The Big Picture

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Wednesday the nation’s top experts on impeachment tried to teach our House and our people how that process ought to work. Collectively, the four testifying professors represented at least a person-century of study, research and thinking. All were articulate—at times eloquent and moving. All quoted our Founders at length and verbatim. All were clear and forceful. Every witness made some sense.

But what changed? Nothing. The distinguished witnesses convinced no one.

The House Judiciary Committee remains divided on party lines. Every vote (all of which were procedural) was strictly on party lines. Republican members accused Democrats of having made up their minds mere days after Trump’s election, and years before the events at issue had even occurred. Democrats looked and sounded genuinely aggrieved and offended by the President’s behavior, and worried about our nation’s future.

The GOP phalanx on the Judiciary Committee took at face value the Tweets and public rants of the alleged perp (Trump), who refuses to testify under oath and has ordered his underlings not to do so. They valued the “corroboration” of President Zelensky of Ukraine, who also has not testified and whose nation’s security seems to hang on Trump’s every whim. They ignored the contrary testimony of witnesses who did testify under oath, at considerable risk to their careers and even their personal safety. They also ignored the ocean of circumstantial evidence of at-least-attempted extortion. And they spent much of their time ranting and raving about process and fairness, rather than the facts of the case.

Doug Collins (R., GA), the Ranking Member, and Jim Jordan (R., OH) were particularly egregious ranters. They all but snarled and shouted as they played the roles of enraged bosses—angry, physically big, middle-aged white men whose word used to be law.

Like many of the GOP members, these two personified the old joke among lawyers: if the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if the law is on your side, argue the law; if neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table. Collins and Jordan have both made their reputations as consummate table-pounders. (I don’t watch hearings often, but I’ve not seen any pols like them in my 74 years. They were so abrasive, aggressive, angry and downright nasty that I found myself wondering whether they had learned their political “skills” at the Genghis Khan School of Diplomacy.

So what’s going on here? Why are the Republican members playing the victims in this extreme and angry way? Why are they painting President Trump a victim? They know their colleagues in the Senate have the votes to block Trump’s removal without breaking a sweat. And that’s exactly what they, like the rest of us, think is going to happen. So why are they ranting and raving and portraying Trump as the second coming of Joan of Arc, about to be unjustly burned at the stake?

To understand the answers, you have to see the big picture. It shows a nation that is no longer a democracy, if it ever was. We haven’t been one for several decades. Not even close. At least we haven’t been if that word means majority rule.

Today the only part of our three branches of our government that operates by majority rule is our House of Representatives. Numbers, as usual, tell that tale. In the table below, I’ve tallied the votes in our Electoral College, House and Senate controlled by all of our nine most populous states, which together hold a majority of our total population.

Together these nine states have 51% of our people and command 46% of votes in the Electoral College, 53% of votes in the House, and 18% of votes in the Senate. The latter fact is the predominant reason, if not the only one, why Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader.

Think about that. Two out of the last three presidents (including Trump) reached office with nationwide popular-vote minorities. That’s due to the Electoral College’s malapportionment. The Supreme Court is tilting sharply right while the country is moving slowly left. Why? Because 67% of the last three presidents reached the White House on minorities of the popular vote, and a majority of the nation’s people have less than one-fifth of the votes in the Senate, which confirms Supreme-Court Justices.

So not surprisingly, our House of Representatives is today the only part of our government that operates under the basic principle of democracy as understood since ancient Greece and Rome: popular-majority rule.

That’s why the House Judiciary Committee, which held yesterday’s hearings, looks a lot like America, with plenty of female and minority members. But this pleasing picture depends on which party you’re talking about. Here’s a table of the demographics of the House Judiciary Committee by party:

House Judiciary Committee Demographics by Party
Party	Men	Women	Whites*	African- Americans	Chinese- Americans	Hispanic- Americans	Indian- Americans
Dems	13	11	11	8	1	3	1
GOP	15	2	17	0	0	0	0

* Non-Hispanic whites, i.e., not “people of color”

Only the Democratic contingent looks like America. The Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are 100% white—with no “people of color” whatsoever—and 88% male.

