The Left Wishes To Fundamentally Transform America - Part II

In today's New York Times is an Op-Ed by regular columnist Jamelle Bouie, titled "The Constitution Is in Tension With Democracy."  When things are not going the way the Left wants, all the rules of the game need to change.  Even the fundamental rules in the Constitution.  Yet, they told us it was Trump who was the dictator, who didn't care about the rules.  

So what are the threats to democracy?  The election deniers, of course.  But only the Republican election deniers.  Not Gore, not Clinton, not Abrams, and not the many others in the Democratic Party.  The other threat to our democracy is the Constitution itself, the very structure of our government.  First, Bouie tells us about the "democratic backsliding of the past six years;" although she is only referring to the Trump years.  Why?  Aside from the fact that the Left hated Trump, there is the assertion that "Donald Trump was selected constitutionally, not elected democratically."  

I get it.  Clinton got nearly 3 million more popular votes than did Trump, but Trump won the electoral college vote and therefore became president.  Many people are unhappy with the fact that we are a republic of 50 states, and not a pure democracy.  I suspect there are some who are even unhappy with our representative form of government in the House.  Those people would like to see the people vote on everything.  

Why do we need an electoral college anyway?  Shouldn't every person's vote count equally?  There are fair arguments to make.  But the other argument is that we are a republic of 50 states.  It would be ridiculous to assert that all 50 states have the same or even similar interests.  How are the interests of those different 50 states best taken into account?  By both the electoral college and the Senate, where each state is represented equally regardless of population.  

Bouie tells us that we have "a system the basic structure of which fuels dysfunction and undermines American democracy, from how it enables minority rule to how it helps inculcate a certain kind of political chauvinism among some of the voters who benefit from lopsided representation in the Senate and the Electoral College."  Well, yes, there is lopsided representation in the Senate and the Electoral College by the smaller states.  

But I cannot help but wonder if that lopsided representation would be of any concern to the Left if it always favored Democrats.  The Left does not ask if our country is best served by a popular vote, which would likely result in the two coasts dictating the outcomes.  Tell me, are the big cities in those coastal states doing so well that we should allow them to set the agenda for the rest of the country?   

Our Constitution has been in effect since 1789.  Of course, some say that is the problem - it is old and outdated.  I hear the same thing said about the Bible.  Our Constitution has the distinction of being the oldest and most enduring governing document on earth.  It has survived a civil war, and numerous other societal challenges.  And it has been amended to meet the needs and the mores of the times.  

But the change that the Left seeks is one that they hope will insure their hold on political power for as long as is possible.  The Constitution, as written, does not do that.  And that is the problem.   

The Left Wishes To Fundamentally Transform America - Part I

You need not take my word for it.  Barack Obama told us back on October 30, 2008, that "we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."  The Left applauded.  The mainstream media was all in.  Then we had the Trump years.  With the Democrats out of power, it was necessary to change the structure of government.  Get rid of the electoral college.  Add states that would be reliably Democratic, in order to increase the number of Democrats in the Senate.  Or, get rid of the Senate altogether.  Pack the Supreme Court.  Term limits for the Justices.  Reduce the Court's jurisdiction.  

Fast forward to now.  The first Monday in October starts a new session of the Supreme Court.  The day prior, on Sunday, October 2, the New York Times had a long editorial titled "The Supreme Court Has A Crisis Of Trust."  We all know why this so-called crisis has suddenly arisen - the Court's decision in Dobbs at the end of the last term, which overturned Roe v. Wade.  If trust in the Court has fallen, it is because papers like the Times and many others in the mainstream media and on the Left have done their best to discredit and malign the Court.

Says the Times:  "The actual cause of its (the Courts) historic unpopularity is no secret.  Over the past several years, the court has been transformed into a judicial arm of the Republican Party...Within four years, the court had a 6-to-3 right-wing supermajority..."  In other words, Trump got to appoint 3 justices to the Court, and the Left cannot tolerate that.  When the Court had 6-to-3 left-wing supermajorities?  No problem.  

At no time does the paper concern itself with whether Roe was decided on solid Constitutional grounds, even though some liberal scholars acknowledged that it was not.  At no time does the paper concern itself with what powers belong to the federal government versus state governments.  The reason, of course, is that the ends justify the means for the Left.  Actual legal and constitutional issues are of no consequence to the Left.   

Here is more from the Times:  "Election deniers in the Republican Party are undermining the integrity of the American electoral system."  If you tell them that Hillary Clinton continues to claim that the 2016 election was stolen from her, that's different.  The same for Stacey Abrams claiming the Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from her.  Then, of course, we had the entire 4 years of the Trump Administration with a large segment of the Democratic Party not only claiming that he was an "illegitimate" president, but trying to remove him from office with their phony Russian collusion story.

The Times:  "Right-wing political violence is a present and growing threat."  Who shot up a Republican Congressional baseball game and nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise?  That would be a left-wing political activist.  What about the threat on the life of Justice Kavanaugh?  And, how about the approximate $2 billion in property damage caused by various left-wing protesters and groups, in the summer of 2020.  Apparently, the Times is not concerned with political violence by Antifa or BLM or other left-wing groups.  

The Times quotes Justice Elena Kagan from a speech given in September at the Northwestern University School of Law:  "When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, when people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society irrespective of the law, that's when there's a problem - and that's when there ought to be a problem."  Shame on Justice Kagan.  Here we have a sitting Justice of the highest court in the land, trying to undermine the legitimacy of that court, for the sole reason that the Dobbs decision did not go as she wanted.  

When Chief Justice John Roberts joined the 4 liberal justices in the initial decision upholding the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), he did so by calling the individual mandate a "tax," which it clearly was not.  The then four liberal justices, including Kagan, made it clear that they  would have upheld the ACA under any legal theory.  In other words, they were willing to act as an "extension of the political process," and support Obama's signature piece of legislation no matter what. 

To this day, I am both amazed and dismayed that so many on the Left simply accept at face value what they read in the New York Times or LA Times or other mainstream papers.