BY LEROY GOLDMANThe Charlotte Observer

Special to the ObserverJuly 1, 2015

In 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Court's four liberal justices and saved Obamacare's centerpiece: the compulsory individual mandate. Last week Roberts, along with sometimes conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined the liberals again to pull Obamacare's fat from the judicial fire.

This time the Court preserved the crucial subsidies that most individuals enrolled in Obamacare receive. In the current case, King v. Burwell, petitionersargued that the Act precluded subsidies in 34 states where the federal government, not the state, established the Exchange. The Court upheld the subsidies in all states even though the act says in plain English that subsidies were authorized in exchanges “established by the state.”

Not surprisingly, Republicans and Conservatives have assaulted the Court's majority opinion as deeply flawed and highly political. And they have repeated their rallying cry to repeal and replace Obamacare.

But here is what those same Republicans and conservatives have not told you. They have not said that they are relieved that the Court ruled the way it did. “What?” you say. “That's impossible!” Wrong.

If the Court had struck down the subsidies in the 34 states in which the exchanges had been established by the federal government, 6.5 million Americans in those states would have found themselves between a rock and a hard place. With their subsidies terminated, most of them would no longer be able to afford their Obamacare coverage.

The fact of the matter is that the Republicans in Congress did not have an effective alternative to cope with the disruption that would have adversely affected millions of their constituents had the Supreme Court killed the subsidies.

The High Court's ruling has let the GOP off the hook, but only temporarily. It's a certainty that the GOP's standard bearer for the presidency in 2016 will campaign on driving a stake into the heart of Obamacare. It's equally certain that the Democratic nominee, presumably Hillary Clinton, will urge the nation to elect her so that Obamacare can be retained and improved.

Thus, it will be the 2016 presidential campaign where the rubber meets the road for the Republicans. Their nominee will have to put up or shut up on what their replacement for Obamacare would be. But the truth is that the GOP has no replacement. It only has fragments.

Some Republicans, the radical right wingers, will simply favor the obliteration of Obamacare. Others in the GOP will trot out a list of specific, competing fragments that will include tax credits for private health insurance, expanded use of Health Savings Accounts, a catastrophic health insurance program, medical malpractice reform and/or allowing each of the 50 states to do their own thing. Call that last one the States Rights option. It's a cop out.

It’s a virtual certainty the GOP standard bearer will be cornered without a viable alternative to Obamacare. That will be music to Hillary Clinton's ears. She will say Obamacare is working and needs to be improved. She will say the Republican Party has never supported health care reform and intends to destroy Obamacare.

The GOP loses that argument, and with it they lose the White House.

But there is a way to let the American people determine what kind of health insurance system they want. What if the GOP promised to enact an alternative to Obamacare that enables American people to freely choose between their plan and Obamacare? If the GOP built a better mousetrap, the American people would do to Obamacare what the GOP can't – reject it in favor of something vastly better.

That better mousetrap has been around more than half a century. Prior to Obamacare it was the largest health insurance program in the nation. It currently covers more than 8 million Americans. It offers its members a choice every year among a variety of fee for service and HMO plans. The fee for service plans enable one to choose their own doctor and hospital. Like Obamacare, its premiums are subsidized.

The plan is a working partnership between the nation's private health insurance companies, Blue Cross, and the federal government. Prior to Obamacare, it covered all of the members of Congress, including all the Republicans. It's name is the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP).

Giving the American people a choice between Obamacare and FEHBP is real, can be understood by average Americans and will enable them to choose the program that best suits their needs. It’s a winner – for everybody.

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The Obamacare war is not over

“When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean —neither more or less.”

 The Obamacare war is not over

The  Asheville Citizen-Times

LeRoy Goldman GUEST COLUMNIST 

2:01 p.m. EDT June 26, 2015

Last Thursday, President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, Obamacare, survived at the Supreme Court — yet again. Another crucial battle has been won by the president. But the outcome of the war over Obamacare remains in doubt. Indeed, the administration’s victory at the Supreme Court may well turn out to be a blessing in disguise for those who oppose the law, a majority of the American people.

In 2012 the constitutionality of the act’s centerpiece, the individual mandate, was challenged in a case, NFIB v. Sebelius, decided by the Supreme Court.

That June the court ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause, but that it was constitutional as a tax. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four conservatives on the court respecting the Commerce Clause, but then turned 180 degrees and joined the four liberals on the court to save the Affordable Care Act by deeming the mandate to be a permissible tax.

The ACA survived, but the onslaught against it did not abate. Comes now the current case the Supreme Court decided last week, King v. Burwell. This case does not challenge the constitutionality of Obamacare. Rather, it is a case of statutory interpretation that turns upon just four words in the statute, “established by the state.” The question before the high court was whether in order for a person to receive a subsidy in the form of a tax credit from the Internal Revenue Service to help pay for his health insurance under Obamacare the state had to have established the exchange. This is vital because 34 states have refused to establish exchanges. In those states the exchanges were established by the federal government.

