Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again

by Dan Pfeiffer

The National Popular Vote interstate compact is an incredibly clever idea that has been spearheaded by a Stanford computer science professor named John Koza. His organization has been working to get states to pass laws that essentially eliminate the Electoral College. As of 2019, fifteen states and Washington, DC, have adopted the compact. In those states, their electoral votes will be awarded to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, not the candidate who wins the state.

While I agree that Democrats shouldn’t engage in the dangerous political nihilism of McConnell, turning the other cheek will be the death of democracy.

While I agree that Democrats shouldn’t engage in the dangerous political nihilism of McConnell, turning the other cheek will be the death of democracy. America is a democracy governed by antidemocratic institutions. We are on an exorable path toward being a country where a shrinking conservative, white minority rules a growing, diverse progressive majority. If we allow that to happen, the system will collapse. We can’t count on Republicans having an epiphany or doing the right thing. It’s certainly possible—as How Democracies Die argues—that the ideas like the ones proposed in this book will lead to even worse actions by the Republicans. The truth is no one knows what will happen. But I do know that if we do nothing, democracy as we know it will be dead.

And oh yeah, the rich didn’t have to pay one extra dime in taxes, because why should we ask the wealthy to sacrifice when we can just take from the poor?

Ryan unveiled the “Ryan plan,” which privatized Medicare, slashed Medicaid, cut food stamps, and generally made life worse for poor Americans in the name of deficit reduction. And oh yeah, the rich didn’t have to pay one extra dime in taxes, because why should we ask the wealthy to sacrifice when we can just take from the poor? Ryan talked about his plan as a response to a crisis of debts and deficits that threatened to plummet America into a financial crisis. This was, of course, bullshit and merely a justification to cut government spending to those who need it most.

Obama thought to himself, “Well, this is awkward.” But what else was there to do but give the speech? The president spent about forty-five minutes politely and accurately ripping Ryan’s plan to shreds. Ryan got visibly upset and stormed off in sadness and anger. Ryan didn’t rebut the substance of Obama’s critique—the speech was factually accurate and fair. He whined about the etiquette and told Obama economic advisor Gene Sperling that Obama “had poisoned the well” for future deals.

Flash forward about five months: Obama was secretly negotiating with the Republican House Speaker John Boehner over a so-called grand-bargain budget deal. This deal would have resolved a budget standoff that was threatening a very fragile economy and would have provided economic aid to struggling families in the near term in exchange for reducing the deficit in the long term.336 After several fits and starts, Boehner called Obama to tell him the deal was dead. And who was the person holding the bloody knife? Paul Ryan. What was Ryan’s reason? A disagreement on policy? No. He thought it was a pretty fair deal. Politics. Boehner told Obama that Ryan opposed the deal because it would “guarantee Obama’s reelection.” Talk about poisoning the well.

He voted for Trump. Paul Ryan voted for someone he thought was dangerously immoral and outrageously stupid to lead the country, because he would rather support a racist, corrupt idiot than a Democrat.

Paul Ryan clearly believes that checks and balances only matter when the president is a Democrat.

Paul Ryan is a Republican first and an American second. I know that seems like a harsh thing to say, but what else can you say about someone that would rather support a dangerously unfit Republican over a Democrat?

Back in 2017, when the Republicans were trying for the zillionth time to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Paul Ryan sat with Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative publication National Review. Lowry asked Ryan about his proposed cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poorest Americans. Republicans have long hated Medicaid because…it is the government health insurance program for the poorest Americans. The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that if the Republican cuts went into place, fourteen million people would lose their health insurance. Ryan, unbowed by the horrific impact of his policy, told Lowry, “We have been dreaming of this since I have been around, since you and I were drinking at a keg.”341

I hate Ryan the most because he had the power to make things better, and he chose not to out of a combination of cowardice and amoral partisanship. When the going got tough, he ran away. He retired from Congress instead of fighting for a better country or even a better Republican Party.

McConnell, for example, knows he is a bad guy. He proudly wears the black hat. He even calls himself the Grim Reaper.

In a discussion with conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, Ryan made an impassioned plea to his party to stand up to the Alt-Right—the euphemism du jour for the white nationalist movement that had taken over the Republican Party. “Intellectually do everything you can to defeat the alt-right. It is identity politics, it is antithetical to what we believe, and it’s a hijacking of our terms.…We have to go back and fight for our ground and re-win these ideas and marginalize these guys as best we can to the corners,” Ryan told Goldberg. If you can ignore the fact that Ryan did nothing in his tenure to take on the Alt-Right and that his super PAC ran ads in the 2018 election that were so racist they might make Steve Bannon blush, Ryan delivered his answer with such a sad sincerity that it was almost believable. He seemed, for the moment at least, as a man truly saddened by what had become of the party to which he had dedicated his life. However, once again, Paul Ryan revealed himself as one of the great frauds in modern political history. His quest to take on the Alt-Right ended the moment he ambled off the stage. His first move after leaving Congress? Joining the board of Fox News’s parent company, which is the engine of the Alt-Right and white nationalism in American politics. He didn’t take on the Alt-Right; he decided to profit off it.