Profiles in Cowardice

 Ben Franklin famously told a citizen in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention had fashioned “a Republic, if you can keep it.”

Nearly nine years ago, Republican politicians, having just lost to Obama/Biden in the Electoral College, floated the idea of, in the future, choosing electors by Congressional District. If that had been done in 2012, Romney/Ryan would have won the Electoral College, even though they lost the popular vote by 3.5 million votes. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/retaining-popular-legitimacy/2013/01/28/eaf15e24-673c-11e2-889b-f23c246aa446_story.html

This idea quickly faded, presumably because Republican politicians were capable of shame and had some respect for majority rule. They chose to keep our democratic republic. 

Four years later, in 2016, Republican nominee Donald Trump won the Electoral College, even though he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election  (This was the third consecutive presidential election in which the popular vote was won by the Democratic candidate.)  

Having tasted the blood of minority victory, Republicans the got upset in 2020, when they lost the popular vote by 7 million and lost the Electoral College. So now they want to subvert the possibility of majority rule by voter suppression activities and allowing gerrymandered Republican state legislatures to overturn the popular will. 

In other words, they no longer care about keeping a democratic republic. 

And now two nominally Democratic Senators stand in the way of enacting federal legislation which could protect majority rule.  Senators Manchin and Sinema need to look into their consciences and their souls and decide whether they want to go down in history as the two Democratic Senators who were, in effect, collaborators with an opposition party gone mad.  

Similarly, the handful of Republican Senators who were once considered principled states-persons who, when necessary, would put principle above party, must decide whether they wish to go down in history as characters in a sequel to Senator John F. Kennedy's book, this one to be entitled Profiles in Cowardice. 

General Clark was wrong, and the Maryland General Assembly was right, on gerrymandering

On December 4, 2021, retired General Wesley Clark published an opinion piece the Washington Post urging the Democratic-controlled Maryland General Assembly to refrain from gerrymandering its Congressional districts, notwithstanding larger scale gerrymandering going on Republican states around the country.  I wrote a letter to the Editor taking exception to Gen. Clark's suggestion:

Like the proverbial generals who are always fighting the last war, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark urged Maryland to lead on resisting gerrymandering in the upcoming redistricting. But Gen. Clark is fighting a war that was lost on June 27, 2019. On that date, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the court would not step in to stop partisan gerrymandering, no matter how coarse. 

Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court saved democracy in America by fashioning the one-person, one-vote standard for legislative and congressional districts. This time, the court declined to act to save American democracy. With the coarsest congressional gerrymandering now occurring in large red states such as Texas, Ohio and Florida, for Gen. Clark to urge that relatively small, blue Maryland act as if the court had set legally enforceable standards of fairness is akin to unilateral disarmament. One would think Gen. Clark, as a former NATO supreme commander, would understand the risks of unilateral disarmament.

David S. Fishback, Olney

On December 12, it was published, along with three similar letters. See here.  

I am proud of the members of the Maryland General Assembly who successfully chose not to unilaterally disarm.