What is the Upcoming
Presidential Election All About?
The answer is simple and clear. The presidential election on November 3, 2020
concerns the completion of the impeachment trial of president Donald Trump by
the US Senate. The majority of the republican
members of the Senate dodged their responsibilities by hiding behind a
statement of Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee who said, “The question then
is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or
the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that
the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential
election. …Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve
with ‘the consent of the governed,’ not at the pleasure of the United States
Congress. Let the people decide.”
There is little to gain debating the
faulty reasoning of the honorable senator, or questioning the lack of logic in
his interpretation of the Constitution regarding the intentions of the founders.
The bold fact is that except for the courageous
vote by Senator Mitt Romney, the Senate Republican majority left the final
decision to the electorate this November.
By default, therefore, every voter must, if not place the issue at the
top of their considerations, at least not forget this responsibility and
include the decision in their deliberations regardless of party affiliation amid
the smoke and fog of this particular election in the midst of a world pandemic.
I have not heard, nor seen a single word, as
to whether the electorate will consider this question of guilt or innocence of
the charges when voting this fall. Nothing.
Nada! But that is not the only tragedy resulting
from the cowardice of the Republican majority in the Senate trial. Nothing
was said of the possibility of the election being anything but honest and fair.
Nothing. Nada! The alarming fact is that the same Republican
party is working day and night to disrupt this election, tampering with the
rules, and without any evidence declaring that the postal system will be unable
to manage the necessary added burden that voting by mail will inflict. Rather than providing extra funds and personnel
for the states in most need in the face of a pandemic, and doing everything possible
to solve any extra stress on the system, the President of the United States has
named Louis DeJoy Postmaster General, a mega contributor to Trump, who will do
all in his power to see the system does not work.
An editorial in the New York Times today
[August 20,2020], outlines what President Trump intends to do on election night,
if ahead in the count by virtue of early voting booth results. “First, he will
claim victory. Then, having spent most of the year denouncing vote-by-mail as
corrupt, fraudulent and prone to abuse, he’ll demand that authorities stop counting
mail-in and absentee ballots. He’ll have
teams of lawyers challenging counts and ballots across the country.” In
summary, “A key element of Trump’s strategy is to undermine the Postal Service’s
ability to deliver and collect mail.” Chaos follows.
What will Lamar Alexander do about that? What about messing with the consent of the
governed?
