Senators Who Voted Against the Hideous Bill Won 21.9 Million More Votes Than Those Who Voted For It
And Five More Thoughts on This Particular Democracy Debacle
First four, on the Senate:
One: Senators Who Voted Against Won 21.9 Million More Votes Than Those Who Voted For
The senators who voted for Trump’s OBBB last week won 65.6 million votes in the elections that put them in the Senate this term.
The senators who voted against it won 87.5 million. That’s 21.9 million votes more, or 57% of the votes cast for these 100 senators.
(I count votes for Vance and Rubio as votes for senators for the legislation, although their seats are held now by appointed successors (who voted for). My numbers.)
Two: Senators Who Voted Against Represent 56% of the Population of the 50 States
The senators who voted for the legislation represent a combined 149.3 million people. (I count each senator as representing ½ the population of the state. Both senators from each state voted the same way in every state except NC and KY.)
The senators who voted against it represent 190.1 million people. That’s 40.8 million more people, or 56% of the population of the fifty states.
Three: Republicans Hold Three More Seats Than They Should Based on How Voters Voted
If we had a normal democratic election system, such that the percentage of votes each party’s candidates received determined how many seats it held in the legislature, our Senate would be 50-50, not 53-47. (Democratic candidates received just over 50% of the vote.) So if the Republicans couldn’t hold all their members (they in fact lost three) the legislation would not have passed.
Four: To Say Nothing of All the People Not in States
Many US citizens live in places that are not states—PR & DC are the largest—and so aren’t represented in the Senate at all, and most of them would have supported senators who would have voted against. Together, their population is greater than that of the five smallest states combined. Those five states’ 10 senators voted 8-2 for the legislation.
Those four points all go to our system’s long-standing democracy failures that got us where we are today. Among other things, our undemocratic Senate was a necessary condition for producing our lawless Supreme Court, which gave us our current illegal president.
After we stop the authoritarian takeover, we need to fix these structural problems, too, or it’ll just happen all over again. Or worse. Things can always get worse.
Five: Enactment of the Bill Is the Illegal Product of Illegal Threats
This president wins votes in Congress through the same kinds of illegal and undemocratic pressure tactics that he uses against news organizations, law firms, universities, and other powerful institutions and leaders who stand in the way of his power-consolidation and self-enrichment.
We don’t know—at least I don’t know—what specific illegal threats he made against Republicans in Congress who might have voted against his legislation and then didn’t. I don’t know whether he made any of his illegal threats expressly and directly to them.
That doesn’t matter.
The threat that keeps them in line is out in the open, in the public vengeance he takes on those who betray him. When he directs federal law enforcement to crush people he doesn’t like with bogus investigations, or denies government contracts to anyone who hires them, or cuts off their access to government facilities or services, or bullies government-funded non-profit organizations to fire them, or removes their security detail so maybe they’ll end up murdered, maybe by someone the president pardoned—when he posts about all of it on social media—the point of it is so it’s all perfectly clear.
The crime boss doesn’t need to tell you personally not to cross him.
And like every effective crime boss, he makes it worst of all for the disloyal. He’s quicker to attack them, with harsher reprisals, and the social environment for them in many Republican places heightens their vulnerability. You may find yourself short on sympathy for right-wing nuts who land in Trump’s crosshairs. But whatever ache your heart can’t feel, we all suffer the consequences of the discipline he imposes.
And
Six: Don’t Take It Too Literally. Trump Won’t.
This president doesn’t feel bound by the laws of Congress. He refuses to spend funds Congress required him to spend, spends in ways not authorized by Congress, conditions funding on factors not permitted by statute or the Constitution. Just last week we learned that he authorized private companies to violate laws of Congress that had been upheld by the Supreme Court, based on his “core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers,” which is to say, on no legal grounds at all.
Laws aren’t irrelevant to him, just as laws aren’t irrelevant to a crime boss. Laws are features of the political environment that must be navigated.
The new legislation remakes that environment. It removes obstacles and expands his range of motion. And so does the spectacle of his dominance in winning its enactment.
But don’t take it too literally. The words in the law are a starting point. What’s coming, if we don’t stop him in time, will definitely be worse.
That’s six. Keep up the good fight. We’ll get through this. If we stop the authoritarian takeover.