Generally speaking, people get the government they deserve. And the American people are about to get it good and hard. I’m looking forward to a Clinton Presidency, the same way I look forward to dental surgery. It will be long and painful, but it’s just something you have to endure. There will be an end to it, and then the beginning of something new.
I want 2017 to be the start of the Insurrection of the States. To my mind, the timing is perfect. Things have gone terribly wrong in this country, and they’re going to keep getting worse. If the last line of American freedom’s defense, its 7,382 State Legislators, don’t step up and perform their duty now, they probably never will. If not now, when? If not us, who?
I know Trump could still win. Nate Silver gives him a one in three shot, and he knows his business. But the last shoe just dropped, and James Comey did the Democrats a favor. Now, at least, we won’t be electing a President under investigation by the FBI. It’s something.
I’m fairly confident Speaker Ryan will be ineffective in opposition. He wants to govern, he wants regular order, he wants to work with the President, to compromise. He’ll do his best, but it won’t be much. The institution he leads, Congress, is corrupt. The next Congress will be the same as the last — feckless, unwilling to fight.
Everybody’s going to be unhappy for the next four years. Nothing will get done. We may manage to kick the can down the road, and avoid economic disaster. I hope so, but that’s the best we can hope for, and it will be a close run thing.
And while all this is going on in Washington, Republican Governors and State Legislators will be governing the States effectively. They have a lot of problems, but they’ll work through them. These men and women are, by and large, not corrupt, and are patriotic Americans. What a contrast to D.C.
Walter Russell Mead thinks “the blue model” is on its last legs, and can’t last much longer. Tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend, elect, elect elect. It only works for so long, and I think Mead is right, it can’t last much longer. Detroit was for openers. Illinois may be next. Things may get ugly, as all the bills come due.
Never in my long life, and, never, in my opinion, in American history have been conditions so ripe for a revolt against the Center. People hate Washington and everybody in it. This is not just from the right. The young Sanders supporters, like my acquaintance Ryan Clayton of the Young Turks, hate Washington as much as I do. These liberal idealists want to use Article V against Washington the same way we do. They want an Article V Convention to propose a campaign finance reform Amendment to the Constitution. They’ve got Resolutions from five States, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Illinois and California. All these very liberal Democratic State Legislators have embraced the use, by the States, of Article V to reform the federal government. Somehow, in the next couple years, we’ll all find something we can work on together. Wolf-pac wants to overturn Citizens United, and that’s a non-starter. But campaign finance reform, in general terms, has huge public support. We just have to find a way to do it without violating the First Amendment. Maybe there’s a way.
What I’m getting at is that the news from Washington in 2017 is going to be very depressing. People will ask, Is this the best we can do? Isn’t there a better way? And all the while, the battle goes on, State by State, for the first exercise of the Article V power in American history. At some point, you’d think people would notice.
That should start happening at the end of the month. Stay tuned.
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