I’ve written volumes on how I’m concerned that President Trump is causing real and lasting danger to our nation. Today I read an article on CNN that spells out my biggest fear: what happens if he is defeated in 2020 and refuses to leave the White House?

In a previous post I spoke of his belief that he won the popular vote and he was the victim of voter fraud. Nobody with any knowledge of the election believes it, but he’s been able to convince many of his supporters that he’s right.

So what happens if he loses the 2020 election and makes the same claim of voter fraud? What if he refuses to leave the White House and calls his supporters to come to Washington DC and set up a perimeter around the White House?

The mark of a true democracy turns not on the inauguration of its first president, but its second. It’s worth noting that our first president, George Washington (1732-1799) served two terms and declined to run for a third term. He passed the mantle of the presidency to John Adams (1736-1826).

President Adams served only one term, being defeated in 1800 by his vice president Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). President Adams, though sorely disappointed, handed the keys to President Jefferson.

In the 219 years since that handoff we’ve seen it replayed countless times. In my lifetime I’ve observed Gerald Ford (1913- 2006) handing the keys to Jimmy Carter (b.1924), Jimmy Carter handing the keys to Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), and finally George H.W. Bush (1924-2018) welcoming Bill Clinton.

It’s never easy to pass these keys to someone who the voters chose over you, but all these men respected the will of the people and they acted with grace and a respect for the office.

I fear that the current occupant of the oval office will not act with either grace or respect. I fear we will find ourselves in a crisis that we used to believe belonged only to lesser nations. I fear that our current president will care nothing for our history, our democracy, and our tradition of peaceful transfer of power. I fear he will declare himself “president for life” that will lead us into chaos.

I pray I’m wrong.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution outlines the role of the Executive Branch. There we find the Electoral College. When we vote for President we select electors who meet to elect the President.

This allows for the unlikely possibility that the majority of Americans may vote for one candidate while the electors may choose another candidate. But this is exactly what happened in 2000 and 2016. Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote but lost to President George W. Bush in the electoral college in 2000. In 2016 Secretary of State Hilary Clinton also won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college.

Because this happened twice in 16 years, and both times sent a Republican to the White House, some are calling for the end of the electoral college and electing the President on a straight popular vote. Proponents of eliminating the electoral college argue that this unfairly benefits states with smaller populations. States send electors to the electoral college based on the number of Representatives plus Senators. For example New York sends 29 electors because they have 27 members of the House of Representatives and 2 Senators. South Dakota sends 3 electors as they have 1 member of the House of Representatives and 2 Senators. My thanks to Linda Monk in her excellent book The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution. She broke down the data and showed that one elector in South Dakota represents 232,000 people while in New York one elector represents 550,000 people.

Candidates for President know this, and the electoral college drives much of where they decide to campaign. I can’t tell you how many of my fellow Californians complain that candidates ignore us, except when they need to fundraise. California sends 55 electors, but it’s a safe state for Democrats and the Republicans see no point in campaigning here. Likewise, Texas sends 38 electors but it’s a “safe” Republican state.

So what states do the candidates care about? That’s actually more complicated than it sounds.

Each Presidential election comprises two parts: getting the nomination and winning the election. And the strategies are different. Most states select their nominees through primaries and they hold both Democratic and Republican primaries on the same day. With the exception of a sitting President running for reelection, most primaries begin with several candidates and the field winnows with each primary. All candidates know that winning early primaries gives them an advantage in popularity and fundraising. This works well for the first three states who hold primaries: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

But once the nominees are chosen, the calculation changes. Now the candidates turn to states with relatively large populations where the numbers of Republicans and Democrats are relatively close: Ohio (18 electors), Florida (29), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), and Wisconsin (10). These five states send only 93 electors out of 538 but they make the difference between victory and defeat.

So what happens if our President was elected only the popular vote? Defenders of the electoral college argue that the candidates would focus only on large population centers: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston (my city of San Diego ranks 8th). Rural areas would be totally ignored.

I’m not certain that’s true. Our campaigns have become so nationalized that all of us see the candidates wherever they are. And speaking for myself, I’m just as happy not to have candidates creating havoc and gridlock when I’m trying to get to work.

I recognize that I would be bombarded with campaign mailers, but does it really matter if my recycling bin is filled at the expense of a recycling bin in Ohio?

And yes, at the end the day we can only eliminate the electoral college by amending the Constitution. It’s a long process. A bill would have to be introduced to Congress and get a 2/3 majority in both houses. Then it goes to the states where 3/4 of the state legislatures would have to approve. Of our 50 states, 38 would have to approve it, meaning that 13 states could block it.

Just some thoughts on a Wednesday evening.

Nearly from President Trump’s election there has been a move to impeach and remove him from office. His ongoing lies, abuses of power, and disregard for the rule of law has only provided fuel for this growing fire. As I write this we read daily about various investigations of him, those around him, and the things they’ve done.

Pair this with the fact that most voters in 2016 voted for Hilary Clinton and others and it’s not hard to understand this. But for the first two years of his presidency Mr. Trump didn’t need to worry about this since his party controlled both houses of Congress. Simply put, the Democrats could complain all they wanted but they were powerless to do anything about it.

