In the spirit of fair play...and protecting the constitution

I've mentioned before in this blog that I used to referee karate tournaments in another lifetime. I always made an effort to call a legitimate point when I saw one, regardless of what I thought of the competitor, their style, uniform, or sensei.  Although I'm no longer a huge fan of sport karate, I've tried to keep the habit of calling a point when I see one.

It would probably surprise no one to hear that I frequently disagree with WV's Senator Shelley Moore Capito. However, I commend her for coming out with a strong and clear statement on the need to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In ordinary times, such a thing would be a matter of course and require no special statement...but these aren't ordinary times as President Trump persistently tries to discard the constitution and overturn the results of an election he lost by seven million popular votes and an electoral margin of 306-232. Since November, we've been as close to an authoritarian coup as we ever have been, so there is merit today in stating the obvious.

Here are some excerpts from her statement:

Several of my congressional colleagues have made clear their plans to object to counting certified electoral votes from certain states. I will oppose their effort because the will of voters in each state—not political considerations or the individual preferences of senators and representatives—must determine the winner of the presidential election....

and

Allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election have been investigated by federal and state law enforcement agencies. Investigations have been overseen by governors, secretaries of state, and local election officials of both political parties who ultimately certified election results in their respective states. Multiple lawsuits have been filed in the contested states and have been decided in state and federal courts, to include the Supreme Court, by judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans. None of these investigations or lawsuits has resulted in evidence of fraud that comes anywhere close to the standard for rejecting a state’s electoral votes.

and

Refusing to count a state’s electoral votes in the absence of such evidence would disenfranchise millions of American voters and call into question the very foundation of representative government enshrined in our Constitution. Therefore, I plan to vote to reject the objections that will be raised and to count the electoral votes that were certified by each state.

and 

Yesterday when I took office for a new six-year term, I did not swear allegiance to any individual or political party. I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Recognizing the individual chosen by the American people to be our president is in keeping with this oath...

I'm calling the point. As we say in karate, "Ippon!"

Thinking ahead

 Well THAT was interesting. I'm hoping today's results will signify the end or at least the beginning of the end of America's latest dark journey, although I think we're not out of the woods yet.

I've been thinking a lot about my walk across Spain two years ago on the Camino de Santiago. More than once I passed through what were mass graves of people like me who were murdered by Franco's fascists during the Spanish civil war of the 1930s. For the last few years, I kept reminding myself that many admirable nations had gone on journeys as bad and much worse than ours but eventually emerged.

Still there's a lot to watch out for. Lot's of people, including myself and colleagues with the American Friends Service Committee, have been thinking about worst case election related scenarios, up to and  including the possibility of a coup. We of course are willing to accept an outcome that accepted all votes but were worried about other irregularities that might threaten the integrity of the eleciton, such as voter suppression and/or intimidation.

Assuming the constitutional anchor holds, the next big fight starts next week, when the freshly stacked deck of the US Supreme Court will consider taking away the health care of millions of Americans, to the delight of West Virginia's attorney general Patrick Morrisey.  There are any number of scenarios there.

Keeping that assumption, we might be in for gridlock in Congress but will at least be spared an American approximation of authoritarianism. 

West Virginia is going to be weird in any case. But, as my late friend and WV poet Norman Jordan, who with his wife Brucella operated an African American heritage museum in his home town of Ansted for years, wrote in a funny poem, I guess you can't have everything.

On the positive side, and assuming no funny stuff, we're going to see the end of a federal department of education, led by someone who never attended any institute of public education, trying to sabotage it. We're going to see the end of administrative policies aimed at taking away food assistance of millions of low income Americans and public school students. 

Assuming parts of the Affordable Care Act remain, we're likely to see the end of federal policies encouraging states to impose bogus work reporting requirements designed to deprive people of health care. We might at least see some harm reduction on the climate change front.

There's still so much to do. Many people with whom we disagree were our friends and allies not so many years ago. The country is still tragically divided. Even with a peaceful transition, many of the policies some of us hope to see will be blocked  until that is changed.

But I'll think about that tomorrow.