How Democrats can use Trump’s scandal to force the Republicans to reverse the Election.
Not a day goes by without Trump becoming an ever greater burden on the Republican Party. Not only have Democrats been demanding his impeachment for weeks, but leading Republicans supported the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the connection between Russian agents and organized crime, Trump, and other Republican leaders before that occurred on May 17. Despite the appointment of a special prosecutor, the Democrats have the ability to not merely force Trump and Pence out of office, but compel the Republicans to effectively reverse the 2016 election by replacing Trump with a Democrat, and putting a liberal majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
As has been wisely related, the appointment of a special prosecutor may be exactly the wrong way to get rid of Trump and Trumpism; slowing the investigation while concealing the most shocking discoveries in secrecy and rumor. Ultimately, a special prosecutor might decide that, although probable cause exists to suspect Trump of crimes like espionage, the evidence is not strong enough to get a conviction.
Removing Trump from the presidency, and replacing him with another Republican conservative, is just as self-defeating for Democrats. Whether that replacement is vice-president Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, or as explained by Free California Journal, Senate President Pro Tempore, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the chief executive of the United States will remain a conservative extremist, exactly the kind of leader that a plurality of American voters chose not to empower.
If history is any guide, few things are worse for a majority party in mid-term elections than having just pardoned a president who has just resigned. In the 1974 elections, conducted two months after never-elected president Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, Democrats gained 43 seats in Congress, three U.S. Senate positions, and even four governorships changed hands. In 1976, the Democrats turned out another Republican congressman, and won the presidency.
Given that experience, the best plan for Democrats is to force the Republicans to give into Trump’s demands for a full pardon in return for his resignation from the Presidency. Although Trump is not demanding a pardon, he will likely do so — at least privately — when he begins to consider resigning.
Trump will be particularly determined to exact a pardon from the new President — whomever that is — once he accepts that he has already been indicted by at least one grand jury for crimes that could put him in prison for life. Indeed, recent news reports indicate that Trump has already been indicted for conspiracy with Russian mobsters, but it has been sealed to avoid a constitutional crisis between the Executive Branch and federal prosecutors. In short, without a pardon, Trump could face immediate arrest and a humiliating perp-walk the minute he leaves office.
Of course, the Democrats should not just flatly refuse to help Republicans remove Trump. Although they can and should continue to demand Trump’s impeachment, they should also demand that the results of the 2016 election be effectively reversed. This can be achieved by making sure that a reliable Democrat like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama complete the term of Trump, not Pence, Ryan, or Hatch. In addition, either Trump’s appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch must resign from the Court, and Merrick Garland must be sworn in without further delay, or Congress must enlarge the Supreme Court to 11 justices, and agree to confirm the people the new Democratic president nominates to the Court.
A “re-vote” is unnecessary because Clinton not only won the popular vote, but among the candidates not disqualified by colluding with foreign adversaries, she also won the electoral college vote. Therefore, Clinton should be declared president by a tally of 227–7, with all electoral votes for Trump disqualified.
As we all know, when a runner in a race is disqualified, the fastest runner not disqualified receives the trophy. The race is not re-run. By the same reasoning, Clinton should not be required to conduct a new contest for the presidency. The votes are in, Trump is disqualified, Clinton wins.
Specifically, Pence would resign as vice-president, Trump would pardon Pence, Trump would then appoint Clinton, and then Trump would resign before Clinton pardoned him.
As an alternative to replacing Trump with Clinton, a former president like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton could take over. There are no shortage of Democratic leaders qualified to take over as president, from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to former Vice-President Al Gore. From the Republican perspective, the major advantage of agreeing to install Obama or Bill Clinton is that neither man would be eligible to run for election as President in 2020, under the 22nd amendment.
As for the Supreme Court, it is settled that the size of the U.S. Supreme Court can be changed by federal law. Although the U.S. Supreme Court began with only six justices when it was first formed by the Constitution, it has had as many 10 justices by 1863, was shrunk to 7, and then set at 9 in 1869.
Although the famous “Court-Packing” scheme that Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to pass in 1937 could have enlarged the Court to as large as 15, the plan was never approved. At any event, adding two justices to the Court to balance out Gorsuch is a reasonable way to solve the extraordinary problems that Trump has caused. The Court would also operate more efficiently and be able to handle more cases with two more members.
Although reversing the effect of the 2016 elections would be a high price to demand from the Republicans for Democratic cooperation in removing Trump and Pence without first promising them pardons, GOP leaders have little choice. Without Democratic votes, they would have to get the votes of all but 20 Republican members just to pass the articles of impeachment. Once the House approved the bill of impeachment, the Republicans would not be able to amass the two-thirds Senate majority needed to remove Trump or Pence from office without at least 15 votes from Democrats and Independents like Bernie Sanders.
Given that Trump’s job-approval rating among Republicans is still an astronomical 84%, the Republican party would tear itself apart if its leaders needed nearly the vote of every Republican member of Congress and every Republican senator to free themselves from the Trump-Pence administration. Yet letting the crippled Trump-Pence administration to keep limping into 2018 and even 2020 would not only lead to major Democratic gains, but by 2020, th power to prosecute Trump, Pence, Ryan, McConnell — every guilty Republican — to the fullest extent of the law.
The only question is whether Democrats are willing to be positively Machiavellian about impeaching Trump-Pence. However, they have nothing to lose, as long as they are open about what they are doing.
