The untold story of how Harry Reid helped give us Donald Trump

I've got a story to tell, one that's out there on the public record, but one that hasn't been much remarked upon.

He lied. Did American democracy die?

It takes place during the Obama-Romney campaign of 2012. During the campaign, Mitt Romney was proving reluctant — as Donald Trump was, after him — to release some pertinent personal financial information. So Sen. Harry Reid, then the leader of Democrats in the Senate, decided to make a big deal about it.

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office. “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying. “He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?

I wrote at the time that "Reid’s allegations look and smell a lot like bullcrap."

Why? Because there’s absolutely no reason to believe that Reid is telling the truth. He’s offered no witnesses and no proof of his claims, only a “somebody told me” statement that wouldn’t get within a million miles of passing muster in a court of law. And when challenged to present his evidence, his response is that Romney can prove Reid’s allegations wrong—by releasing his tax forms. Politically clever? Yes. Distasteful? It absolutely should be.

It turned out I was right. Reid later admitted lying, but said he had no regrets: "Romney didn't win, did he?"

Fast forward to the fall of 2016. Trump versus Clinton. Her emails have been hacked; Trump has asked the Russians to release them to the media. It's all very suspicious. And Harry Reid, serving out his final days in the Senate, makes his move. He writes an angry letter to James Comey.

In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.

Here's the thing: Reid was right! He was telling the truth! We found out later that Republicans had warned President Obama they'd accuse him of politicizing intelligence if he went public with this — and Obama, probably figuring Clinton would win anyway, decided to keep his mouth shut. Reid's letter to Comey, when made public, represented one of the best possible chances to get this issue fixed firmly in the minds of the American voters. Only ... Reid's accusation was treated like so much bullshit. Here's the Washington Post:

Reid is saying that he has been told the FBI has evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And he's not just saying this information came from mysterious and unnamed national security officials; he's saying Comey himself has left him with this impression. But there is no public evidence to support Reid's claim of actual "coordination" between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And were that to be the case, it would be a scandal of epic proportions. Asked what evidence exists of such a connection, Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson cited classified briefings. "There have been classified briefings on this topic," Jentleson said. "That is all I can say." Asked whether the letter means Comey has shared such information directly with Reid, Jentleson said, "Refer you to the language in the letter." This is the political equivalent of Reid lighting a match, dropping it on a dry ground and walking away.

The Post then mentioned Reid's false allegation against Romney. And it included this old quote from Reid:

Is there a line he wouldn’t cross when it comes to political warfare? “I don’t know what that line would be,” [Reid] said.

It was, in retrospect, a missed opportunity. In 2012, when Reid made his first, pretty clearly bogus charges, there were no end of defenders. Why? Because, I was told, Romney hadn't released his tax returns so who was to say Reid was wrong? And in any case, the other guys fight dirty so why shouldn't we? We're tired of always being the weak ones, right?

 The problem being: When Reid's credibility mattered most, when he could've used some "trust me" to help steer the nation on a different course, he'd spent it all on a crappy lie he probably didn't even need to make in order for Obama to win. Going low, politically, has its short-term rewards. It can be justified on that basis. But who wishes Americans had paid more attention to Harry Reid last fall? A lot of the same people who lauded his earlier lie.

Hey: Politics ain't beanbag. It's never going to be as clean as I like it. But there are costs to wallowing in the dirt, and they're not just moral prissyness. They matter. We're all living with how they matter now.

More evidence that Trump's support didn't come from the "white working class."

National Review detects something interesting in the exit polls:

The 2016 CNN Exit Poll found, for instance, that Trump won among married voters, winning 52 percent, but lost decisively among the unmarried (see table below). The 26-point marriage gap in the 2016 electorate is large. (The marriage gap is calculated by taking the difference between the two candidates for the married and adding it to the difference between the two candidates for the unmarried.) In fact, it surpasses the 24-point gender gap also found in the CNN Exit Poll of the 2016 electorate.

Who is married? It isn't the white working class — at least, not as much as it used to be.

WaPo:

Over the last few decades, members of the white working class have also become less likely to be married. As this chart from economists Shelly Lundberg and Robert A. Pollak shows, marriage rates have fallen for whites without a college degree. About 55 percent of white men and 60 percent of women with no more than a high school diploma are married, compared to about 70 percent of men and women with four-year college degrees.

More about the "marriage gap" here. What's interesting is that divorce rates for college graduates has fallen back to about where they were in the 1960s, before the rise of no-fault divorce. It's the working class that's increasingly full of broken and never-been marriages.

