Pennsylvania Republican Senator Gene Yaw: Let’s Get Things Straight

At the outset, and in the interest of full disclosure, I will state that I voted for Donald Trump every time his name was on the ballot.   I also supported his campaign financially.   Do I like the fact that the candidate I supported lost – NO.  Nevertheless, our system requires that, as a citizen, I respect the laws of this state and country.

Since the November 3rd election, I have been told that “I am not a Patriot.”  I am a military veteran and, of course, that previous comment came from a person who has never carried a weapon in the defense of this country.  I have been told “I do not understand the law.”   I am a lawyer, and, of course, that previous comment came from a non-lawyer.  I have been told that “I do not understand importance of the state legislature in the election process.”   I am a fairly senior member of the Pennsylvania Senate and, of course, that comment was made by a person who has never served in any elected office.    One misinformed soul even pontificated that it was clear I was “not running for office again.”  Of course, they fail to recognize that I have not yet been sworn into the term for which I was just re-elected.  A final threat I received is that if I don’t agree with those who don’t like the election results “I can guarantee you that you will never be re-elected to any other office again.”  Ironically, that comment came from a disgruntled citizen from Iowa.   For the record – I do not plan to run for office in Iowa.

Whether any of these misinformed comments mean anything is a question I will leave to my constituents.    Pending that, however, I will explain what my background and experience tell me about the November 3rd election and where we stand today.   For those who want to take the time to understand, hopefully this will help to close this issue and move us on to matters which need our undivided attention.    For the minority who think they have all the answers and disregard any facts contrary to their belief, this will do nothing.

There are two primary issues raised about the election.   One is that there is “widespread fraud and irregularities” in the election.   The second is that under Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the legislature is the only body, which can determine how a states electors are chosen.  I will address each, but before doing so, I will make it clear that I am a firm believer in the “rule of law” because without honoring the rule of law, we are left with chaos.   In the current situation, there are laws which have been in existence for many years.   Those laws set the stage for the conduct of the election on November 3rd and we are bound by them, like it or not.

The Trump lawyers have talked about “widespread fraud and irregularities” since November 3rd.   Talking has led to allegations in lawsuits.   Therein lies an important point.    Making allegations in a lawsuit is easy.   In any lawsuit, however, allegation must be proven by testimony presented under oath from witnesses who have personal knowledge of the events at issue.   We have all heard about “100’s of affidavits” or “stacks of affidavits” supporting the talk about fraud and irregularities.    For whatever reason, however, none of this supporting proof or testimony from witnesses has been presented in any of the court proceedings.  Saying a problem exists is easy.   Proving a problem exists is difficult.  Repeatedly saying a problem exists is not proof of existence.

I am not privy to the rationale followed by the Trump lawyers as to why litigation was conducted in a certain way.  To my knowledge, Trump’s lawyers have filed at least 40 lawsuits throughout the United States, including several in Pennsylvania.   Thus far, the number of decisions favorable to the Trump claims of fraud and irregularities is zero.  It cannot go unnoticed that many of the decisions were issued by judges who we would say have a Republican leaning.  Some were appointed by Bush, some by Obama and some by Trump but all reached the same conclusion.  We all recognize a 0-40 record as not being a good performance.   The overwhelming consensus in those decisions is that there is no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in the November 3rd election. Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that United States Attorney General and the Director of the FBI, both of whom are Trump appointees, have publicly stated that there is no evidence to support claims of widespread fraud and irregularities.   Either Trump has the dumbest lawyers on the planet or there really is no proof of widespread fraud or irregularities.

Much blame for the Trump loss in Pennsylvania is laid on the mail in ballot provisions of Act 77.   My question is if the mail in voting of Act 77 was so bad, why did the Trump organization send out a mail-in ballot application to every registered Republican in the state?    At first, the Trump organization was against mail-in voting, but halfway through the campaign a flip flop was done and mail-in voting was encouraged.   The campaign flip flop clearly caused confusion among voters.

The November 3rd election resulted in Republican wins in state row offices for the first time in 40 years.  There were Republican gains in the Pennsylvania House majority and Republicans maintained their advantage in the Senate.  Clearly, Republicans did well in the election.   Were the elections in all of those races subject to fraud and irregularities?   The answer is, no.   So, the question is what happened to Trump?  The short and simple answer is that he did not receive enough votes in what used to be Republican strongholds such as the collar counties around Philadelphia.

