Three More Days

by baldilocks

The great Wal­ter E. Williams reminds us of how our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment works — or, at least, how it’s sup­posed to work.

Democ­rats are hop­ing the com­ing elec­tion will give them a major­ity in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Repub­li­cans and much of our nation dread that prospect. My ques­tion is: What would a House major­ity mean for the Democ­rats? Let’s look at it.

To con­trol the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Democ­rats must win at least 218 seats, which many pre­dict as being likely. To con­trol the Sen­ate, Democ­rats must win enough seats to get to 51, which many pre­dict is unlikely. Let’s say the Democ­rats do take the House. If they were to pass a mea­sure that Repub­li­cans in both houses didn’t like and Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump didn’t like, either, he could use his veto pen. To over­ride Trump’s veto, Democ­rats would need to meet the U.S. Constitution’s require­ment that they muster a two-​thirds vote in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (290 votes) and a two-​thirds vote in the Sen­ate (67 votes). Nei­ther would be likely.

It’s quite a chal­lenge to over­ride a pres­i­den­tial veto. Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt was the veto king, with 635 vetoes. Only nine of them were over­rid­den. Pres­i­dent Grover Cleve­land vetoed 584 con­gres­sional mea­sures and was over­rid­den only seven times. If the House Democ­rats were to do all that they promise to do and if Pres­i­dent Trump were to mar­shal the guts of Pres­i­dents Roo­sevelt and Cleve­land — both Democ­rats, I might add — the next two years would be a sight to behold.

I remem­ber how ret­i­cent George W. Bush was to use his veto power as pres­i­dent. I don’t think that would be a prob­lem for Don­ald Trump. Just a hunch.

I’d almost like to see the Democ­rats have more feces fits when the pres­i­dent refuses to bow down meekly to donk majori­ties in the Leg­isla­tive Branch. Almost.

Williams con­tin­ues on in his usual calm, rea­son­ably man­ner and as I was read­ing, it occurred to me that even if the Democ­rats get every­thing they want on Tues­day, they won’t be sat­is­fied. Why not? Because Don­ald Trump will still be there as pres­i­dent of the United States, with all the author­ity inher­ent to the office, and with none of the fear of George W. Bush. Yes, I said it.

Win­ning on Tues­day will be the first step to their ulti­mate goal: remov­ing Pres­i­dent Trump from office. And you know that a vic­tory on Tues­day will embolden them in their already aston­ish­ing recklessness.

It’s up to the Peo­ple to pre­vent them from tak­ing that step.

Either way, be pre­pared for crazy. And for funny.

Juli­ette Akinyi Ochieng has been blog­ging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here. She pub­lished her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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