And the point here is not to sneer at that. But given the overlap between elites and marriage, National Review's discovery suggests maybe that "white working class" narrative about Trump's victory has some holes in it.

Church

I continue to attend church, even though the old Mark Twain observation that "you can't pray a lie" remains true, at least for me, and I don't have faith to match the hymns or sermons. But community is a nice thing.

Here's my favorite part: The sharing of joys and concerns.

I don't know if your church does it. Certainly, it's not been practiced in all the churches I've ever attended. But at Peace Mennonite, a young child takes a microphone around the sanctuary, and members of the congregation share important news from the week.

My cousin discovered she has cancer.

The mother of a little boy in my son's class died suddenly.

And joys:

I found a place to live.

The disease in remission.

He's coming home. 

It's the difference between church and, I guess, Facebook for me. News gets shared on social media all the time. And that can be very helpful.  But in real time, face-to-face, I get a more palpable sense of community — of the act of "bearing one another's burdens" that community can be about.

I'm not a good bearer of the burdens of others. Not even my wife, all the time, and she's borne mine so wonderfully. So. Even though I feel a bit strange in the church, unable to sing most of the hymns, I persist. I am learning.

Just to sum up...

I'm fairly aware there's not a large constituency for my position, which is roughly:

• Donald Trump ran a racist campaign.

• People of color and minorities (and women!) are right to be alarmed and angered by his victory. They are justified in wondering why we're supposed to care about the feelings of the "white working class" while their concerns about living under racist regime are so easily disposed of.

• That the system that produced this victory placed inordinate value on the feelings of white people — and can reasonably be called "white supremacy." 

• That it is nonetheless a bad idea, as a matter of democratic tactics, to write off ALL the Trump voters as irredeemables who cannot be persuaded to join our side. (I.E. It's an approach designed to help lose in 2020, as well.) 

• That there are ways of attempting that persuasion without giving up a public and vocal commitment to justice, racial, sexual, and otherwise. 

• That it's bad for society for both halves of the country to view the other half as the implacable enemy.

Manichaeism is emotionally satisfying, but it doesn't do much to solve problems.

What would Jesus do?

Folks, forgive me. This is a draft, at best, written after midnight when thoughts kept coming and I couldn't shut up my brain.

I used to be pretty decent at community-building. It was back in the early aughts, when I was a newspaper reporter given the privilege of being my publication’s first blogger — and I used the platform to celebrate everything that was wonderful about my community.

It was easy — necessary — for me to take that approach. As an “objective” journalist, my professional mission was to avoid at all costs seeming as though I had an opinion on the issues of the day. That’s not really an approach made for blogging, so becoming a cheerleader seemed like the right move. No, that’s not necessarily “objective,” but when you work for a Kansas newspaper, only a few people will object to seeing the stuff of their daily lives lauded by a journalist. Not coincidentally, I built up a nice group of fans and friends who also loved our town.

When I left the paper, I went into opinion journalism, and was freed from the old constraints. There were new ones, though. As part of my duties, I co-wrote a weekly column — which survives to this day — arguing issues with a conservative writer, who eventually became one of my best friends. The format was popular, but imposed new constraints. I had just 300-some-odd words to make a case. And the me-versus-Ben format for the most part discouraged the seeking of common ground or bipartisan solutions: Both of us became busy trying to win an argument.

Winning an argument, I’ve always hoped, involves some degree of being right. And being right has become very, very important to me. To the exclusion, perhaps, of other important values.

Here’s where I mention that my return to Kansas has brought my return to regular worship at the Mennonite church. I’m not a good Mennonite; I don’t really know that I believe in God, and certainly I don’t believe in any kind of orthodox idea of God. But I love a church community, and in my life I’ve particularly come to love Mennonite church communities. Which means, in recent days, I’ve wondered what the Mennonite response to the election of Donald Trump should be.

Granted, this is the viewpoint of a particular kind of Mennonite. My congregation, like the college town I live in, is full of white liberals who see themselves on the side of the underdog. The town can get more than a little bit self-congratulatory in its liberalism; Mennonite earnestness and modesty quiets down that tendency in the church … for the most part. But there’s not much question about how most folks in the congregation voted; if anybody did cast a ballot for Trump, they are in hiding.

The reason for the question — how should Mennonites respond — came from an unease about how many of my friends have reacted to Trump’s election: With declarations of something like total war. “If you voted for Trump, you’re not my friend,” I see folks writing. The passion is understandable — particularly if you’re a minority or person of color who has been made to feel, by Trump’s rhetoric, that your life is about to get much, much more difficult.