King’s lawyers argued that in those 34 states the subsidies are impermissible under the statute, and so too are the IRS regulations that permit them. The administration’s response to the court basically was, “nonsense”. They argued that the subsidies in all states were legal and necessary in order for the act to work, as they argued, Congress intended.

Both sides understood that terminating the subsidies in so many states would likely precipitate a death spiral for Obamacare. That’s because, absent subsidies, many individuals would drop their insurance. Those remaining would be older and sicker, and that would force sharp increases in insurance premiums that would quickly destabilize the entire system.

Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined the four liberals on the court to hand the administration a 6-3 victory, essentially arguing that the words, “established by the state,” when taken in the context of the entire law mean “established by the state or the federal government.”

On May 12, 2015, Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking before the Phoenix Federalist Society said, “the most important element of a good dissent is a really stupid majority decision.” He knew then what we know now. Scalia’s dissent in King isn’t just good, it’s scathingly good. In it he dismembers Roberts’ majority opinion.

Scalia states, “Words no longer have meaning if an exchange that is not established by a state is ‘established by the state.” Regarding the possibility of a Congressional drafting error, Scalia says, “it is entirely plausible that tax credits were restricted to state exchanges deliberately in order to encourage states to establish their own exchanges. We therefore have no authority to dismiss the terms of the law as a drafting fumble.”

And then Scalia addresses how the court’s decision undermines the doctrine of separation of powers. He says their decision, “reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery... More importantly, the court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men.”

The court has unwisely chosen to permit the IRS regulations respecting subsidies to rely upon the illogic of Humpty Dumpty who said, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean —neither more or less.”

In the 2012 Obamacare decision, Roberts said, “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” Yet that is precisely what he has done in this case.

Look for it to have a boomerang effect. Now the Republicans in Congress will not have to try to fix Obamacare had the court ruled in favor of King. Instead it will become an all or nothing, zero-sum game, determined by who wins in 2016.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was a member of the federal government’s senior executive service for many years, and can be contacted at:  EmailMe

Honor vets: Abolish the VA | The Charlotte Observer

Honor vets: Abolish the VA

The Charlotte Observer

By:  LeRoy Goldman

Special To The Observer

June 3, 2015

Americans have no faith in socialized medicine, a system in which the federal government owns the hospitals, employs the doctors and nurses and pays the bills. Yet the United States has a vast system of socialized medicine. Its name is the VA!

Would you trade your health care for the VA? Of course, you wouldn’t. Why then do we dishonor veterans by forcing them into a failed system that we would never choose? And how do we right this wrong?

The Department of Veterans Affairs is an entrenched, Jabba the Hutt, behemoth. It is the second largest federal agency with more than 200,000 employees. Only the Department of Defense is larger. It operates more than 1,000 health-care facilities, including 163 hospitals. The Obama administration is requesting that Congress appropriate $168.8 billion for the VA for the coming fiscal year. The request states, “the budget supports veterans, their families and survivors in receiving the highest quality benefits and services which they earned through their sacrifice and service to the nation.”

That’s a lie. The shocking revelations about the VA over the past year, while the worst yet, are not new. The VA’s current problems are not an aberration from a long-standing track record of competence and accomplishment. The truth is that the VA has had a deeply troubled history since the Revolutionary War.

A century of incompetence

Here’s a sampler from a CNN report a year ago by Michael Pearson.

In 1921 Congress created the Veterans Bureau to aid World War I veterans. By 1930 it was so corrupt it was abolished.

In the 1940s and the 1950s Government Commissions found widespread waste, and inadequate care in the VA.

In the 1970s the VA refused to recognize and treat exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange by American troops in Vietnam.

Since 2000 the VA has spun out of control. The backlog of unprocessed disability claims has skyrocketed. Sensitive records of more than 25 million veterans have been stolen. The VA has botched colonoscopies, thus exposing veterans to hepatitis and HIV. Veterans have died from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease in a Pennsylvania VA hospital. In 2012 VA cemeteries were faulted for misidentifying veteran’s grave sites.

In 2014 at least 59 veterans died because of treatment delays in VA hospitals, preventable delays that were concealed by VA managers so they could appear to be performing at a high level. At the same time, 986 of the top 1,000 federal employees receiving bonuses were VA physicians. Sound right?

The construction of a new VA hospital in Denver is now in limbo because its estimated costs have trebled to $1.73 billion.

New secretary not enough

It’s obvious the VA and the corrupt culture it has bred over decades can’t be fixed by simply appointing a new cabinet secretary. Expecting the president or Congress to correct these systemic problems is foolhardy. If either of them had the will to fix this mess, it would have happened long ago.

The fix, if it is to happen, will have to come from veterans. It will require them to do that which is unnatural for them. Veterans have been taught to respect authority and the chain of command. But now they need to challenge the VA’s authority because it has turned its back on them and their families. It’s what happens when you combine greed, incompetence, sloth and criminal behavior in an enormous federal bureaucracy.

The nation’s veterans need to organize marches in every congressional district on Veterans Day this November. They should call for abolishing the VA’s system of socialized medicine. They should demand a card, just like a Medicare card, that will enable all of them to receive their medical care where and from whom they wish. If they march nationwide in large numbers with that one message, the VA is doomed. Few congressman, senators or presidential candidates will dare risk that kind of organized voter wrath in 2016.

