So Much Worse Than They Realize

Hillary Clinton - the most corrupt presidential candidate in American history - lost the election to Donald Trump, and her supporters are freaking out.

Many are protesting, some are rioting.

Anyone who's been paying attention expected riots, because it's what Leftists do when they don't get their way. Leftists are overgrown toddlers, so when someone tells them "no", they pitch a fit. Besides, it's what they've been doing all along this election year.



Things look pretty bleak for Leftists on the presidential front.

Source: NYT

The mainstream media expected Clinton to carry Florida and Arizona. They certainly didn't expect to lose Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan (a traditional bastion of union and Democrat support).

Ironically, things are far worse (or better, depending on your perspective) than the vast majority of Clinton supporters suspect. Because they're Leftists, and for Leftists politics are a religion, they see their presidential candidate as a sort of messiah figure.



Because they see their presidential candidates as saviors, they focus almost all their attention on the presidential race, to the detriment of the hundreds of other races throughout the country. Yes, Republicans maintained majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives (though not with a filibuster-proof super majority), and yes, that's bad news for Democrats, but it's the states where things get really ugly for them. Check out these maps from the Washington Post.

When you look at state legislatures alone, the picture looks even worse. From Reason Magazine.

Republicans control 32 state legislatures, but - as the WaPo points out - Nebraska's legislature "is technically nonpartisan but Republican in practice". That means Republicans "in practice" control 33 state legislatures. As the WaPo points out, most of this Democrat decline took place during the Obama administration.

However, this latest decline is part of a 38-year trend, according to Pew Research.

Joe Scarborough put it this way.

Democrats Under Barack Obama

-11 seats in Senate
-60 seats in House
-14 governorships
-900 state legislative seats

Worst since 1922.

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) November 13, 2016

There are at least two major reasons why this is a disaster for the Democrats. First, state legislatures and governors make up a political party's "bench" for national politics. The Republicans now have a much deeper bench from which to draw national-level candidates than the Democrats do. It's not even close.

The second reason is far more important. Article V of the US Constitution reads...

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

With 33 state legislatures effectively under Republican control, the Republicans can now call a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution, and they don't even need to convince Democrats to go along. In fact, a convention of the states has been in the works for years. The states already held a simulated convention from 21-23 September 2016. According to National Review...

The simulated convention passed significant amendment proposals on the following six ideas:
1. Requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt
2. Imposing term limits on Congress (effective retroactively)
3. Limiting federal overreach by returning the Commerce Clause to its original meaning
4. Limiting the power of federal regulations by allowing an easy congressional override
5. Requiring a supermajority to impose federal taxes and repealing the 16th Amendment, which legalized the federal income tax
6. Giving the states (by a three-fifths vote) the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation, or executive order  

If the states ratify just half of these proposals, they would greatly limit and decentralize the federal government's power, which would return the country to a point closer to the founders' intent - a federalist system in which the states govern themselves with little input from the federal government, and the federal government is mostly limited to regulating trade between the states and implementing foreign policy.

Now, don't get too excited (or horrified, depending on your perspective). Article V of the Constitution states that new amendments must be...

... ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof... 

... in order to make those amendments...

.... valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution... 

Three fourths of 50 state legislatures equals 38 state legislatures. The Republicans effectively control 33 legislatures, which means they need to convince five legislatures they don't control to ratify any amendments. Right now, there are three bicameral legislatures that are split between Democrats and Republicans.

Can the Republicans convince five state legislatures that are either split, or controlled by the Democrats, to ratify Constitutional amendments that would be a Leftist's nightmare?

We shall see.

There's a lesson here for my Democrat friends. Slandering your fellow Americans as racists so you can wallow in your unearned sense of moral superiority is no way to persuade people to your way of thinking. But, hey, keep it up. Surely you can deliver five more state legislatures to the Republicans.

Secession, No. Federalism, Yes

You may have heard that the White House website now has petitions from all 50 states requesting permission to peacefully secede from the Union.  The most famous of these - and the one with the most signatures - is from Texas, naturally.  The whole thing is silly, but it reflects a real problem.  A whole lot of Americans are unhappy with the federal government, which makes perfect sense.  It's impossible to please 350,000,000 people at the same time.  It's highly unlikely that any state will actually attempt to secede, but the existence of so many disgruntled voters is no laughing matter.

There is, however, a very simple solution to this problem.

 Let the central government do the things that only central governments can do -- national defense, regulation of trade to keep the provinces from engaging in economic warfare with one another, protection of basic civil rights -- and then let the provinces go their own way in most other issues. Don't like the way things are run where you are? Move to a province that's more to your taste. Meanwhile, approaches that work in individual provinces can, after some experimentation, be adopted by the central government, thus lowering the risk of adopting untested policies at the national level. You get the benefits of secession without seceding.

Pretty simple, right?  If you want to live in a state with enormous debt, high taxes, business-stifling regulations, high unemployment, lots of poverty, welfare and income inequality, and crappy schools, move to California, New York or Illinois.   If you want to live in a state with low debt, low taxes, little regulation, lots of jobs and low unemployment rates, move to North Dakota, Texas or Utah.

It's not even a new idea.

Sound good? It should. It's called federalism, and it's the approach chosen by the United States when it adopted the Constitution in 1789. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

It's a nice plan. Beats secession. Maybe we should give it another try.

For a bunch of racist old white dudes, those Founding Fathers sure were smart!