With regard to presidential electors, Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature therof may direct, a Number of Electors…”    The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case Bush v Gore, stated “[w]hen the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental.”   Pennsylvania’s Election Code adopted in 1937, provides that in Pennsylvania, electors are determined by the popular vote for the office of President.  Pennsylvania’s legislature, 83 years ago, determined that the people would choose electors by vesting that right in its people.  In Pennsylvania, that is a fundamental right which has served to elect Presidents for the past eight decades.   In fact, Pennsylvania has followed this approach since the election of George Washington in 1789.    So, the rules of the game, so to speak, for the November 3rd election were set in 1937 and under those rules the people, not the legislature, choose the Presidential electors.

Many emails and comments I receive simply ignore the fundamental right that voters have in selecting electors and just say that the legislature should ignore that law and name different electors.    Not only does that suggestion run contrary to the provision of Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution but that suggestion also ignores the ex post facto provisions included in both the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of Pennsylvania.    Ex post facto provisions prohibit the changing of laws after an event to make them applicable to an event which has already occurred.   This concept is at the very core of our system of government.   A very simple example is that if you are driving 70 mph today in a 70 mph zone, the constitutions prohibit changing the law next week to say that the speed limit was 60 mph and charging you with a 10 mph violation.   We can always change laws going forward, we cannot go backward.   So, the rules for who selects electors in Pennsylvania were established in 1937 and they are the rules applicable to the November 3rd election.   The people choose the electors by their votes and those results were certified by the governor according to the Election Law on November 24th, 2020.  Those are the persons who will vote on January 6th.

Talking about fraud and irregularities is easy.   Perhaps it is appropriate to say that talk is cheap.  Providing facts under oath in a court setting is a difficult challenge but that is what our rule of law requires.   That is what keeps our country civilized.

How the Navy could be torpedoing Trump’s chances in 2020

When it comes time to defend his red wall along the Great Lakes, President Trump is going to come face to face with the consequences of his Pentagon leadership’s failure to implement his oft-promised 355-ship Navy (up from 290 today).

Pennsylvania workers make many of the essentials that go into ships, including shafts manufactured in Erie and cooling systems in York. Every time the Navy awards a contract for a new ship, the president or vice president should be at one of these facilities talking about the jobs the contracts will provide. But the Navy hasn’t been issuing those contracts, so the president can’t make those announcements.

The Navy could have gone big — still could still go big — in Philadelphia. To extend the life of the existing fleet, a person familiar with the planning tells me, the Navy must perform roughly 100 more ship dockings in the next decade than current dock space can accommodate. Philly Shipyard has the capability to build floating dry docks to make up for this shortfall. Why isn’t Trump announcing a plan to expand the Navy’s dry-dock infrastructure while standing in Philly Shipyard?

Wisconsin benefits from Navy shipbuilding in two ways. First, there is the shipyard in Marinette that creates jobs in both Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Fincantieri Marine Group is a bidder on the new 20-ship Navy FFG(X) guided-missile frigate program, but politics cannot take precedence over ship design, so the contract is not guaranteed to land lakeside in Wisconsin. The least Trump could do, though, is insist that the Navy pick up the pace of its dreadfully slow design competition.

The Fincantieri Marinette Marine is already under contract to build four Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships for Saudi Arabia. More work would be sent Wisconsin’s way if the Trump administration could persuade the Saudis to increase their order or bring other countries, such as Israel, on board.

Incredibly, Michigan ranks near the bottom of all the states when defense spending is calculated as a percentage of a state’s GDP — 47th out of 50 in fiscal year 2017 for what was once the arsenal of democracy. Per-resident defense spending in Michigan that year was a paltry $386, compared with $1,554 in Oklahoma.

When the Air Force decided in 2017 not to base F-35A fighter aircraft at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan, it missed an easy way to achieve some equity in the distribution of defense-industry dollars in the states. Trump could direct the Pentagon to reverse that decision.