That changed in November when the Democrats won a majority of members of the House of Representatives though Republicans claim a slim majority in the Senate.

So here’s the problem: removing a president from office requires a two part process and states that a president can only be removed for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” He (or she) can be impeached (by a simple majority in the House) and removed from office (by a 2/3 vote of the Senate). You can read this in Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. Our founders purposely made this hard to do.

In our history, two presidents have been impeached but neither was removed from office: Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) and Bill Clinton (b.1946). I believe neither of them should have been impeached.

President Johnson came to office in what could be argued was our lowest point as a nation. He took the oath of office a few hours after the death of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), a few days after the end of the Civil War. Shortly after this, President Johnson began to feud with the Cabinet he inherited. He wanted to implement President Lincoln’s plan to generously welcome back the Southern States. But many Republicans, including Secretary of State Edwin Stanton (1819-1869) advocated a much harsher Reconstruction. Recognizing this conflict, Republicans in Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act over the president’s veto. It prohibited him from firing a member of his cabinet without Senate approval; it’s been a tradition before and since that the president needs the Senate’s advice and consent to name a member of his cabinet but that they serve at his pleasure and can be removed at any time, for any reason (or no reason). With his belief that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, President Johnson attempted to fire Secretary Stanton. By a vote of 126 to 47 he was impeached. But when it moved to the Senate he was kept in office when the vote of 35 to 19 wasn’t enough to remove him from office (it’s worth noting that 35 voted to remove him, but 36 were needed).

President Clinton came into office in 1989, after 12 years of Republican presidents. People who didn’t like him referred to him as “Slick Willie” and criticized his wife for keeping her maiden name. In 1992 we learned that Bill and Hillary had lost a great deal of money investing in a real estate deal called Whitewater and an investigation was initiated. Eventually a woman named Paula Jones accused him of sexual harassment. President Clinton has always denied her claims, and during an appearance before a grand jury he was asked if he ever had sexual relations with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. He had a legal, but inappropriate relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. But he denied the affair, and lying to a grand jury is a crime. The House impeached him by a vote of 228-226. But, like President Johnson, the Senate refused to remove him from office, voting 55-45 to keep him in office.

I argue that neither should have been impeached because neither of their offenses constituted an abuse of power. Much of the rhetoric surrounding the American Revolution found its voice in the tyranny of King George III (1738-1820) and I believe our Constitution provides the opportunity to remove a President if he abuses his power. President Johnson challenged an unconstitutional law and President Clinton lied to prevent embarrassment.

Two years into the Trump presidency we have reason to believe he has abused his power but we don’t have proof. There are some things he may have done that were wrong but not an abuse of power: he may have lied about the value of his properties to enable him to borrow money (for example). This is clearly a crime but it’s not an abuse of power. He can be held to answer for this when he leaves office, but I don’t this should cause his removal from office.

On the other hand we see allegations that he may have broken the law to abuse his power. Investigations in place look to the possibility that the president conspired with the Russians: in return for them to post fake social media that put Hilary Clinton in a bad light (in the hopes that voters would believe this and vote for Mr. Trump), President Trump would ensure a more cozy relationship with the United States.

But we don’t have all the facts yet. If our suspicions come to light, from the Mueller report or some other source, Speaker Pelosi and I will change our minds on impeachment. Only then will we support impeachment and removal from office.

Only then.

Last Friday many of us gathered around our televisions, radios, and social media with one question: will our government stay open? We all were grateful that President Trump signed an continuing resolution to keep the government open despite not getting all the funding he wanted for a border wall on the Mexican border.

I’ve written about this before but a border wall is expensive, ineffective, and unpopular.

Unfortunately we knew it was only a matter of time before the other shoe would drop, and it did. President Trump has shown us again and again that he believes his office gives him unlimited power and that we are not citizens but subjects. I’m not sure who, but someone told him about the National Emergencies Act of 1976. It allows the President, during national emergencies, to act now and wait for Congress to support it. You can read his remarks on February 15th here: here. Previous presidents have invoked this during emergencies like 9/11 and hurricanes. These were events were it was clear that fast action was needed and consensus was assumed.

Enter President Trump’s wall. He recognized that he’ll lose much of his base if he doesn’t build the wall and he’ll pay an even higher price if he shuts down parts of the government again knowing the House of Representatives will never agree to the wall.

And so he manufactured an emergency. He’s claiming that we need the wall to stop drugs even though a wall won’t fix it. He also claims this will stop criminals from coming and committing crimes against Americans even though the crime rate among the undocumented is lower than the crime rate among Americans.

Clearly the emergency he speaks of isn’t an emergency for the United States. It’s an emergency for his re-election campaign. He’s recognized that the road to victory in 2020 becomes much more difficult if he doesn’t have a wall to point to.

His base doesn’t care that Hillary isn’t in jail or that coal isn’t coming back. But to his horror, Mr. Trump does know that when he promised to build the wall they were listening.

The rest of us care more about our future than we care about his future. The president’s road now goes through the court system and I pray the Judicial Branch cares more about our future.

Fortunately the next step is the Judicial Branch. As I write this 16 states have filed suit to stop this. I believe they will rule in favor of our nation instead of our president, but even if they don’t, there’s a good chance it will be tied up long enough to land on the desk of the next president.

We can only hope.