I am back from my ninth trip to New York to teach at Columbia. It is now just seven days until the election,
so it is time for me to prognosticate. I
am not talking about how the election will turn out, but about what will happen
after the Democrats retake the House. [I
am aware that there is a chance they will fail to do so, but since I plan to
kill myself in that eventuality, I need not concern myself with it.]
Herewith my prediction.
Like all pundits, I shall take full credit for it if I am right, and
totally forget that I made it if I am wrong.
So: The day after the
results are in, Trump will without the slightest evidence of unease or
hesitation pivot to being a non-partisan supporter of DACA guarantees,
comprehensive immigration reform, infrastructure spending, guarantees for those
with pre-existing conditions, and whatever else Democrats want that does not
negatively affect his own financial interests.
Overtly, covertly, or implicitly, but in all events unmistakably, he
will communicate it to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that he will work cooperatively
with them for the next two years so long as they squelch the Democratic lust
for investigations of him or his family and allow him to summarily shut down
the Mueller probe.
This will pose a terrible dilemma for the Democrats, and I
fear there is a grave danger that they will succumb, in which case they will
pave the way for Trump’s re-election and the death of what remains of constitutional
democracy in America.
10 comments:
Please, Prof. Wolff, I know that you are saying it in jest, to demonstrate the depths of your agony, but even in jest, pledges of suicide should be avoided. El Duce may be reading (I know, highly unlikely, not just because this is not a site he would frequent, but because he does not/cannot read, but one of his minions may surf the internet for signs of rebellion) and insist that you have made a promise that has been converted into a contract by virtue of the doctrine of promissory estoppel and sue you for breach of contract. (He, of course, would not know what the hell the doctrine is, but his personal attorneys may inform him. And even though the doctrine would have no application, since El Duce has not offered any consideration for your promise, should it wend its way to the S. Ct., J. Kavanaugh would write a majority opinion holding you liable for breach of contract.) As an aside, remember the song from the movie Mash – Suicide Is Painless?
Regarding your prognostication, you may be right about the Devil’s bargain that El Duce would offer the Democrats, but I assume even the Democrats would be able to figure out that if they accepted the bargain, after the Mueller investigation was discontinued, el Duce would renege on his promise. Then, when they sued El Duce for breach of contract, the S. Ct. would dismiss the lawsuit in a decision written by J. Kavanaugh holding that the contract was unconscionable, or the Democrats lacked standing to sue, or the terms of the contract were ambiguous, or ......
And yes, if you are wrong regarding the offer of such a bargain, then your prediction, like defeat in battle, will be an orphan.
Il Duce--right? Of course, it's your neologism, so you can do what you want with it.
Il Duce refers to Mussolini. I was referring to El Duce, the drummer for the band The Mentors, who, according to Wikipedia, was allegedly hired by Courtney Love to kill her husband.
I stand corrected. Il Duce it is.
Further clarification. Actually, should Il Duce sue Prof. Wolff for breach of contract, the contract would be unenforceable because suicide is, I assume, illegal in North Carolina, and the offer of illegal consideration renders a contract invalid. But this might not prevent J. Kavanaugh from still ruling in favor of Il Duce.
Below are examples of comments that followed a report that, long before they were judges, Sandra Day O’Connor once declined a proposal of marriage by William Rehnquist.
Pachydermman
41 minutes ago
And this story is about? Why would I care. I want to talk about the 2 SCJ that President Trump has put on the SC. & I say THANK YOU for that. Cause Now the LEFT Partisan leaning Ones can't change Policies cause they want to give what the demonRATS wanted. . The Dems want control of the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court in order to advance their liberal causes . *** If they lose their control of enacting laws through legislative means or by liberal judicial fiat, they lose their ability to enact their radical leftist agenda — an agenda that the media seems to fully support******. Read more at this link... http://www.galesburg.com/op. . & have a nice rest of the day on that who's really ruining the FABRIC of America Note (The DemonRATS!)
The Watcher
43 minutes ago
I wonder if they were married if they would've been allowed to serve on the Supreme Court together.
Maybe it was a mistake for the Democrats to have supported curtailing the use of literacy tests in order to qualify to vote in the Voting Rights Act. Perhaps if they were reinstated, Black voters would sufficiently outnumber ignorant White voters to insure passage of the progressive social measures we liberals yearn for. (In Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, 360 U.S. 45 (1959), the Supreme Court held that literacy tests were not unconstitutional.) Maybe voter suppression is not the culprit; it's just been the wrong kind of voter suppression.
Prof. Wolff, I'm afraid to agree with you on all the major points. The biggest disappointment for me has been Schumer. He has turned out to be the weakest leader of opposition in the history of the Senate. He does not even attempt to put up a fight or give moral support to the frontlines like Ried used to.
There was an article by a respected legal authority in today's NYT, on the subject of Trump's stated goal of nullifying the US Consitution via executive order. One of the comments on that article was intriguing: https://nyti.ms/2CTondV#permid=29231485.
Dr. Foner asks at the end of his NYT opinion piece,
“If the president can unilaterally abrogate a provision of the Constitution by executive order, which one will be next?”
The answer is that he cannot. Such an executive order would be immediately challenged in a federal district court. In all likelihood, execution of the executive order would be stayed by the court until it could be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Although nothing is guaranteed these days, the odds are, I would think, even with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Court, that the order would be ruled unconstitutional by a vote of 9-0. If not, if it were sustained by a a vote of 5-4, the Court would have to overturn the standing precedent of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), which held that there were only two exceptions to the birthright provision of the 14th Amendment: the offspring of ambassadors and of ambassadorial staff born in the United States; and the offspring of hostile aliens who have militarily occupied part of the United States.
If the Supreme Court were to overturn the interpretation of the 14th Amendment set forth in Wong Kim Ark, then there will be a whole lot more that we would have to worry about other than the question of the meaning of the birthright provision. We would be entering a period of American history that would render our republic unrecognizable.
Prof. Wolff, I don’t think you have a thing to worry about.
If the Democrats take control of the House but not the Senate, the bargain would make no sense to the House leadership because whatever they passed in the way health care, infrastructure etc. would not make it through Mitch McConnell’s Senate. They would not need Trump to pass this legislation in the House, so what can he offer other than to try to share the credit?
If the Democrats control both Houses, the situation would be different--they could get something done. The question then, though, is what does Trump have to offer them? If he signs the legislation, the Democrats can take credit for turning him around. In a normal world, he would risk his chances for re-election by vetoing popular legislation, but my guess is that that’s what he would do--justifying his veto by lying about the legislation, denouncing fake news, and telling a lot of lies. It’s been a winning formula for him so far, and he’s unlikely to see any reason to give it up.
Even if Trump were to turn into a modern day Abraham Lincoln, enough of the left as well as the center would still despise him; and if he switched sides on legislation, he’d lose the support of a lot of the right. The conservatives who held their noses and supported him because of his tax cuts would not be happy if he suddenly were to support higher taxes on the wealthy.
As to Schumer, I wouldn’t sell him short. He’s too cozy with Wall St. for my taste (I would have preferred Durbin), but any Senator from NY has to be cozy with Wall St. Finance is a major industry in the State and a large employer. He also wants to keep his job as party leader in the Senate, and that’s what is likely to control his actions. And if he were to have a majority, it would be a caucus that includes most, if not all, of the centrist Democrats who are at risk in the election Tuesday--Mancin, Heitkamp et al. That’s what would push him from the left to the center, not Wall St.
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Nat
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