It also seems to me to be incorrect.

I wrote this earlier about the topic (with some small revisions):

“To cut ourselves off from people who have made what we think was a grievous error in their vote is to give up on persuading them, to give up on understanding why they voted, to give up on understanding them in any but the most cartoonish stereotypes.

“As a matter of ideology, cutting off your pro-Trump friends is to give up on democracy. As a matter of tactics, cutting off your pro-Trump friends is to give up on ever again winning in a democratic process.

“And as a long-term issues, confining ourselves to echo chambers is part of our national problem.”

That still seems right to me. Democracy requires persuasion, not isolation. It requires engagement, and it’s tiring and it takes a lot of work and it requires us to spend a lot of time hearing opinions we don’t like from (in many cases) people we don’t like.

OK. But what about the Mennonites?

Mennonites have a rich history of shunning politics. In fact, they have a rich history of fleeing uncomfortable political situations. They’re pacifists — which they believe comes directly from the example of Jesus. The Mennonites I know today are the literal and spiritual heirs to people who fled Germany for Russia, then Russia for the United States, to avoid compulsory military service. In World War II, many declared themselves conscientious objectors and suffered scorn from their fellow Americans as a result. There’s a lot that’s noble about that history.

So I asked myself this:

Would the most "Mennonite" response to this election would be Is it to bury ourselves in communities of like-mindedness, walled off from a world we don't like? Or is it to work for peace and justice where we find its absence?

And then I realized: Historically the answer is “yes.”

And then I realized: That’s OK.

Which is to say this: Mennonites preserved their faith community by raising up those walls, hard, and by largely confining themselves to communities of like-minded believers. In my hometown of Hillsboro, churches continued to worship in a German dialect through the late 1950s. (My boss in high school, the owner of a local grocery store, could still converse and — more memorably — sing in that dialect.) When my family moved to the town in the mid-1980s, we were gobsmacked by its insularity. We made jokes about it, but we also, for a very long time, felt very alone.

That’s been both a strength and a weakness for Mennonites, clearly. They preserved their identity, but they made relatively few converts. Mennonites are still, today, often a gathering of white people with German surnames. There are charms to this. There are also problems.

What’s all this have to do with politics? Are we called to isolating ourselves to preserve our moral goodness, or to engage a world we see as fallen?

I think the answer is yes.

Which is to say: We are right to build communities of people who believe more or less as we do. That’s how churches exist. And if one looks to the Bible, it would seem that there are limits to the engagement that might be required of us. “Whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy and stay at his house until you move on.As you enter the house, greet its occupants. If the home is worthy, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not welcome you or heed your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.” That’s not a call to keep engaging past the point of all understanding.

But those words came from Jesus.

The Jesus who called Zaccheus down from the tree.

The Jesus who forgave the woman at the well.

The Jesus who fed the hungry because they followed him and wanted to hear more from him.

The Jesus who cured the child of a Roman centurion.

Mennonites have another tradition. One that works at the creation of peace and justice where those features are absent. They are drawn to places of conflict, and work for resolution. This means bringing together antagonists. It means finding a way to end the conflict that is mutually acceptable. It’s hard work, driven more by hope than success. It is noble and worthy.

So. Where does that leave me?

If you’re not Christian — or not Mennonite, perhaps — you probably left this piece awhile back. I don’t blame you.

But here is where I am arriving:

I want to keep writing about politics. I want my values represented in the debate, and expressing them is the best way I know how.

But I need to focus a bit less on being right. I need to work harder to abandon arguments that appeal to people who think like I do. I need to work on persuasion, instead.

Ah, but persuasion is just another tool of being right. So what I need to do more actively is listen. To consider and process the opinions of people who think differently than I do. To care about them. *To show my work* at doing that processing, so people know that I’m hearing and listening to them, instead of just trying to win the argument with them. I need to be open to the possibility that my mind will be changed once in awhile while still holding firm to some essential values.

There’s tension in all this. A balance that might be difficult to achieve. To try to be right, and yet to realize that “rightness” perhaps carries you only so far. To try to be right and recognize you’re occasionally wrong. To try to be right, yet modest enough to truly hear people who also try to be right - and come to different conclusions.

I know some folks will point out I’m showing my privilege. As a straight white guy, I have less to lose in a Trump Administration than many people of color. That’s entirely correct. And I can’t let the mission of engagement override the moral requirement of aiding, defending, and being on the side of the oppressed. But I must try to do both.

