The Cavalry Will Not Get Here In Time

During this past week, both President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald J. Trump became their respective party’s presumptive nominees for president. Both have accumulated enough delegates from the primaries already completed to clinch the nominations at this summer’s political conventions.

Get over it. It happened. There is no wishing it away. There is no changing it. Now we have to deal with it. Although the election is still about eight months away and a lot can happen in that period of time, all of us need to assume that one or the other of them will be elected (actually, reelected).

What makes this election different from any I have experienced, and I would venture, different than any since the Civil War, is that this is not the typical “horse race” based on policies or popularity. This is not even a referendum on our current president as so many elections in the past have been. This is purely and simply a decision for our nation as to whether we want to continue as a democratic republic or become a fiefdom for a wannabe autocrat in the nature of Hungary or even Russia. Yes. I truly believe it is that bad and I do not consider such statements to be hyperbolic or a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Every day that Trump is campaigning or otherwise publicly speaking he tells us that in fact, he will be an autocrat. He publicly states that he will be a dictator on day one.

Some pundits may declare that our political parties have been “polarized” for the last 30 years or more and that we are just seeing more of the same. That may be a correct statement for previous elections, but today our country is not polarized. There is one party that is trying to govern, a bit left of center but more mainstream than not, and one party that is just crazy, dysfunctional, and radicalized. For those keeping score at home, more and more “normal” Republicans are retiring at the end of their terms or quitting before their terms are over because they cannot take the MAGA dysfunction and radicalization driving the Congress today. The latest is Republican Congressman Ken Buck (CO) who just announced that he is leaving at the end of of next week. Representative Buck is one of the most conservative Republicans in the House and according to his statements, his last straws were the impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Defense Alejandro Mayorkas and the continued attempt to impeach President Biden, neither effort includes any evidence of wrongdoing to support impeachment under the Constitution. (You may have noted that the Republicans’ two top “witnesses” against President Biden have been disgraced. One fled the country as he was about to be arrested for various financial crimes and the other was arrested for being an agent of Russian intelligence. You just can’t make this stuff up.)

President Biden currently is running behind Trump in national polls. Two things come to mind. One, national polls really are not relevant because the elections this century have revolved around five or six key states. Whoever wins those, wins the election. Since President George H.W. Bush won election in 1988, Republicans have only won the popular vote for president once — President George W. Bush in 2004. (The Electoral College in action!) Thus those states take on enormous importance and tend to be the focus of campaigns for both parties. Second, at this point in time, people are going to express their unhappiness about anything in their lives. When pollsters ask them about their presidential choices at this point, most voters are expressing their opinions about their perceived quality of life — which is important and politicians need to respond to that — but it is not necessarily who they will actually vote for in the election. In my view, when it comes time to mark their ballots, given all that they know about Trump now and how much they will observe about his maniacal behavior in the months to come, more people will vote for Mr. Biden than for Trump.

In a free and fair election.

Which we have no guarantee will happen. In 2020 Trump and the men and women in his gang tried their hardest to stage a coup through many avenues of attack, culminating in the storming of the capitol. Their intention was clear — negate the results of a free and fair election and keep Trump in power. There is no reason to believe that they will not try again — probably through voter suppression, intimidation and outright violence — and now they have all of their lessons learned from their first try. At a rally in Ohio on 16 March Trump proclaimed that “if I don’t get elected its gonna be a bloodbath. That’s the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”

The guardrails of our democracy held in 2020, even if only barely. The brave Republican men and women in office that saved the day then have largely been replaced by stooges loyal to Trump. More troubling, those of us that thought the judiciary would work in accordance with the laws of our land to hold Trump accountable in a timely way are going to be sadly mistaken. There are lots of fingers that can be pointed in lots of directions, starting with Attorney General Merrick Garland who delayed and delayed (presumably hoping it would just all go away) authorizing an investigation into the lawless behavior of Trump. Once the investigations began and grand juries returned indictments, the delay game began. And Trump is winning that game.

If any of us were innocent of crimes, then I presume we would want to quickly go before a judge in a fair trial and clear our names. Not with Trump. To date, I have not noticed that his legal teams are arguing against the facts, presenting alternative explanations or otherwise trying to prove his innocence. Instead, it is a constant stream of motions, many of them legally dubious, that drag on and on. The play is simple. Delay until Trump is elected and then he will pardon himself or otherwise create a Constitutional crisis (and probably an actual physical crisis) if the courts continue to pursue holding him accountable. And so far, even as I understand that everyone has a right to contest the charges against them, the judiciary has allowed him to get away with it. Under the Speedy Trial Act of 1974, as amended in 1979, with exceptions, a trial is to start no earlier than 30 days after an indictment and no later than 70 days. Trump and his lawyers have managed to work around this, seemingly at will as judges bend over backwards to appear unbiased, even as you or I would not be afforded the same leeway. Trump is using their efforts to appear fair to his advantage in the way that a mob boss would employ all elements at his disposal to intimidate witnesses, judges and other members of the court.

Remember that the right to a speedy trial works both ways. The defendant cannot be held without the processes moving apace but equally important is the fact that the public deserves to have a timely and fair trial. It is vital that voters know before they cast a ballot whether or not one of the candidates is a convicted felon responsible for trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after an election.

In particular, the cases surrounding the events of 6 January 2021 and Trump’s keeping highly classified documents in his beach club in Florida — and trying to obstruct the investigation into that — are moving baffling slow. Starting in December of last year the Supreme Court had the opportunity to review Trump’s claim of absolute immunity. Finally taking the case, they will not hear arguments until 25 April — the last day of the current session. That means that it is likely that a ruling on the claim will not be handed down until June or July. Even then they may rule in a way that returns the case to a lower court for further review. Should the Supreme Court clearly rule this summer, it is still increasingly difficult to get the trial completed before voting starts, given the time that the presiding judge intends to give the Trump team to prepare their defense.

Consider also that in the recent Trump v Anderson case, the Supreme Court eviscerated Article 3 of the 14th Amendment that prohibits an office holder that took an oath to defend the Constitution from holding future office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” On a 9-0 vote they decided that no single state can invoke the amendment and keep someone off the ballot. Fair enough. But digging deeper the vote was actually 5-4 as the majority opinion stated that only a two-thirds vote in the Congress could prohibit an insurrectionist from running for office. To most people, including four Supreme Court justices, that was over reach and not in keeping with the original intent of the amendment. Apparently, it is okay to foment an insurrection to keep oneself in power and then run again to try and do it again, unless Congress overwhelming says no. And oh, by the way, the Supreme Court expedited that hearing and the decision, unlike with the immunity issue.

In Florida the judge presiding over the documents case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida — Judge Aileen Cannon — is taking an unusually long time to move that case forward given that most legal experts opine that the case is the most straightforward of all of those for which Trump was indicted. It is becoming increasingly apparent that she is slow rolling the trial until after the election. (I might speculate that since she has been ruling in Trump’s favor on various motions for over a year now, and since she was appointed by Trump shortly before he left office, it might be that she is auditioning for the Supreme Court under a second Trump term.)

In numerous movies in 1950’s and 60’s westerns it became a cliche that as the beleaguered settlers were running out of ammunition and about to be overrun and killed, bugles would sound and the cavalry would come riding over the hill to save the day. When it comes to holding Trump accountable for his actions and to know whether he is a convicted felon or not before voting, there will be no cavalry riding over the hill to save the day. Not when it comes to the judiciary and not when it comes to Congress. Only we the voters will be able to save our democracy.