As we come to the end of another year, there are a lot of things happening. 

Let’s start with North Carolina and the Ninth District, the last of the House seats still up in the air.  It is unclear how much of the vote count has been impacted by the shenanigans.  There is substantial evidence showing that political operatives broke North Carolina law by getting involved in the collection of absentee ballots from non-relatives.  There is also evidence suggesting that these individuals may suggests that these operaves were selective in turning in the ballots that they received and may have altered other ballots (e.g., by casting votes in races that the voter left blank).  Since some states do allow non-relatives to collect absentee ballots, what is happening in North Carolina shows the need to have some anti-fraud measures in such voting.  Making it easy to vote is a good thing.  However, historically, we have known that most voter fraud is connected with mail-in or absentee voting and not with in-person voter-impersonation.    Of course, Republicans have been more concerned with stopping in-person fraud in ways that make it difficult to vote in person.  Meanwhile, they have uniformly been willing to relax the rules designed to assure that ballots received in the mail actually reflect the intent of the person who supposedly have cast them.  Going forward, Democrats — wanting to make it easy for people to vote — need to be sure that the rules include adequate protection to prevent con-artists from stealing and altering ballots before they get to the election office.

We have also seen the start of Democrats announcing that they are considering running for President.  Over the next three to six months, we will see more Democrats announce their campaigns; some of these candidates will decide to halt their campaigns before we reach July, but many of them will make the late Summer when we begin to have debates.  While the DNC does not need to finalize its debate plans yet, it does need to consider what the Republicans did wrong in 2016 (as well as what the Democrats did wrong in 2016).  The Republicans big problem was having too many candidates for a single debate.  The simple reality is that more candidates on the stage translates into less substance and more personal attacks and everyone agreeing with what they perceive as party orthodoxy.  On the other hand, there is no rational method for choosing which candidates make the debate.  The Republican tentative solution was what many called the JV or kiddie-table debate in which polls were used to separate the top candidates from the others.  However, after the first four or five candidates, the gap between the remaining candidates will often be less than the standard margin of error in most polls.  (In other words, the difference is close enough that the real standing of the candidates is unclear.)  Offering my humble suggestions, the following makes sense to me:  1) No more than six or seven candidates on the stage at a time (even that is probably too many, but it allows each candidate to have a semi-substantive response to each question); 2) all parts of the debate need to be in prime time (see next suggestion below) even if that means short breaks between the parts in which candidates are rushed on and off the stage with no opportunity to schmooze with the audience for those in the earlier parts; and 3) the candidates in part one or part two (or part three if there are even more candidates) should be randomly suggested and there should be a limit on the number of consecutive times that a candidate can be in any part (in other words, no part is clearly the “Not Ready for Prime Time” debate and no candidate is consistently going in the early debate or the late debate). 

With control of the House, Democrats will be able to investigate the seemingly unending corruption that is the Trump Organization’s takeover of our government.   It is important that this investigation be methodical and productive.  To avoid being seen as a partisan exercise, each stage must produce a significant development that justifies the next stage.  It is still too early to tell if the end result will be impeachment.   It is likely that there will be additional information showing that Trump is a corrupt incompetent businessman who has never played by any rules, and that might erode Trump’s support slightly heading into the 2020 election.  But the Democrats hopes for 2020 depend less on eroding Trump’s popularity than in unifying the 55% that has always been anti-Trump.   And that will be a hard task.

Over this weekend, we have had a rather conservative judge find that the repeal of the tax part of the individual mandate has invalidated the entire Affordable Care Act.  There is no way to describe this opinion as anything other than conservative judicial activism.  Back in 2012, the Supreme Court found that the validity of the individual mandate depended on the tax penalty.  As a logical consequence of that decision, the repeal of the tax last year means that the individual mandate is now unconstitutional.  However, because the individual mandate was constitutional when adopted, the entire Affordable Care Act (other than the requirement that all states expand Medicaid) was constitutional when passed.  The repeal of one part of a statute normally does not repeal the remaining part of the statute.  The repeal of the tax part only passed (under Senate rules) because it did not repeal the remainder of the Affordable Care Act.  Holding otherwise, as the trial judge did, overturns over four hundred years of Anglo-American law on the impact of statutory amendments.  (Generally speaking, a new law has to expressly repeal existing law; and courts rarely find that a new law implicitly repeals provisions that are not expressly repealed.)

Finally, as we have seen in the past two years, we have a President who is either divorced from reality or is willing to pretend as if he is to appeal to a base that is clueless about the real world (and is intentionally kept in the dark by the conservative wing of the media).  With the Democrats now in control of the House, we are likely to see more deadlocks as the President takes positions that have no chance of passing the House and refuses to compromise (until significant damage has been done).  We will also see more chaos internationally, as the President takes stands contrary to what has been the consensus position of the U.S. since World War 2 leaving our allies unsure of whether they can rely on us anymore. 

And we will look at the domestic politics of our allies as they face significant debates and (in some cases) elections.  In the United Kingdom, they are facing a deadline for finalizing the terms of their departure from the European Union.  The problem is that while a slim majority wanted to leave the European Union when they had a referendum in 2016, that slim majority did not reflect a consensus within the “leave” camp on what the terms of leaving would be.  Now that leaving is only approximately one hundred days away, there is no consensus behind the package that the government negotiated.  This package includes the immediate terms as well as default rules that will continue as the UK negotiates more permanent arrangements.  One of the big issues related to the default rules concerns the desire to not establish a “hard border” (e.g., passport checks, customs checks, etc.) between Northern Ireland/Ulster/the Six Counties and the Republic of Ireland.  But avoiding a hard border on Ireland would require a hard border on goods going from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom or, alternatively, the rest of the United Kingdom retaining closer ties the European Union that would leave the EU with significant authority over the UK but leave the UK without any power within the EU.  Shockingly, these options currently do not command support from the majority of the UK Parliament.  These proposals are so unpopular that Prime Minister May delayed a vote on them, triggering a vote of no-confidence within her own party in which approximately one-third of the Conservative Party voted to remove her as leader (and prime minister).  Given that the Conservatives do not actually have a majority in the UK Parliament, there is a real chance of elections next year (if the Conservatives lose a no-confidence vote) or a new referendum on whether to stay in the EU now that the terms of leaving are clearer.  Additionally, as part of this week’s vote, Prime Minister May promised to stand down as leader before the next election (currently scheduled for 2022).  As Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany has also indicated that she will step down before the next general election there, our allies are looking at changes in leadership in the near future. 

Over the next year, in addition to any early elections that might occur, we will definitely have elections in Canada and Australia.  In Canada, it looks the current Liberal government is a slight favorite to retain power.  In Australia, it seems like the Australian Labour Party is a slight favorite to take control back from the Liberal-National Coalition.   Needless to say, a win by the Liberals in Canada would be a thumb in the eye to Trump who likes to take the occasional potshot at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  And the fact that Justin Trudeau is likely to win is another reason  why NAFTA 2 (excuse me, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) only contains minor changes from the original NAFTA and President Trump is unlikely to get any significant changes despite what he tells his base.

Twelve months from now, we will be on the verge of the Iowa caucus.  Anybody who tells you that they know who will win in Iowa is either deluding you or themselves.  The next twelve months will define the issues that will matter to Democrats in 2020.  And the candidate who gets ahead on these issues will likely be the nominee.  But today, the race is still wide open.  All we know is that something will happen over the next 12 months that is going to crystalize why voters made a tragic mistake in allowing Trump to snatch an electoral college victory from the jaws of rejection in the popular vote and why we need to do better in 2020.