I must be more about the building of community than the winning of arguments. There are plenty of people who do the latter; not enough of the former.

Alexander Hamilton probably wanted Hillary Clinton to win.

In response to my complaints that Hillary won the popular vote even while losing the Electoral College, my friends who are (ahem) perhaps more faithful to the Constitution as written point out — correctly — that the Constitution has a number of “countermajoritarian” features, that the American government was designed as a republic instead of a straight democracy in order to ensure the majority couldn’t tyrannize the minority.

In fact, they say, the Electoral College is an important one of these countermajoritarian features because it gives individual states more of a role in selecting the executive, instead of leaving it a straight-up popularity contest.

There’s pretty strong evidence, though, the Founders didn’t intend the popular vote losers to regularly win office. One feature of the old — failed — Articles of Confederation  is required a supermajority (nine of the 13 states) to pass legislation. Which meant a single state, or a small minority of states, could muck things up.

That requirement appears nowhere in the Constitution. And the authors of that Constitution resisted calls to give each state the exact same representation in Congress because they thought such a move would be too countermajoritarian. Here’s Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist No. 22:

Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller.

Which, ahem:

This election was not precisely what Hamilton was writing about. But jeepers, it’s kind of on point, no? The Founders were countermajoritarian, perhaps, but not that countermajoritarian. In fact, they saw some danger to the republic in such features.

Similarly, James Madison wrote in Federalist 58, warning against a requirement that Congress need a quorum to pass laws — saying it gave the minority too much power over the majority. And at the end of the day, the majority is supposed to win, right?

Why wouldn’t we apply this logic to the presidential election?

In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences.

You may point out that Hillary, while winning a greater number of popular votes, did not win a majority. I say fine! Let’s dump Gary Johnson and Jill Stein from the ballot and have a runoff election!

Or there are other answers. “Countermajoritarian” features have their place in our governance, but it’s a limited place. If a minority of voters can routinely win the presidential election, trouble is probably stewing. I’ll get in trouble with my conservative friends for saying this, but the Constitution, as it currently works, is clearly defective. Let’s fix it.

Liberals: We're overthinking this. Hillary didn't lose. This is what it should mean.

Interesting:

Nate Cohn of the New York Times estimates that when every vote is tallied, some 63.4 million Americans will have voted for Clinton and 61.2 million for Trump. That means Clinton will have turned out more supporters than any presidential candidate in history except for Obama in 2008 and 2012. And as David Wasserman of Cook Political Report notes, the total vote count—including third party votes—has already crossed 127 million, and will “easily beat” the 129 million total from 2012. The idea that voters stayed home in 2016 because they hated Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is a myth.

We already know the Electoral College can produce undemocratic results, but what we don't know is why — aside from how it serves entrenched interests — it benefits the American people to have their preference for national executive overturned because of archaic rules designed, in part, to protect the institution of slavery. 

A form of choosing the national leader that — as has happened in this election — gives greater weight to the preferences of whites over the preferences of the overall body of voters might plausibly be said to be White Supremacy. When that form was created by men trying to ensure slavery wasn't overturned, the argument grows stronger yet. Throw in the number of black votes that might've gone missing due to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the conclusion becomes more difficult yet to avoid.

I know, I know, this is a republic, not a democracy. But this isn't like the Senate, where the structure can be said to "cool" fiery, short-term passions. There's simply no good reason for producing a result most voters said they didn't want. That we've entered an era where the system repeatedly produces that outcome doesn't mean that Democrats have the wrong message for America. It means they have the wrong message for, I guess, Florida. The Florida panhandle, if you want to get specific. And that's not the same thing.

It also means the system is delegitimizing itself.

Perhaps instead of battling each other over whether liberals need to reexamine their principles, what we need to really do is work hard and persistently for fair elections that really represent the preferences of most voters. Such a system won't always produce wins for Democrats. But it would probably produce wins for Democrats when Democrats win. That's not too much to ask.

I'm not cutting off my pro-Trump friends

Here and there on Facebook, I've seen a few of my friends declare they no longer wish the friendship of Trump supporters — and vowing to cut them out of their social media lives entirely.

I'm not going to do that.

To cut ourselves off from people who have made what we think was a grievous error in their vote is to give up on persuading them, to give up on understanding why they voted, to give up on understanding them in any but the most cartoonish stereotypes.

As a matter of idealism, cutting off your pro-Trump friends is to give up on democracy. As a matter of tactics, cutting off your pro-Trump friends is to give up on ever again winning in a democratic process.

