Sep.15

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Should Democrats Campaign on the Culture of Corruption?

Democrats are adrift and don't know which way to go. They are getting plenty of advice, though, from all sides. Two Democratic strategists, Ashley Etienne and Jesse Lee, have written a memo arguing that experience shows focusing on the culture of corruption and abuse of power is something voters can relate to. They want Democrats to call out this corruption and propose antidotes to each abuse. Here are some of the areas where Trump is especially corrupt and can be called out:

• Getting the DoJ to cover up Jeffrey Epstein's crimes and dangling a pardon in front of Ghislaine Maxwell.
• Firing agency heads (e.g., BLS) who were doing their job because he didn't want to hear the truth.
• Trying to rig the 2026 election with gerrymandering so your vote won't count.
• Killing clean energy while your electricity bill goes up, all as payback to oil company donors.
• Allowing his crypto business to become a way for rich donors to bribe him to do things for them and not for you.
• His corrupt power grab in L.A., D.C., and elsewhere to sideline your elected officials there.
• Weaponizing law enforcement to ignore real crime and focus on punishing his political enemies.

Alone, each of these is small, but together they make the point that Trump is totally corrupt and serves only his wealthy donors and not you. The approach is to tap into the public's feeling that "the system is rigged." Agree with that. Emphasize that. Say that your feeling that it is rigged is absolutely right. Then show how Trump is the one rigging it for him and against you. An approach like this against Trump in 2018 worked well with the Democrats picking up 41 House seats.

This is only half of it. The other half is proposing reforms to fix things. Some things could be:

• Ban the president, veep, and Congresscritters from owning stock except publicly traded ETFs like the S&P 500.
• End gerrymandering permanently.
• Apply binding ethics rules to the president, veep, Congress, and the courts with real penalties for violations.

We think their list is very meager. We would add:

• Require emergencies to be approved by the Senate and then for only 30 days.
• Ban acting appointments for all executive vacancies; let the #2 act until there is a Senate-confirmed appointee.
• Repeal all the laws that give the president emergency powers; if it is a true emergency, Congress will act.
• Make it a named impeachable offense for the president to impound any funding appropriated by Congress.
• Make it an impeachable offense for the president to spend funds in a way not intended by Congress.
• Reform the courts, especially the Supreme Court.
• Pass H.R. 1 and other election reforms.
• Get the big money out of politics, for example
  • Strip the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction on legislation about campaign funding.
  • Require all donations and donors to super PACs be posted on their website within 48 hours.
  • Have all donations under $500 for president and Congress be matched by public money 5:1.
  • Have all donations > $10,000 to any candidate be matched by equal public funds for the opponent.

By tapping into the public's feeling that the system is rigged and showing how that works and proposing reforms, the Democrats could have a strong case. (V)