Our votes are our laws.

He sexually harassed and assaulted 27 women.  He stuck his hand under their skirts in public places.  He grabbed their breasts without even knowing who they were.  He raped one woman in a public dressing room in a department store.  He bragged about abusing women to a reporter for a national television show and the tape became public.

It didn’t hurt his support even a little bit.  As more information has come out about the incidents of sexual assault, his support among Christian evangelicals has gone up.

He openly appealed to Russians for help in defeating his opponent in an election for the American presidency.  He hired a man as his campaign manager who had close connections to Russian oligarchs and at least one man trained by Russian intelligence agencies.  When his campaign manager was convicted in connection to the investigation of Russian influence on his campaign, he dangled the promise of a pardon to influence him not to cooperate with prosecutors, and before he left office, he made good on his promise and pardoned the man.

It didn’t affect the support of his political party at all, a party that had spent decades red baiting, investigating, and jailing ordinary Americans for their support of Russia.

He hired corrupt, incompetent goofs to run entire departments of his government, and when they were investigated for misappropriating government funds and misusing government material and abusing their offices for personal gain, he backed them up.  When they were driven from office by scandal, he hired replacements who were just like them.  When they resigned or were driven from office and it became clear that the Senate would not confirm his new cabinet officials, he concocted ways for them to serve in “acting” capacities anyway.

Support among his base went up, not down.

He openly obstructed the administration of justice in the investigation of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential campaign.  He dangled more pardons to influence others who were under investigation and to encourage them not to answer truthfully when questioned by the FBI and federal prosecutors.  When they were convicted of lying to the FBI, he pardoned them before leaving office.

It didn’t affect his poll numbers at all.

He lied publicly about his opponent’s actions while in office with respect to a foreign nation, Ukraine, and then he threatened to withhold military support to that nation’s military, support which had been legally mandated by the Congress, unless the president initiated an investigation of his opponent’s family in his country.

He was impeached, but conviction failed in the Senate because of intransigent support of his own political party in that body.  Evidence of his guilt was laughed at by his supporters in the Senate.

In the face of a deadly pandemic that was killing tens and then hundreds of thousands of the citizens of his own country, he lied repeatedly about the severity of the disease and pushed fake “cures” including “somehow” shining light inside the body and “cleaning” human beings with disinfectant.  He clamped down on the release of information from the CDC and NIH unless it had been cleared by the White House and then had it altered to fit his political agenda of getting reelected.  According to one of the medical experts serving on his own “task force” on the pandemic, as many as 30 to 40 thousand lives could have been saved if he hadn’t told lies about the disease.

Four hundred thousand died before he left office.  The lies he told mattered to the dead but not to the 74 million living people who voted to reelect him.

He incited a riot by his supporters to attack and invade the Capitol and he encouraged others to overturn the election by delaying, stopping altogether, or changing the electoral ballots awarded to his opponent into ballots for him in an attempt to change the outcome of the election.  He was impeached for inciting the riot which caused multiple deaths and injuries to as many as 140 police officers. 

Conviction in the Senate for the second impeachment failed because his party bought the fiction that all he did was to encourage his supporters to express their “free speech” that they disagreed with the outcome of the election.  Facts about the violence committed by the mob of his supporters did not matter to members of his political party in the Senate.

Now that he is apparently running for office again, he is holding rallies of his supporters and he has admitted that his goal was overturning the election.  He has promised to pardon those convicted of violence against law enforcement officers and sedition against the government.  He has called upon his supporters to engage in “the biggest protests we have ever had” in cities where he is under investigation for financial crimes and crimes committed to overturn the election.  The cities include New York City, Washington D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia.  The investigations include those of the New York State Attorney General, the New York City District Attorney, and the Department of Justice of the United States. 

The last time he called for a “protest” by his supporters against the outcome of the presidential election, tens of millions of dollars of damage was done to the United States Capitol and the certification of Electoral College ballots was interfered with and delayed.  He is openly calling anew for another insurrection, this time against the administration of justice in multiple jurisdictions.  He read his remarks at the Texas rally on Saturday night off a teleprompter.  Fomenting violent insurrection is obviously the plan for his campaign to run for the presidency again in 2024.  He is running on turning the insurrection on January 6 into a rallying cry not only for his campaign for reelection but for his political party, the Republican Party.  Whether you stand for or against the violence that tried to interfere with the Congress and overturn the last election will become a loyalty test for Republican candidates across the nation.  He is openly calling upon his political party to join him in not accepting the outcome of the next election unless he and his political party win.

Laws have never mattered to him.  He has never been prosecuted and convicted for a single crime he has committed even as he has broken laws right out in the open in full view of everyone.  Prosecutors have never touched him.  He has never faced a jury.  The only time he has ever lost was when he faced the voters in the last election and was ousted from the White House.  He is convinced that if he doesn’t win the presidency again, he will end up in jail.  He is determined not to let that happen.

Last Saturday, he told us why he is running, and he set the terms of the next election.  Either we will have votes that count and elections that mean something, or we won’t.  Either we will be a nation with laws that have meaning and breaking them has consequences, or we won’t.

We are about to have an election for Congress and an election for the Presidency.  They may be the last elections we ever have.