And as a long-term issues, confining ourselves to echo chambers is part of our national problem.

Don't get me wrong: I expect a Trumpian presidency is a disaster, particularly for people of color. And in total honesty: My own relationships have been tested by this campaign season. There's probably some damage yet to make itself apparent.

But people are more than the sum of their votes. We are more than the sum of our votes. Let's maybe take a deep breath before we sunder too many relationships.

Here's how we remake American government.

Note: This was more or less written prior to the election — a time when I thought the campaign would end with Democrats having some power to create change. That ain't gonna happen for a couple of years. Still, for the sake of conversation....

Something’s gotta change.

That much is clear after an election that was one of the most divisive ever — one that left many of us feeling, as Alec Baldwin said on SNL, “gross.” Our governance and our politics have failed us. It is within our power to fix it.

These fixes aren’t marginal. So let’s admit up front that radical changes could have radical, unexpected consequences. But let’s also admit that a system that put Donald Trump in charge of nukes is a system that deserves radical reconsidering, at the very least.

Seven ideas to fix it all:

• Scrap the presidential system, replace it with a parliament. I suspect a lot of frustration in the land right now is that nobody really has the power to get things done. Dems get frustrated because President Obama was limited in carrying out his agenda by a Republican Congress; Republicans are frustrated that Congress was limited in carrying out its agenda by a Democratic President. Everybody has a little power, but not enough to actually make proactive changes. That’s frustrating for everybody.

You’ll notice, too, not many thriving democracies have duplicated the American system over the years, even though we’re the oldest democracy. So. Let’s build a parliament. Two houses: Congress and the Senate. The Congress would be voted in like it is now — from districts in each state. The majority party (or coalition) in Congress would then appoint the executive from within its own ranks. One big benefit? It greatly reduces the likelihood that somebody like Donald Trump, with zero record of public service, could come so close to running the show. But the structure would put Congress and the executive — we could still call him or her “president” in order to — in the hands of the same party. That party would then be held accountable by voters for how it implemented its agenda.

(One other item that’s important to note here. I was going to suggest a requirement for a pause on legislative branch investigations while the executive is in office. But only some investigations — anything involving items that transpired before the executive took office — and the pause would only last until the executive left office. We don’t need Hillary haunted by a thousand more Benghazi investigations, for example. Investigations would be reserved for actions taken by the executive and his/her representatives after they’d taken office. That leaves current accountability in place while reducing a lot of petty harassment that goes on with these things. I’m not sure this requirement is needed, though, in a parliamentary setup: One party is unlikely to harass its own executive with unnecessary investigations.)

On a related note:

• Scrap the Electoral College. Or make the electoral vote apportionment in each state equal to the popular vote: The college is a relic of pre-Civil War times when the “nation” was more like a confederation — more like the European Union, say, than France. Twice in 16 years, now, the popular vote has been overridden by the Electoral College. I’m not sure the system can withstand it happening again anytime soon.

• But what about checks and balances? You’re right: We don’t want crude majoritarianism to reign. How to put the brakes on a runaway majority? And how to incorporate a form of strong-states federalism that our conservative brethren will no doubt clamor for?

That’s why we have the Senate. But let’s go back to populating the Senate the old-fashioned way: Appointed by their respective state governments to represent state interests. But the Senate won’t be a co-equal of the House of Representatives, as it is now. What we’re aiming for is a House of Commons-House of Lords situation, where the House of Commons does the real work of passing bills and the House of Lords has limited powers to slow or halt legislation it doesn’t like. Let’s work out the details later — my initial, throw-it-out there proposal is that the Senate would require votes representing two-thirds of the states in order to block House legislation.

Federalists: If you want an additional role in this process, let’s talk about giving the states a role in directly proposing or scotching legislation. Again, they’d have to meet a high bar — with agreement from the majority of legislatures in two-thirds of states. We can tinker with this; let’s keep talking.

And, oh yeah: We’d still have a Bill of Rights in our new Constitution.

• Won’t gerrymandering ensure a permanent majority for one party? Not if our new Constitution requires House districts to be drawn the way they do in California now, with an independent commission drawing boundaries according to populations and community interests instead of with the intent of protecting “safe” seats for either party. The result of that reform is that more California seats are competitive than was the case under the old system.

Not only is this good in small-d democratic terms, it also has a side benefit in reducing polarization: A Republican who has no fear of running against a legitimate Democratic opponent is a Republican with incentives to run as far right as possible, in order to stave off primary opposition. Competitive races would require candidates who operate closer to the center.

