John Donnelly: An easy two-step plan to end American democracy

The end to American democracy could be one election away.

John Donnelly: An easy two-step plan to end American democracy

JD Vance became well known in 2016 with the publication of his book “Hillbilly Elegy.” The book chronicles his inspiring life from poverty to the U.S. Marines to Yale Law School.

In 2016, he described Donald Trump as “America’s Hitler.” But then he decided to run for Senate in 2022 in increasingly conservative Ohio as a Republican and this required a sudden conversion to MAGA and support for Trump. He won that Senate race.

Vance now describes an ongoing “war for the soul of the Republican Party” with Trump/MAGA on one side and “the old guard/RINOs” on the other side. Vance is now fully on board with who he previously called “America’s Hitler.” What MAGA policies does this mean he supports? He is a vocal supporter of trade wars and high tariffs and he does not support helping Ukraine defend itself against the Russian invaders. These are sacrosanct MAGA policies.

But most importantly, JD Vance supports the Trump/MAGA policy of undermining faith in our elections — particularly the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The Trump/MAGA policy is to throw out the U.S. Constitution in order to achieve their political objective of absolute power without guardrails. This was apparent in a Feb. 4 interview of Vance by George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” Vance made two points very clear and the acceptance of those two MAGA positions would lead to the end of the American political system that has existed for 250 years.

MAGA position No. 1: Congress, not the American voter, will decide who is president

If Vance had been vice president in early January 2021, he would not have done what Mike Pence concluded he was required to do by the U.S. Constitution. Pence accepted the electors in the 2020 presidential election sent to him by each state and certified the election.

Vance would have done what  Trump demanded. He would have asked each state to send two sets of electors — one set for Trump and one set for Biden, regardless of who had been the certified winner in each state. Once multiple state electors had been sent to Congress, Vance said: “The Congress should have fought over it from there.”

Let me translate what Vance is saying: “You, American voter, can vote for president, but if a lot of folks in Congress think something was wrong with the certified outcome of that election, then Congress will decide which slate of electors from each state to accept. Thus, from now on, the party controlling Congress will select the president, not the American voter.”

MAGA position No. 2: The courts cannot limit the power of the president

Vance stated that if Trump were to become president again, he could ignore Supreme Court rulings that limited his power, even from this current very conservative Supreme Court. Vance told Stephanopoulos: “And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.”

Vance understands that the Supreme Court has no army of enforcers. They rely on the presidency/executive branch to accept their decisions. While Vance would not want the Biden Administration to ignore the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, he is green-lighting a future Trump Administration to ignore any prospective rulings of the Supreme Court that would limit their power.

Vance is describing how American authoritarianism/fascism would emerge. Vance would end direct democracy in the election of presidents. A gerrymandered Congress would choose the president, not the American voter. Once the president picked by the majority party in Congress is in place, Vance wants to get rid of the constitutional guardrails that have limited past presidents.

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The founders of this country set up controls/restrictions on exactly what MAGA/Vance want to do. The founders set up a three-branch government: president, legislature and judiciary — with checks and balances everywhere to limit anyone exercising absolute power.

One of these checks and balances is having a judiciary that determines the legality of actions. If the courts say to a future Trump presidency: “No you can’t do that,” MAGA/Vance want this future — backed up by their control of the military — to ignore these court rulings. This is how American democracy would end.

That end could be one election away.

— John Donnelly is a resident of Holland.