Why does this matter? It matters because the future of our nation is a multicultural, multi-religious, multi-racial, multiethnic society with gender equality. It’s far too late to turn back. By 2043, the inexorable force of demographics will make us a majority-minority nation, i.e., one in which a majority of our population and of voters will be what we now call “minorities.” Most of us will be so-called “people of color,” not non-Hispanic whites. And females are already a majority of our people and a majority of voters.

So what we have now is a truly egalitarian society waiting to be born, with an old guard of white male bosses trying to abort it. The old guard not only counts on the unfairness of minority rule in the Electoral College, the Senate and consequently our Supreme Court. It also is the prime mover in gerrymandering, vote suppression, and dirty stunts like McConnell’s stealing a Supreme-Court appointment from President Obama.

Of course the smart ones among the old guard know their minority power is doomed. The forces of demographics are inexorable, if only because “people of color” and recent immigrants tend to have more children than old-time white citizens. (That’s one big reason why our minority bosses want to stop immigration cold.) In addition, people are starting to move away from the big cities into the small towns and rural areas, bringing their big-city politics and culture to where the Electoral College and Senate votes are.

Most young people think differently and want the future now. So do an unknown number of old white folks like me. So sooner or later—maybe sooner than the demographers think—the force of sheer numbers will overcome even the gross perversions of majority rule inherent in our Electoral College and Senate.

What do you do when you think your unfair power is doomed and you don’t trust the coming majority, in part because you and/or your ancestors have grievously wronged them? You do everything possible to keep things as they are. You stop at nothing. You even support a supreme leader who already has given every indication of stopping at nothing to stay in power. He may become our nation’s first emperor, but he will be your emperor. Or so you think.

This is the big picture in our nation today. And it’s why the Dems’ impeachment strategy is all wrong.

The GOP are putting all their chips on the table and risking our nation’s decay into empire—with a modern Caligula in charge!—just to extend a bit the dismal life of their fading ancien regime. Meanwhile, the Dems’ fret about the niceties of health-insurance programs that are no more than pipe dreams while that ancien regime lasts. They worry (God help us!) about whether they’ll have to attend some impeachment hearings during their campaigns. And they obsess over the fates of wobbly Dems in red states. (How many careers of pols in both parties have ended already, while Trump lies and Tweets, Congress does nothing, and the nation rots?)

As history stands today, there is nothing that matters more than impeaching and removing Trump or beating him next November. With the GOP having a majority in the Senate, and two-thirds required to remove, the chances of removing him after impeachment are infinitesimal. But the chances of beating him are much better if the impeachment process continues right up to the presidential election. And if the Dems’ keep the House and improve their position in the Senate, they could even roll that process over into a second Trump term. That might restrain his and his party’s excesses.

Of all the professorial witnesses at yesterday’s hearing, Jonathan Turley was the most prophetic. Although outnumbered three to one, he kept his cool. Most importantly, while supposedly testifying for the GOP, he offered the Dems invaluable advice. They are moving too fast. They are spreading their net of impeachment articles much too narrowly. And if they stay on their present course of speed above thoroughness and persuasiveness, they will further divide the nation and leave half of it behind.

Furthermore, the Dems will fall right into an obvious trap that Trump has already sprung once. By what amounts to obstruction of justice, Trump and his minions have buried the Muller Report under an avalanche of lies, spin, distortion and distraction. The Dems foolishly aided that effort by failing to include a count based on the Muller Report in their current impeachment proceedings—a blunder they are now reportedly rethinking.

In so doing, the Dems allowed Trump and his lackeys to falsely claim exoneration and millions of followers to credit that claim. The Mueller Report and its more-than-credible charges of treachery and obstruction of justice are, in public opinion, hanging by a thread.