• As long as we’re at it, let’s require that House candidates campaign entirely using public funds. There are two big problems with today’s money-driven politics. First, it gets our representatives in the mindset that they’re representing the money and not the constituents. Second, our representatives spend godawful amounts of time raising money for their next campaign. So. Get them out of the business.

Note to conservatives who weep about the death of the First Amendment here: Spend all the money you want advocating for the candidate you desire. But the candidate won’t be able to receive your donations to spend at their own discretion, nor would they be allowed to coordinate with you or political action committees. This leaves money more influential in the process than I’d like, but it’s probably impossible to get money out of politics entirely. So. Let’s at least insulate our elected officials from it.

• One more House reform: Ranked-choice voting required in all House races. This could allow for the emergence of third parties that might more properly represent the range of American politics than just the A-to-B spectrum of Democrats and Republicans.

• Finally, term limits for Supreme Court justices. If such limits existed, I have to believe that Donald Trump’s support in this election might’ve slipped somewhat. As it was, there were too many people who weren't ready to let Hillary Clinton have possible control over the court for  generation. And frankly, this isn’t a bad idea: Merrick Garland excepted, the parties have been appointing younger, less-experienced jurists to the court in order to maximize their chances of serving 30 years, maybe more.

So. Limit justices to a single, 18-year term. Rotate the seats so that one comes up for approval every two years. And let the nominations come, as they do in some states, from independent panels, with the president picking the candidate from (say) three finalists, subject to approval from the House.

Yeah, this is all kind of crazy. It’s a dramatic reimagining of our governance. But drama is too much of our political lives these days. These six steps might help reduce that drama.

One last thought for my conservative friends

If you've spent the last eight years using the word "tyranny" to describe the presidency of Barack Obama, but then turned and supported Donald Trump — a man of clear authoritarian instincts — to be president, well: I don't believe you anymore. I have to assume everything you said about "liberty" and "freedom" was just a fog of words meant to help your side retain power.

Awake. Haunted.

I'm up. In a few minutes, I take my son to school. He's alarmed by the news I just gave him. I told him he doesn't have to worry.

I hope I'm right. I don't really believe I am.

I try to practice my politics somewhere in the neighborhood of "a pox on both your houses," trying to remember that the speck I see in the eye of my political rivals is probably matched by the log in my own. Politics is ever an elbow-throwing business, the Republic usually survives, and so I don't want to let myself get too high or low about specific outcomes.

But what haunts me is this: Many of the people I know who ended up in the Trump camp pretty much expect him to be a disaster, too, or they did until they convinced themselves otherwise.

And they did convince themselves — in some cases because tribal affiliations demanded it, in other cases out of spite, and in many cases because they ardently believed that Hillary Clinton was just as monstrous as their candidate.

But they know. They know he's awful. And hey supported him anyway.

What's next for liberals now that Donald Trump has been elected?

So, liberals, this is the country we’re stuck in. Unless you’re moving out — and you’re probably not — you now have a couple of alternatives:

• Surrender.

• Fight for your values.

Let’s choose the latter. How do we do that? A couple of lessons learned and strategies going forward:

• Let’s vote our hearts. Except for the opportunity to nominate (potentially) the first woman president, Bernie Sanders (despite not being an actual Democrat) probably stood closer to the heart of the Democratic base than Hillary Clinton, who had supported the Iraq War and who was enmeshed in Wall Street.

I supported Clinton during the primaries, despite my concerns about her on policy, as well as the Clintons’ predilection for making it easy on GOP scandalmongers trying to ruin their reputation. (The same scandalmongers never really laid a glove on President Obama, but it requires the target of that scandalmongering to be disciplined, a trait the Clintons have never managed consistently.) I was thinking tactically — expecting she would be more likely to beat a Republican opponent and thus defend what gains have been made the last eight years. I was wrong.

In fact, if you want to jump out of the piece right now because I didn’t see what was coming and why, I don’t blame you.

If you look back at the 21st century elections, Democrats have won when they love their candidate — Obama in ‘08 and ‘12 — and lost when they’re thinking tactically: Kerry ‘04 and now Clinton ‘16. So. Vote what you love. And if you’re worried Americans won’t accept the lefty you love, consider this: Nobody would’ve given Donald Trump more than a punchers’ chance of winning when he started. Anything can happen, and having the nominee you like can move the “Overton Window” in a direction you desire. Timidity does not move that window.

