This Is Not Normal, Part 2
So it's come to this? The inauguration of a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist raises some fundamental questions about our democracy.
Related Posts:
In this group of posts, we’re taking a look at a number of fundamental presumptions about the way the United States operates — presumptions which appear to be outdated or, at the very least, insufficient to deal with the current state of the nation.
In This Is Not Normal, Part 1, we looked at some of the ways the legal system does not seem to be up to the task of contending with the realities of life in the United States in the year 2025.
Next up: The erosion of our politics and the ways we choose our leaders.
Political/Electoral Questions
Do we need to shorten the campaign cycle? Do we really need 3.999 years (or longer) of campaigning for every presidential election? Shouldn’t our politicians be spending the bulk of their time — oh, I don’t know — maybe governing?
Some countries place restrictions around the duration of campaigns. For example:
Mexico — 90 days, with 60 days “pre-campaign”
Philippines — 90 days
Canada — between 37 and 51 days
Brazil — 90 days
In other countries, the short duration of campaigns can be attributed both to tradition and to the fact that there isn’t unlimited money being poured into campaigns. Some examples:
In Japan, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s 2021 campaign lasted only 12 days.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign in 2024 lasted 33 days.
Here in the U.S., Kamala Harris pulled together a remarkable campaign in 109 days. That’s more in line with the duration of campaigns in other developed nations. Had she not been running against someone who had been campaigning — largely on a right-wing media reinforced collection of lies and unlimited dark money — for the previous four years, the result of the election might have been different.
Other developed nations manage to launch campaigns and hold elections within the constraints of a specific time period. Their governments function as well as, or better, than the United States government is currently functioning.
As important as who prevails in an election is what the winners are able to accomplish once elected. If a President or any office holder is spending a significant part of their time campaigning for themselves or others, it can’t help but diminish their effectiveness as a leader.
Is it time for us, first, to acknowledge that an unending campaign cycle is deleterious to our political system and, second, to address this issue with legislation that puts some realistic constraints around our campaigns?
Should a handful of multi-billionaires be able to have unlimited political influence because of their wealth?
In 1971, Congress passed the Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA) which set limits on campaign spending and prohibited foreign parties from contributing to federal campaigns. By 1974, it became obvious that voluntary adherence to FECA was insufficient, and the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) was established after Watergate to enforce the requirements of FECA.
Over the years, the provisions of FECA have been undercut several times by legislation. Additionally, the FEC has had budget reductions to the point of being almost incapable of enforcing the few legal constraints that remain. The most recent nail in election fairness coffin — the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission — basically opened the door to unlimited contributions from corporations and unions.
(The Republicans like to pretend there is parity between the contributions from multi-billion-dollar corporations and trade unions; nothing could be further from reality.)
Long before the Citizens United decision, campaigns relied on contributions, and the wealthy — those more able to contribute — were also more likely to contribute to Republicans. For every large donation that Republican candidates received, Democrats had to work exponentially harder to gather up multiple small-dollar donations.
But the words “large” and “small” took on new meaning with the Citizens United decision, insofar as those terms are applied to the size of campaign donations. With Citizens United, the financial scales became permanently tipped in favor of Republicans.
Should the Electoral College — a structure with racist origins — control the outcome of current day presidential elections, continuing to subvert the will of the majority?
The concept of Electors was established in the Constitution as an alternative to relying on the popular vote. What isn’t spoken about often is the fact that slave-holding states with lower non-slave (and therefore non-voting) population wanted to ensure that their interests would be well represented at the federal level. So, instead of relying on actual population, the compromise among the founders was to consider slaves to be the equivalent of 3/5ths of a person for the purposes of counting population but not to allow slaves to vote.
Over the years, there have been many attempts to amend the Constitution to address this fairly obvious structural shortcoming in our election system:
“Reference sources indicate that over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject. The American Bar Association has criticized the Electoral College as ‘archaic’ and ‘ambiguous’ and its polling showed 69 percent of lawyers favored abolishing it in 1987. But surveys of political scientists have supported continuation of the Electoral College. Public opinion polls have shown Americans favored abolishing it by majorities of 58 percent in 1967; 81 percent in 1968; and 75 percent in 1981.”
— National Archives, “Electoral College History”
In both the 2000 election and the 2016 election, the winner of the popular vote did not become president. It can easily be argued that the course of the nation’s history was changed drastically — and negatively — as a result.
Even if the Electoral College system is to remain in place, should it be required that the electors for each state be awarded proportionally?
In reality, there’s not such thing as a “red state” or a “blue state.” All states have voters all along the political spectrum, from extreme right to extreme left. It’s simplistic (though handy) to refer to “red states” and “blue states.”
Doesn’t it make sense to acknowledge the Republican voters in predominantly Democratic states and the Democratic voters in predominantly Republican states, in proportion with their actual numbers?
For example, if a state has 30 electors, and one candidate gets 45% of the vote and the other gets 55% of the vote, does it make sense to award all 30 electors to the candidate with 55%? If electors were allocated proportionally, it would be more representative in our “representative democracy.” Why not award 13 electors to the candidate with 45% of the vote and 17 electors to the candidate with 55% of the votes? This would at least align more closely with the will of the people.
Should one particular political party be the beneficiary of all of these outdated or partisan-designed elements of our form of government?
It’s not a coincidence that the Republican Party benefits from these lopsided structures that control our elections. It’s the result of a concerted decades-long effort to wrest control of the levers of power away from the citizenry and into the hands of a powerful few.
Citizens United (the organization) is a right-wing organization whose mission is to promote conservative causes. The Citizens United case was decided by a right-leaning Supreme Court — a court which, in the years since, has been stacked to be even more right-leaning.
In most cases, wealthy individuals favor the political party that favors them — the Republican Party. The feedback loop between wealthy right-wing donors and Republican legislators is well established, often resulting in laws that favor wealthy individuals and corporations.
SuperPAC contributions to Republican candidates are more than twice as much as SuperPAC contributions to Democratic candidates because wealthy corporations and individuals favor Republican policies which benefit them and increasingly leave the average citizen behind. This is structurally antithetical to the notion of democracy.
Efforts to change the Electoral College system have been opposed and defeated by the forces that politically benefit most from the existence of the Electoral College system.
Is it surprising that the political party that is structurally supported by a financial and judicial biases has gained power? Is it surprising that that same party implements policies that favor the structures that put them in power, sometimes even in opposition to the majority views of the people in their own party?
With the advantages that the Republicans enjoy, the only surprise is that the Democrats achieve any electoral success at all.
In Part 3, we’ll look at some of the societal questions that require attention if we are to hold onto our democracy as we have known it.
I've always wondered, since my teens, how the reigning President could just minimize their regular duties to go on the campaign trail. And I can't even think about the Electoral college it annoys me so much!