The Navy’s plans for a new “large unmanned surface vessel” calls for a ship which could be built at a Great Lakes facility; near Detroit makes sense, if only out of fairness to a state that has been largely ignored in the Trump military rebuild. Given the likely long-term need for many of these ships in the future, a new facility could be planted and grown along with the program. It pains this Buckeye to say so, but somewhere along the Michigan coast next door to Ohio would be equitable.

A focus on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin need not be limited to the Defense Department. Recently, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) pushed successfully for the planned relocation of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colo., in a brilliant move to bring bureaucrats closer to the citizens they regulate and whom they are supposed to serve. Sending large parts of the Environmental Protection Agency to Flint, Mich., or nearby locations would drive home the same message.

Trump has the chance to drain the swamp while making government agencies much more attuned to the people in flyover country. But he must act soon.

Yet, it is really the Navy’s utter failure to deliver even a bare-bones plan to realize the president’s promise of a 355-ship Navy that ought to rankle the commander in chief. A new chief of naval operations will arrive soon. The president ought to have waiting on his desk copies of the speeches in which he promised, and then promised again, a 355-ship Navy, along with the slogan famously used by Winston Churchill scrawled with the black Sharpie that Trump likes to use: “Action this day!”

A Democratic Narrative Misses the Reality of 2018

As Democrats move from success in the 2018 midterms to the early stages of picking a 2020 presidential candidate, a narrative is taking root. It holds that the key Democratic voter today is young, liberal and rebellious—in short, a version of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old activist who became the youngest congresswoman ever and who appears to be pushing the party to the left.

There is one problem with this narrative. It largely misses the story of the voters who actually delivered success to Democrats last year—and who may determine the outcome of the next presidential race.

It’s certainly true that there was a lot of energy among young, liberal Democrats in 2018, and that figures to be true again in the new presidential cycle.

Yet the Democratic electorate in 2018—the one that swung House seats and governor’s offices from Republican to Democratic—was neither as young nor as liberal as popularly imagined. AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 115,000 self-identified 2018 midterm voters, found that just 15% of those who voted Democratic last November were aged 18 through 29. The largest contingent of Democratic voters—36%—actually were ages 45 through 64.

All told, 60% of Democratic voters were aged 45 or older.

In ideological terms, there is no doubt that the party is moving to the left. An increasing share of Democrats are identifying themselves as liberal. Yet that movement also can be overstated. While half of Democratic voters last year identified themselves as liberal, 48% called themselves moderate or conservative. And moderates outnumbered “very liberal” Democratic voters by two to one.

“The attention may be focused on the left, but the actual energy and votes came from the mainstream and the center,” says Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, an organization that supports moderate Democrats.

As has been widely noted, the key voters in 2018 were white suburban women, who showed up in large numbers to vent their anger at President Trump by voting Democratic. Yet many of these suburban women weren’t fired-up liberals, but rather centrists who previously supported moderate Republicans in their districts.

Their switch is why many of those moderate Republicans washed out to sea; their fate was sealed more by moderate women rising up to vote Democratic than because of a left-wing insurrection. Indeed, candidates endorsed by the moderate New Democrat coalition flipped 33 of the 42 House seats that went from Republican to Democrat.

Geographically, the keys to Democrats’ success came not in the party’s coastal enclaves—such as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s district, which was held by Democrats long before she arrived—but rather in the industrial upper Midwest swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. All three states were won by Mr. Trump in 2016, but Democrats won the popular House vote in those states last fall. Democrats also nominated moderates for governor in all three states—and all three won, by a margin of 1.3 million votes.

This reality is important for Democrats as candidates begin drifting onto the 2020 presidential battlefield. The prevailing narrative suggests not only that the advantage goes to a fresh face who excites the party’s young progressives—think former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas or Sen. Kamala Harris of California—but that such a choice has the best chance of success against Mr. Trump.

And maybe that’s the case. But consider the alternative, suggested by the reality of the midterm election results: The votes that will spell the difference for Democrats lie not on the left and on the coasts, but in the center and in the industrial Midwest.

That’s where Mr. Biden enters the picture. Perhaps the 76-year-old former vice president is too old. He certainly doesn’t meet the desire for “new blood” in politics cited last week by former President Obama.