(Would Sanders have beaten Trump? Who knows? One thing’s for sure: He would’ve robbed Donald of some potency on economic issues and in challenging the elites. In any case, you either win or you lose — and Dems lost with Clinton. Might as well lose in the pursuit of ideals.)

Why we can't give up on each other. (Or: Holy crap, Glenn Beck!)

I saw this on a friend's Facebook page today, telling his Trump-supporting buddies to get lost, and it admittedly resonated:

I strive to be a man of peace and I will always be cool if we find ourselves in the same place. But if this circus clown gets elected, I will never forget what you have done.

I want change as much as anyone, but you’re standing by a monster who boasts of committing sexual assaults, won't reject his endorsement from the fucking KKK, taunts his audiences to physically harm his critics and rejects religious freedom and other rights that generations of Americans have fought and died to earn and preserve.

This election season has been deeply trying to all of us. As it culminates, it's natural and easy to wonder how the hell we can live with the other half of Americans whose values so repulse us. Maybe it's time to divvy up the country? Liberals get the coasts and Great Lakes states, while conservatives get the rest? Might that be safer than trying to stick together?

What I keep trying to remember is this: The people we are today — the thoughts, the worldview — are not set in stone. We can change. For example, Glenn Beck*:

“I did a lot of freaking out about Barack Obama.” But, he said, “Obama made me a better man.” He regrets calling the President a racist and counts himself a Black Lives Matter supporter. “There are things unique to the African-American experience that I cannot relate to,” he said. “I had to listen to them.”

We have not always been this polarized. It's not a given that we need remain this polarized. But some of us are going to have to change our worldviews. And all of us, all of us, are probably going to have to listen to experiences that we cannot otherwise relate to.

*

Schadenfreude will kill us all.

Rod Dreher's not voting for Trump, but he'd still kinda sorta like to see those nasty liberals suffer the pain of having Trump win.

If Trump wins, on Wednesday morning I will wake up looking for something good, anything. The idea that the election results will have ruined the day of these horrible people, as well as this sad-sack sycophant, is … well, it’s better than nothing.

That Rod Dreher. He sure is a super-Christian, isn't he?

Only thing: Can any liberal deny feeling the same way about the prospect of a Trump loss? I hope we wouldn't feel that way if we thought Hillary Clinton was a disaster, like Dreher says about Trump. But we probably would.

I can't escape the feeling that schadenfreude and associated emotions are driving too much of our politics. We admire politicians and give them our support because they make the "right enemies" instead of what we want them to do in office. Delighting In The Tears of Our Enemies — becoming an "Effyouocracy" — is probably not the foundation for wise and prolonged self-governance. 

No to Donald Trump

I’ve been trying to come up with a closing argument on this election that edifies rather than irritates — a way of communicating that embraces wisdom and thoughtfulness instead of the shrill anger that has characterized so much of the campaign.

After days of introspection, what it comes down to this: I got nothing. Either you agree with me or you don’t. There’s not much I can say that will change your mind now.

I have tried to resist the idea for years now that people having different political ideas makes them bad people. But Donald Trump appears, from everything I can observe, to be a bad person. At best he’s a boor, the proverbial rich boy who was born on third base and assumed he’d hit a triple. Mostly, though, he’s a breeder of resentments — against Mexicans, against Muslims, and against Jews. (Oh, and women. Perhaps especially women.) He doesn’t ask us to be our best selves. Instead, he glories in being his worst self, calls it a crusade against political correctness, and invites us all to sink deeper into the mud with him.

Republicans seem intent on destroying the Republic

Let's be clear, there's a straight line between this:

In a vintage return to his confrontational style, Sen. Ted Cruz indicated that Republicans could seek to block a Democratic president from filling the vacant Supreme Court seat indefinitely.

And this:

Jared Halbrook, 25, of Green Bay, Wis., said that if Mr. Trump lost to Hillary Clinton, which he worried would happen through a stolen election, it could lead to “another Revolutionary War.” 

“People are going to march on the capitols,” said Mr. Halbrook, who works at a call center. “They’re going to do whatever needs to be done to get her out of office, because she does not belong there.” 

“If push comes to shove,” he added, and Mrs. Clinton “has to go by any means necessary, it will be done.”

The connecting line: Conservatives have spent a generation arguing that Democratic governance isn't just wrong, but illegitimate. (Thus the Clinton impeachment, thus birtherism, etc.) If Democratic governance is illegitimate, then of course you block all judicial nominations, of course your partisans warn darkly of an armed revolution if the election doesn't turn out their way. It's an approach that invites disaster. We're about to find out if that disaster is finally at our doorstep.

