The Threat to Our Democracy

I have a simple view to share regarding the current government shutdown. I’ve resisted making comments on the matter for now because of the fact that, quite frankly, I didn’t expect that it would take so long for things to be put to an end. We have troops in Afghanistan, we’re trying to manage a very volatile Middle East situation right now, the economy has been struggling to return to normalcy… shutting down the government and threatening the debt ceiling is not something reasonable people do at a time like this.

Fareed Zakaria, a columnist and host of a CNN Sunday morning show, struck a critical point leading off his show this week. He said that what is at stake now is not just a question of Obamacare, or some tax language, or debt and deficits. It’s not about Republicans versus Democrats, or Obama versus Boehner. It’s not about Ted Cruz, or the Tea Party, or any of that nonsense. It’s about our democracy. It’s about how a democracy functions, and the consequences of it failing to function.

Did you know that we the people don’t pick the president? While yes, technically we vote for who we want to be president, and that’s essentially how it works out, we don’t actually vote for the president. The Electoral College works that we tell the electors who we want to be chosen as president. They then come together and, if all works right, follow the will of the people, thereby electing to the presidency the person picked by their relative constituency.

But what if an Elector decides they won’t honor the will of the people and pledges to another candidate? And if that change turns an election? That is possible. It is possible in the very next election, even though it has never happened before.

Why? Because why the Constitution sets up the Electoral College, and sets up the Electors, it does not bind the Electors to the will of the people. In other words, even if Iowa, Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, etc, votes one way, some or all of their Electors could vote for someone else. And it would be completely legal. Congress then has to count/certify those votes in a joint session. In that session any member can challenge a state’s vote. In theory there would be any reason given, and the election of the president could be held up indefinitely.

But while this is legal, it is not what we expect of our democracy. Our system of the Electoral College works because there is an implicit trust that the Electors and the Congress will not violate that trust and affirm their own personal feelings. There is an understanding that they will support the will of the state they represent, the fidelity of the process, and not stand on their own little soapbox or grandstand for their own gains or ideology.

The same thing generally applies to our government. We have a process for how laws work and how you change those laws. A bill is introduced in one chamber of Congress. That bill is debated, tweaked, debated, on and on, until it is passed. It’s then sent to the other chamber where that process repeats until a bill is passed out of that chamber. Then, the two chambers appoint equal numbers of conferees to sit together, work out a singular bill, which then has to pass both chambers. That passed bill gets signed into law, and that’s that.

If you don’t like the law, you think it’s illegal, you have two options. You can challenge it in court, as has been done with the Affordable Care Act, where the Supreme Court checks to see if the law violates any Constitutional edicts. If that isn’t the case, as the Supreme Court did rule with the ACA, then the only option left is to try to repeal that law with another law. The House has tried that, more than 40 times in fact, but that bill could not get passed in the Senate, would likely be vetoed by the President, and there is not nearly enough votes to override a veto.

This is how democracy works. Actions are decided by votes. The results of old votes are changed by another vote. We the American people have an implicit trust that Congress will adhere to these rules not just in letter but in spirit as well. There is a trust that the Congress will do what it must to keep the government up and running, and that we will pay our debts – all of them – without delay or undue consternation. We do not expect that members of Congress will tie the failure to fulfill their agenda under the normal process to shutdown the government or default on the debt.

We have a Congress right now that is failing to honor the Constitution they supposedly hold dear.  Have they explicitly violated the Constitution? No. The Constitution nor any law says that one tenth of the power of government cannot force the government to shut down by way of threatening to ruin the careers of their colleagues and forcing the acceptance of their desire to undo a law they don’t like. There is no violation of the law, but there is a severe undermining of the democratic process.

You see, while the law doesn’t ban what they are doing, there are a lot of things that the law doesn’t ban. However, we like to believe that we are creatures of our better nature. We would like to believe that there are certain things which are just so obviously wrong that we don’t need to formulate a law just to affirm that you can’t do them.

However, there are members of the Republican Party right now that are content with violating the trust, that tradition, and that expectation. They don’t much care that they are violating that trust, because as far as they’re concerned they aren’t violating any law. And even if they had to they probably would try to violate the rules if it was to make their point.

The damage they are doing is not to themselves, or to the Democratic Party, but to the democratic system. Because the message they are sending is, “we don’t care what the rules say, that a matter was settled by election, that we don’t have the means to do what we want by way of the established procedure – we will force you all to abide by our demands even if we have to threaten to make yours and the lives of people all around the world miserable to do it”.

That is where we are right now. They may try to dress it up in whatever clever or cynical dressing they want, they can feign indignation and innocence under claims that all they want is a negotiation. The reality is, however, they allowed the government to be shut down because they couldn’t get the votes they wanted to put an end to the Affordable Care Act. They continue to block the reopening of the government because they can’t get the votes they need to end the ACA. And if they intend to continue following Ted Cruz into the abyss, they will let our nation become a deadbeat for the first time in our history by not increasing the debt ceiling because they can’t get the votes they need to end the ACA.

The president will not negotiate with the Republicans on these two issues, nor should he. Term it breaking the fever, or breaking the habit, or whatever you would like to call it. A precedent cannot be set where one group of lawmakers can feel as though they have the right to force the government into default, into shutdown, whenever they cannot get the legislative outcome that they like. Because here is the reality; a budget comes up every year, and the debt ceiling will come up again at least a handful of times in the next three years. Are we to tolerate this nonsense again then too? If they’re still disgruntled about the ACA, or some other law out there, are we to expect that they will hold up the election of the next president if that person doesn’t promise to adhere to some position or another?

Democracy is slow and it is messy. It is frustrating and not always does it satisfy the needs, wants, or expectations that some place on it. But it is a solemn process that requires all participants to recognize that one has bounds within which they are to operate. They may not be strapped with explosives, or holding a firearm, but they are holding the nation, and with the debt ceiling they are holding the world, hostage to their demands. It is not right and it should not be tolerated.

They should not be rewarded with a “get”. They don’t deserve an escape hatch or a lifeline after blindly and idiotically forcing our nation to endure all of this. What they need is to simply end this. They do not deserve nor should they be holding out, for a way that they can be allowed to save face for their voters back home who may otherwise realize that their elected officials threw them all into traffic during rush hour. You don’t wreck your rental car and then blame the rental agency for renting you the car, or complain that it costs so much to repair it, or get mad at the person you hit that they were there or that you have to pay their repair bills or medical bills, or that they called the cops on you. YOU wrecked the car. You are responsible. Now stop the complaining, the whining, and do what you are supposed to do.

There should be no negotiations with the Republicans. They want to talk about the debt, deficit, budget, the ACA, entitlements, energy, anything else, there is a forum for that. And if you can’t get the support needed to pass whatever measures you want, then unfortunately you will have to work a little harder to get the consensus you need. But now is not the time to have those debates. Open the government, allow the government the flexibility it needs to pay the bills you yourselves have racked up. Argue about everything else later. That’s how our government functions – that’s how a normal, working, effective, government functions. You aren’t acting like spoiled children – you’re acting like completely moronic adults. Learn what your job is and how to do it, or leave.