On the other hand, if the Democrats’ key votes in 2020 will lie among centrists in the industrial Midwest, the more moderate profile of the favorite son of Scranton, Pa., will be an attractive one. Moreover, if voters generally are looking for somebody who knows how to get things done rather than simply create controversy, the guy who once prevented a government shutdown by cutting a big budget deal with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell may have some appeal.

It’s too early to know, of course—but there is more than one narrative at work for Democrats.

Could an Amy Klobuchar Solve Democrats’ Dilemma?

They seek a presidential candidate who appeals to both their liberal coastal base and to Midwestern working- and middle-class voters

When asked recently who Republicans should fear most in the 2020 presidential campaign, two prominent GOP figures, both women speaking independently of each other, gave the same response: Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

A third Republican, a male, asked which kind of candidate Democrats should want, replied: “They need a boring white guy from the Midwest.”

So, there you have it: The dream ticket of Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Case closed, cancel the primaries, on to the general election.

So if all that creates an opportunity for Democrats in 2020, here’s their dilemma: Can they pick a candidate who can blend the party’s conflicting impulses?

This may seem a long ways off, but the reality is that most Democrats thinking of running for president—and the number probably runs into the 20s—plan to make their decision over the next several weeks, so they can move out starting in early 2019.

As this drama begins, the key question is whether the party will find somebody who appeals both to its coastal base dominated by progressives, upscale college graduates, millennials and minorities, or choose someone who is more appealing to traditional working- and middle-class voters in industrial Midwest states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, all of which helped Democrats reclaim the House in this year’s mid-term elections.

.. The winning lottery ticket, of course, goes to somebody who can appeal to both. And that’s why Ms. Klobuchar’s name—and profile—attract attention. She’s a woman, obviously, which is important at a time when newly energized women are a growing force within the party. She pleased her party base in the hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh when she challenged him about his use of alcohol, but did so in a sufficiently calm and understated manner that she won an apology from Mr. Kavanaugh after he initially responded angrily.

.. She also won re-election this year with more than 60% of the vote in the one state Trump forces lost in 2016 but think they have a legitimate chance to flip their way in 2020.

.. The question is whether she or anyone can put together a policy agenda that pleases both party liberals, who are pushing for

  1. a Medicare-for-all health system,
  2. the demise of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement system and an
  3. aggressive new climate-change action plan, and more moderate Midwestern voters, who may be scared off by all of those things.

Ms. Klobuchar’s policy priorities may suggest a path. To address health care, the top priority of Democratic voters, she advocates a step-by-step approach, one that seeks to

  • drive down prescription drug costs by opening the door to less-expensive drugs from Canada,
  • protect and improve the Affordable Care Act, and
  • expand health coverage by considering such steps as allowing more Americans to buy into the Medicare system.

.. She’s talked of a push to improve American infrastructure that would include expanding rural Americans’ access to broadband service, paying for it by rolling back some—though not all—of the tax cuts Republicans passed last year. She pushes for more vigorous antitrust enforcement, more protections for privacy and steps to curb undisclosed money in politics

.. For his part, Sen. Brown, a liberal who this year won Ohio as it otherwise drifts Republican, offers a working-class-friendly agenda that combines progressive impulses for government activism to drive up wages with Trumpian skepticism about trade deals and corporate outsourcing.

 

 

 

 

 

How Trump Won Re-election in 2020

A sneak peek at the Times’s news analysis from Nov. 4, 2020.

.. Extraordinary turnout in California, New York, Illinois and other Democratic bastions could not compensate for the president’s abiding popularity in the states that still decide who gets to live in the White House: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

.. In exit poll interviews, Mr. Trump’s supporters frequently cited the state of the economy to explain their vote. “What part of Dow 30,000 do the liberals not understand?”

.. despite an economy that continues to struggle with painfully slow wage growth, spiraling budget deficits and multiplying trade wars that have hurt businesses as diverse as Ohio soybean farmers and California chipmakers.

.. their signature proposals — Medicare for all and free college tuition for most American families — would have been expensive and would require tax increases on families making more than $200,000. Mr. Trump and other Republicans charged they would “bankrupt you and bankrupt the country.”

.. Democrats sought instead to cast the election in starkly moral terms. Yet by Election Day, the charge that Mr. Trump is morally or intellectually unfit for office had been made so often that it had lost most of its former edge among swing voters.