Behind closed doors, Republicans are no doubt licking their chops in anticipation of pulling off the same trick again. If the Dems proceed on their accelerated schedule, the GOP-controlled Senate will acquit Trump before even the primary campaigns begin, and Trump will go into the general election with a valid claim of complete and total exoneration and a strengthened claim of having been the victim of a “witch hunt.” With those “victories” under his belt, he will also pull out all the stops in asking for foreign assistance in swaying the election yet again.

One reason for the GOP’s abrasive rants yesterday about victimhood was to strengthen Trump’s hand when that time comes. The other was to tap into the well-justified anger and resentment that drives Trump’s backers to follow him into Hell.

As all four witnesses in yesterday’s hearings affirmed, our Founders designed impeachment as a tool to keep a rogue president from going rogue again and again. We now know how Trump operates, because he’s already repeated his sins. He made his extortionate phone call with Zelensky mere days after a weak Muller Report (and Barr’s spin) appeared to exonerate him. In the “court” of public opinion, a claim of exoneration would be even harder to counter after the GOP-controlled Senate acquits him.

If the impeachment process ends in acquittal before next November’s election, two things will happen. First, Trump’s chances of winning a second term will increase substantially. Second, Trump will be encouraged to act like an emperor without restraint, both during the general-election campaign and if he wins. He will pull out all the stops. He will accelerate his push to corrupt and subvert everyone and everything to his will, including Russians and any other foreigners who want him as our boss.

There is no turning back the clock. Now that it has begun, the impeachment process is the fulcrum on which the fate of our nation balances. It also augurs the fate of the GOP’s last-ditch effort to preserve their ancien regime as long as possible. Impeachment is now part of a political death match that cannot be stopped.

Either way it comes out, careers will end, regimes will change, and mountains will move. But isn’t it better to fight the good fight and fall on your sword if you have to, than to knuckle under to the same kind of craven impulses that make even once-thoughtful and patriotic Republicans kow-tow to Trump?

As Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon, “alea jacta est,” “the die is cast.” The GOP cast it when they cast their lot with Trump, knowing full well who and what he is. The Dems cast it when they started the impeachment process. Now they must broaden that process, strengthen it, and expand it to cover all of Trump’s many sins against democracy and the rule of law. Then they must make sure it lasts at least until November 3 of next year, or close enough so that the Senate cannot act.

In this and all else, they should work with the steely resolve of a Mitch McConnell coolly lowering Merrick Garland’s nomination into the sewer without so much as a hearing. Tit for tat is not a pleasant thing in what’s supposed to be a reasoned democracy. But it’s appropriate now against a party and a presidency that have abandoned all traces of decency and, to preserve their minority power, are setting our nation on a clear path toward empire and tyranny.

Minority Rule in the United States
State	2019 Population	Electoral Votes	House Members	Senators
California	39,747,267	55	53	2
Texas	29,087,070	38	36	2
Florida	21,646,155	29	27	2
New York	19,491,339	29	27	2
Pennsylvania	12,813,969	20	18	2
Illinois	12,700,381	20	18	2
Ohio	11,718,568	18	16	2
Georgia	10,627,767	16	14	2
North Carolina	10,497,741	15	13	2
Nine Most Populous States	168,330,266	249	231	18
All States	330,000,000	538	435	100
Percentage for the Nine	51%	46%	53%	18%

I know, I know. California doesn’t usually vote with Texas, nor New York with Georgia. But the basic point of this table still stands. No matter what states you aggregate together, the Electoral College still favors land over people, and the Senate grossly under-represents the more populated states. This table is just a cute way of illustrating how badly skewed our governmental structure is. If all these big states did vote together, they would invariably lose the presidency and have virtually no power in the Senate, despite having an absolute majority of our people.

I don’t know what the ancient Greeks or Romans would call this. They certainly wouldn’t call it “democracy.”

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