So let's talk about those elections
Nov. 9th, 2017 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexTuesday was very good in a whole lot of places. It was not so great in some others. I understand the "yay, everything is better now" and the "Democrats are back" sentiment, but I think it's both wrong and potentially dangerously overblown. Nate Silver's take is more measured - he argues that these results mean that control of the House is definitely in play for 2018.
Back in July, when I still had energy to blog politics regularly I noted that one of the biggest impacts Trump was having was to put into play seats that would ordinarily have been considered "safe". Republicans four months ago saw no value in putting daylight between themselves and Trump because the Dear Leader's followers would crucify them if they did. Last night we saw normally safe red districts flip blue and we saw people like the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia go down in flames (underperforming his poll numbers) after moving hard right and making support for Trump a feature of their candidacy.
So far this has only been an issue in blue and purple states but I think Silver is right - that amount of math means the Democrats don't have to flip heavily red states in order to take back the House. The problem is that even once Trump is gone - whether that's one, two, or seven more years (let THAT sink in a minute) - there will still be the loyal Trump voters and the forces that propelled him to the Presidency to deal with.
We saw a number of those forces in play this election, ranging from overt racist attacks against Muslim and Asian candidates before the election, to a series of polls that show quite clearly that white men and white women are still voting for Trumpist candidates. If you didn't know before, you should now realize that the Democrats owe their sweep - especially in Virginia - to women of color (mostly black) who turned out in record numbers, who were integral to the candidates' ground games, who ran for office in unprecedented numbers, and who voted for progressive candidates.
And while almost no one was looking, Wisconsin became the 30th state to vote for holding a (US) Constitutional Convention. 34 are needed to convene such a convention, something that has never been done. Article 5 of the US Constitution provides that a Convention can be called by 2/3 of both houses of Congress or by 2/3 of the state legislatures. Since Congress can't get a 2/3 majority to agree on what day of the week it is, very conservative and what we'd now call "alt right" forces have been quietly working on the state level for many years to force this.
Their nominal cover is a national "balanced budget" amendment - itself a terrible and stupid idea (*) - but the real risk is that once you open the process up there are very few limits on what the Convention could do. A few clauses, such as equal representation of the States in Congress, can't be changed this way. But everything else is. Want to see a national Freedom To Impose My Region On You clause? Got you covered. Want to see corporate secrecy and privilege enshrined as the highest law of the land? On it.
Basically every regressive, racist, sexist, you-name-it position that the Alt Right holds dear could be made the unbreakable law of the land. You probably couldn't get slavery reestablished, but going back to a past where queer folk were denied rights is completely believable if this thing happens because it's being driven and funded by people like the John Birch society. If you think they're not capable of packing the Constitutional Convention with their people you are foolishly naive, imo.
In theory, anything this Convention proposed would still need to be ratified by 3/4 of the states (in their legislatures) but Congress can get around that by authorizing state-level conventions. In either case, all the states get to do is vote yes or no - the text issued by the Constitutional Convention is immutable.
There are also some whacky corner cases that nobody knows how to deal with, such as what happens if the Convention issues incompatible or contradictory amendments. In the past this has been dealt with by having new Amendments explicitly address the conflicts, as when the 21st Amendment explicitly reversed the 18th Amendment, ending the US Prohibition era. In a world where multiple amendments are circulating there may be an incentive to delay ratification of an Amendment, in order to ensure that it supersedes the contradictory rival.
(*) If people want to know why I think this is so I'll expound in a separate entry but this wall of text is already long enough.
Back in July, when I still had energy to blog politics regularly I noted that one of the biggest impacts Trump was having was to put into play seats that would ordinarily have been considered "safe". Republicans four months ago saw no value in putting daylight between themselves and Trump because the Dear Leader's followers would crucify them if they did. Last night we saw normally safe red districts flip blue and we saw people like the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia go down in flames (underperforming his poll numbers) after moving hard right and making support for Trump a feature of their candidacy.
So far this has only been an issue in blue and purple states but I think Silver is right - that amount of math means the Democrats don't have to flip heavily red states in order to take back the House. The problem is that even once Trump is gone - whether that's one, two, or seven more years (let THAT sink in a minute) - there will still be the loyal Trump voters and the forces that propelled him to the Presidency to deal with.
