My dear departed friend Ann was from Wisconsin, and it was from her that I first learned about Cheesehead hats. She actually owned one, a huge wedge of plastic cheddar that fit nicely on her head. You see, Wisconsin is the dairy capital of the United States and produces over 3 billion pounds of cheese per year. That’s more than 26 percent of all the cheese produced in this country.
Those are amazing facts about a state that has very recently risen from a relatively sedate cheese producer to the top of the political news cycle. So, what has gotten everyone’s attention? The conservative Republican governor, Scott Walker, lost his seat to a Democrat, Tony Evers, in the November elections. The attorney general also lost his seat to a Democrat, and the secretary of state, a Democrat as well, retained his. The people of Wisconsin spoke, and when the votes were counted, they spoke blue.
But not so blue at the district level, as both the state Assembly and the Senate remained as red as ever, if not more so. That does seem strange given the Democratic wins in Wisconsin at the state level, but not so strange when you take into account how gerrymandered those districts are. According to election return data for the state Assembly, the Republicans won only 46 percent of the vote but managed to win 64 percent of the seats. Wow, gerrymandering really works!
So, the people of Wisconsin voted out their Republican governor in favor of a Democrat and would have turned their legislative chambers blue had there been fair districting. Of course, Scott Walker will exit gracefully on Jan. 7, and the Republican legislature will do its best to work with the incoming administration.
Guess again. Walker and his Republican party instead decided to subvert democracy by calling a late-term, lame-duck legislative session, and rushed through to a vote a series of bills that greatly reduce the ability of the incoming governor, attorney general and secretary of state to do their jobs. This is obviously a strategy to prevent them from fulfilling their campaign promises. Those promises included the expansion of Medicaid and a plan to remove the state from a multi-state federal lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act, among many other efforts to support the people of Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, Wisconsin is not the only state engaging in such anti-democratic behavior. North Carolina pulled the same stunt in 2016 when a Democrat, Roy Cooper, won the governorship; he was then stripped of his powers to run the government. Those powers were so reduced that he spent his first two years in office mainly fighting the power-grab in court. But this November’s election, despite North Carolina’s own gerrymandered districts, resulted in enough Democrats winning in the legislature to restore Governor Cooper’s power to at least veto legislation he disapproves of.
Whatever happened to the American concept of free and fair elections? That when you lose, you gracefully exit the stage, leaving a gracious letter of welcome for your replacement. That’s what we count on: The people vote, and we all, including the politicians, respect the outcome.
But that’s not what’s happening now. Michigan is also embroiled in the same sort of democracy-killing behavior. Does it not matter what the voters want? How can our elected officials break the rules and norms and just do as they please?
The answer, I believe, is in the example being set at the very top of our government where it’s happening on a daily basis. There is no political norm that the Trump administration has not broken. And as long as there is this model at the top to follow, that’s what Republicans will do.
I fear that we are headed for a time when losing incumbents will refuse to leave office. Isn’t that the next step once lame-duck sessions are no longer a big enough power-grab? They will reject the vote counts or yell voter fraud, something that has yet to be proved even exists. Or they’ll simply refuse to move on.
But the biggest fear is that when the time comes for Trump to leave office, he simply will not go. And his party will allow it because they either support his every move without question, or they will choose to remain silent. And so, in short order, our “democracy” will be run by an authoritarian autocrat, supported by his party, and that will be that.
He will then have the power to make laws and break them just as he has tried to do for the last two years. But by then, he will have stacked the courts with supportive judges who will rule in his favor, unlike the independent jurists who have in many cases thus far ruled against his most egregious attempts to undermine our rules and laws.
And what then? Oh, you say, the Supreme Court will put a stop to all that. Which brings me to the newest and, recently, the most controversial member of the court, whose confirmation sealed the conservative majority: Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I wonder how he’ll vote when Trump’s lawbreaking reaches the high court?
I think you already know the answer to that.
Karen Gardner, of Haydenville, a retired computer programmer, is a bird watcher, nature photographer and ukulele player. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.