The difference between Bill Clinton and Donald Trump: (Or, compartmentalization is a good thing)

Conservative thinker Hadley Arkes doesn’t understand why #NeverTrump Republicans can’t just get on the bandwagon already. Don’t they know what’s at stake?

I can hardly blame the Bushes for recoiling from the indignities and insults, the lies and calumnies, thrown off with such abandon by Donald Trump. But accomplished public men are even more obliged than the rest of us to respect the difference, searing at times, between personal wounds and public duties. To take those duties seriously is to raise the question of why the Bushes and people like them do not care as much for the things that other Republicans, ordinary folk, see at stake in 2016:

• the prospect that medical care will be politically managed at the national level, with an independent commission rationing care, bringing everyone under their control;
• the specter of federal courts filled at all levels with the professoriate of the Left, ready to install as law those fevered theories that have now become the fashion at the “better” universities; and
• the crushing effects of Dodd-Frank, creating vast costs in compliance and damping incentives for banks to invest in new businesses.

I won’t argue with Arkes’ assessment of the issues. If you’re conservative, this must indeed be what the election of Hillary Clinton looks like.

But Arkes is mistaken, I think, in how he understands the stuffy refusal of people like the Bushes or Paul Ryan to give Donald Trump their full-throated support. In his telling, Trump is basically Rodney Dangerfield in “Caddyshack” — gauche, “flawed,” but, in the end, one of the good guys.

The idea, hinted at more than a few times, is that Trump might end up like Bill Clinton — who was personally gross, perhaps even criminal, but who also happened to be (by many accounts) a pretty effective president in spite of his personal foibles.

Here’s the thing — and it’s why, I think, some #NeverTrump Republicans won’t just concede the point: Bill Clinton managed to be a reasonably effective in spite of his personal foibles because he understood and observed the line between “personal” and “public” to a degree that Donald Trump cannot fathom.

During Clinton’s impeachment, this trait was known as “compartmentalization,” and it was generally discussed pejoratively. As one writer put it: "Bill Clinton famously compartmentalized his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, convincing himself his relations with her were neither sexual nor related to his performance as president. He did not convince much of the country."

Well, he was found “not guilty” at the impeachment trial. More importantly, this seems to be model for what Trump’s advocates believe he can be as president.

But there’s very little in Trump’s history, or in his campaigning, to suggest he’s capable of such line-drawing. His whole career has been about stamping the “Trump” name on an endless array of products — real estate, in particular, but also steaks and wine and ties — so that the distinction between Trump the person and “Trump” the brand grew very blurry indeed.

As far as the campaign, I keep coming back to the third presidential debate, where Hillary Clinton and Trump were both asked how they’d make Supreme Court appointments. Here’s how Trump opened his answer:

Trump: Well, first of all, it’s so great to be with you and thank you, everybody. The Supreme Court, it is what it is all about. Our country is so, so, it is just so imperative that we have the right justices. Something happened recently where Justice Ginsburg made some very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people. Many, many millions of people that I represent and she was forced to apologize. And apologize she did. But these were statements that should never, ever have been made. We need a Supreme Court that in my opinion is going to uphold the second amendment and all amendments, but the second amendment which is under absolute siege.

Observe: Trump processes a key policy question in terms of how he, personally, has been aggrieved by a member of the Supreme Court before he can start to get to the issue itself.

Let’s not forget Trump’s appearance at Gettysburg, where he spent 13 minutes griping about the women who have made groping allegations against him before getting down to the business, supposedly, of the day: Unveiling his agenda for the first 100 days in office.

Can Trump separate his personal issues from the job he’d be required to do as president? The evidence says “no.” He is not a compartmentalizer.

In this, he resembles not Bill Clinton, but Richard Nixon, whose dark resentments so occupied him that he self-destructed his way out of power, having lost the confidence of the country and even of the Republican Party that was supposed to have his back.

I’m not conservative. I’m not a Republican. I was never going to be somebody who might vote for Donald Trump. But Trump’s temperament is why, even if you’re 100 percent on board with his policy prescriptions, you should be hesitant to lend your support to his candidacy. He’s not simply a flawed man who will do the business of the American people; he is a flawed man who, it seems likely, will make those flaws the business of the American people.

Not all flaws are equal, it turns out. And the presidency is bigger than policy outcomes.

If you have lousy character and want to be president, you’d best be a compartmentalizer. Trump’s not. It’s why #NeverTrump Republicans are correct to withhold their support.