We saw a number of those forces in play this election, ranging from overt racist attacks against Muslim and Asian candidates before the election, to a series of polls that show quite clearly that white men and white women are still voting for Trumpist candidates. If you didn't know before, you should now realize that the Democrats owe their sweep - especially in Virginia - to women of color (mostly black) who turned out in record numbers, who were integral to the candidates' ground games, who ran for office in unprecedented numbers, and who voted for progressive candidates.
And while almost no one was looking, Wisconsin became the 30th state to vote for holding a (US) Constitutional Convention. 34 are needed to convene such a convention, something that has never been done. Article 5 of the US Constitution provides that a Convention can be called by 2/3 of both houses of Congress or by 2/3 of the state legislatures. Since Congress can't get a 2/3 majority to agree on what day of the week it is, very conservative and what we'd now call "alt right" forces have been quietly working on the state level for many years to force this.
Their nominal cover is a national "balanced budget" amendment - itself a terrible and stupid idea (*) - but the real risk is that once you open the process up there are very few limits on what the Convention could do. A few clauses, such as equal representation of the States in Congress, can't be changed this way. But everything else is. Want to see a national Freedom To Impose My Region On You clause? Got you covered. Want to see corporate secrecy and privilege enshrined as the highest law of the land? On it.
Basically every regressive, racist, sexist, you-name-it position that the Alt Right holds dear could be made the unbreakable law of the land. You probably couldn't get slavery reestablished, but going back to a past where queer folk were denied rights is completely believable if this thing happens because it's being driven and funded by people like the John Birch society. If you think they're not capable of packing the Constitutional Convention with their people you are foolishly naive, imo.
In theory, anything this Convention proposed would still need to be ratified by 3/4 of the states (in their legislatures) but Congress can get around that by authorizing state-level conventions. In either case, all the states get to do is vote yes or no - the text issued by the Constitutional Convention is immutable.
There are also some whacky corner cases that nobody knows how to deal with, such as what happens if the Convention issues incompatible or contradictory amendments. In the past this has been dealt with by having new Amendments explicitly address the conflicts, as when the 21st Amendment explicitly reversed the 18th Amendment, ending the US Prohibition era. In a world where multiple amendments are circulating there may be an incentive to delay ratification of an Amendment, in order to ensure that it supersedes the contradictory rival.
(*) If people want to know why I think this is so I'll expound in a separate entry but this wall of text is already long enough.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 03:31 pm (UTC)Some states have issued calls for a Convention to consider (only) a balanced budget amendment. That also has no Constitutional basis and would be immediate grounds for challenging the legitimacy of those states' votes. If those limited calls are thrown out then we may fall below the 2/3rds number again.
And that vastly oversimplifies the current mess. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_applications_for_an_Article_V_Convention) actually has a pretty good list of all the applications and their structures and limitations. Several of the states have made things much more complicated by linking their calls with calls issued in other states, and having disjoint lists. If you take those at face value, the biggest group so far named is 23, well short of 34.
It's completely unclear what happens now. If a CC call is issued and some states go "nope, not going" what actually happens? What happens if some states' delegations show up and say "We're only here to discuss a Balanced Budget Amendment" and some other states say "We're not going to talk about anything but a Right to Life Amendment"? And then they don't vote on each others' amendments. Does the CC have any force if not all 50 states are represented?
We theoretically went 'round this bend two years ago when Michigan passed its call - by some methods of counting that made them the 34th. Boehner, then Speaker of the House - got a lot of pressure to issue the call at that time and didn't do so. Here's a short news story from that time: https://www.newsmax.com/US/constitutional-convention-Boehner-balanced-budget/2014/04/11/id/565155/
The Constitution also doesn't say how the CC would be composed. There are a number of proposals floating around that include fixed representation (e.g. two per state) and proportional (e.g. number of Senators + number of Representatives). All these proposals are limited to representation by the officially recognized States. Picking one method or the other might piss off enough states that they would sue and/or boycott.
I believe both DC and Puerto Rico would have good cases to be made that they deserve representation of some kind at a CC and I would be stunned if a CC was initiated without them and they did not challenge its legitimacy. I don't think they'd win, but I do think it would gum up the works even further.
It almost makes me sad that Scalia is dead. I would dearly love to see the legal backflips he'd have to do in order to rule in some pretend-Originalist way on these matters where the Constitution is clearly silent.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-10 03:35 pm (UTC)