Its work can be absorbed

In 1959 the VA had the temerity to adopt as its motto a line from President Lincoln’s majestic Second Inaugural Address in 1865, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”

The VA’s willful failure to live up to that motto amply justifies its demise. Most of its facilities can be absorbed by academic medical centers and community hospitals. Many of its employees, the honest and competent, can be reemployed by those entities.

If you want to obliterate a reckless bureaucracy and unchecked federal spending, abolish the VA before it kills again.

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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The 'blue wall' can be penetrated

The 'blue wall' can be penetrated

By LeROY GOLDMAN

Hendersonville Times-News

Be Our Guest columnist

Published: Tuesday, May 19, 2015 at 4:30 a.m.

The outcomes of American presidential elections are frequently predictable. Like a pendulum, they swing from one party to the other, especially after a president has been twice elected.

The Democrats recaptured the White House in 1960, following Eisenhower; in 1976, following Nixon-Ford; in 1992, following Reagan-Bush; and in 2008, following George W. Bush. The Republicans won in 1952, following Roosevelt-Truman; in 1968, following Kennedy-Johnson; in 1980, following Carter; and in 2000, following Clinton.

Thus, it would seem that 2016 is advantage Republicans. There are abundant data that point to such an outcome.

President Barack Obama is perceived by a very large swath of the electorate as one of the most polarizing presidents in the nation’s history. His approval number, while somewhat improved, hovers at an anemic 50 percent. A very large majority of the American people believe the country is on the wrong track.

All of the foregoing raises an intriguing question: Why is Hillary Clinton seeking the presidency when it would seem she is a likely loser? After all, regardless of what you think of her, she’s no dummy.

In fact, she believes she will win. And there is a very good chance that she’s right. The reason she may be right has everything to do with the advantage the Democrats have in the way the Electoral College operates. It’s what the Democrats call their “blue wall.”

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In all but two states, Maine and Nebraska, the candidate that carries a state wins all of that state’s electoral votes. This gives the Democrats a substantial advantage in amassing the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House. They basically have a lock on 19 states and the District of Columbia with 247 electoral votes, leaving them only 23 votes shy of victory.

The GOP has a lock on only 191 electoral votes. There are 100 electoral votes in the eight swing states of Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

The swing states of Virginia (13 votes), New Hampshire (four votes) and Nevada (six votes) have been trending increasingly Democratic. Their 23 votes plus the guaranteed 247 are all the Democrats need for victory. Put another way, the Republicans can hold their red states and win all the remaining swing states, and they will still lose the election.

And now you see the seemingly impregnable strength of the Democrats’ blue wall. It’s Hillary’s ace in the hole. It explains why she is running and expects to win.

But the blue wall can be breached. Here’s how:

Let’s go back to the two states, Maine and Nebraska, that don’t award electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Instead, they award electoral votes on the basis of which candidate carries each congressional district. Thus, the winner-take-all rule in those two states does not apply unless one of the candidates carries all of the congressional districts in that state. Maine passed its law in 1972, and Nebraska followed suit in 1996. It’s perfectly legal.

However, Maine and Nebraska’s laws are a distinction without a difference because the Democratic presidential nominee always carries both of Maine’s districts, and the Republican nominee carries all three of Nebraska’s congressional districts.

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But what if a few other states, the right few, chose to pass legislation that would apportion its electoral votes by congressional district just like Maine and Nebraska?

If the blue wall states of Michigan and Wisconsin were to pass such legislation, it would change everything. It would blow a hole in the blue wall. In both states, Republicans control the governor’s mansion and both chambers of the state legislature, so they have the power to get such a bill passed.

In those two states, the Republicans control 14 of 22 congressional districts. It’s reasonable to assume that the GOP presidential nominee would carry those 14 districts. That would reduce the Democrats’ lock on electoral votes from 247 to 233, and it would increase the GOP’s total from 191 to 205.

The GOP also controls the levers of power in Nevada. Changing the law there would likely split its electoral vote 3-3, raising the aggregate totals to 236 for the Democrats and 208 for the Republicans.

Now the remaining blue states plus the swing states of Virginia and New Hampshire, which have been trending Democratic, are no longer sufficient for a Democratic victory! Changing the law in the three aforementioned states would help level the Electoral College playing field for 2016.

Oh, you say, the Democrats would respond by doing the same thing in other states, thus nullifying the GOP gains that can be made in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Not true. Try to find a state that presents that analogous advantage to the Democrats. There is none!

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None exists because of the enormous gains the Republicans made in gubernatorial and state legislative contests nationwide in the 2010 and 2014 elections. Thus, in every state where the Democrats could improve their electoral vote count by having legislation in place like that of Maine or Nebraska, their path forward is blocked by the fact that the GOP controls the governor’s mansion, the state legislature or both in all those states.

Elections have consequences. What remains to be seen is whether the Republicans are capable of acting in their own interest. Hillary’s betting they’re not.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:  EmailMe

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