.. “I don’t care if he lies or exaggerates in his tweets or breaks his vows to his wife, so long as he keeps his promises to me,”

.. citing the economy and Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominations as decisive for her vote. “And he has.”

.. Many of Mr. Trump’s supporters also said they felt vindicated by the conclusions of Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. While the former F.B.I. director painted a damning portrait of a campaign that was riddled with Kremlin sympathizers and a candidate whose real-estate ventures were beholden to Russian investors, no clear evidence of collusion between Mr. Trump and Moscow ever emerged and the president was never indicted.

.. Democrats also failed to capitalize on, and may have been damaged by, winning back control of the House of Representatives, but not the Senate, in the 2018 midterms. Mr. Trump proved effective, if characteristically vitriolic, in making a foil of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. 

.. Efforts to impeach the president mainly served to energize his base. Polling surveys suggested that wavering voters saw a Democratic Party more invested in humiliating the president than in helping them.

..  it did not take long for campaign aides to Senator Warren to offer damning appraisals of her performance as a candidate. Historical references abounded: The Children’s Crusade; Pickett’s Charge; the McGovern campaign of 1972. The common thread was that the campaign’s moral fervor repeatedly got the better of its message focus.

.. He got my party to lose its marbles.”

.. The lawmaker cited calls by party activists to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — calls the Warren campaign did not formally endorse but did little to refute — as emblematic of the party’s broader problems.

.. “What do Democrats stand for?” he asked.

  • “Lawlessness or liberality?
  • Policymaking or virtue signaling?
  • Gender-neutral pronouns and bathrooms or good jobs and higher wages?”

“Democrats used to stand with the Working Man,” he tweeted Wednesday morning. “Now it’s the party of Abortion and Amnesty. All that’s missing is Acid. Sad!”

 

Edward Gorsuch: Fugitive Slave Claim in Pennsylvania

As a wealthy Maryland wheat farmer, Edward Gorsuch had manumitted several slaves in their 20s. He allowed his slaves to work for cash elsewhere during the slow season. Upon finding some of his wheat missing, he thought his slaves sold it to a local farmer. His slaves Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, George Ford, and Joshua Hammond, fearing his bad temper, fled across the Mason–Dixon line to the farm of William Parker, a mulatto free man and abolitionist who lived in Christiana, Pennsylvania. Parker, 29, was a member of the Lancaster Black Self-Protection Society and known to use violence to defend himself and the fugitive slaves who sought refuge in the area.[citation needed]

Gorsuch obtained four warrants and organized four parties, which set out separately with federal marshals to recover his property—the four slaves. He was killed and others were wounded. While Gorsuch was legally entitled to recover his slaves under the Fugitive Slave Act, it is not clear who precipitated the violence. The incident was variously called the “Christiana Riot”, “Christiana Resistance”, the “Christiana Outrage”, and the “Christiana Tragedy”. The Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society helped provide defense for the suspects charged in the case.[citation needed]

The event frightened slaveholders, as black men not only fought back but prevailed. Some feared this would inspire enslaved blacks and encourage rebelliousness. The case was prosecuted in Philadelphia U.S. District Court under the Fugitive Slave Act, which required citizens to cooperate in the capture and return of fugitive slaves. The disturbance increased regional and racial tensions. In the North, it added to the push to abolish slavery.[32]

In September 1851, the grand jury returned a “true bill” (indictment) against 38 suspects, who were held in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison to await trial. U.S. District Judge John K. Kane ruled that the men could be tried for treason.[citation needed]

The only person actually tried was Castner Hanway, a European-American man. On 15 November 1851 he was tried for liberating slaves taken into custody by U.S. Marshal Kline, as well as for resisting arrest, conspiracy, and treason. Hanway’s responsibility for the violent events was unclear. He was reported as one of the first on the scene where Gorsuch and others of his party were attacked, and he and his horse provided cover for Dickerson Gorsuch and Dr. Pearce, who were wounded. The jury deliberated 15 minutes before returning a Not Guilty. Among the five defense lawyers, recruited by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, was U.S. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, who had practiced law in Lancaster County since at least 1838.[33]