Let’s get one thing straight — Donald Trump’s presidential re-election chances did not improve after he was found guilty of 34 felonies.
If getting convicted of felonies improved anyone’s electoral chances, Hillary Clinton would’ve let herself get arrested for something — Whitewater, Benghazi, her emails, use your imagination — in 2016 while she was running her ultimately doomed campaign for president. She could then have run as the next coming of Eugene Debs, the firebrand socialist who ran for president from prison to protest his conviction under the Sedition Act, shoring up her support among disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporters in the process.
Debs, it should be noted, didn’t come remotely close to winning the presidency.
Let’s get another thing straight — Trump isn’t acting like someone who seriously believes he can’t get a fair trial in this country. If he was, he’d be bunking with Edward Snowden in Russia. Instead, he claims he’s a paragon of patience and forbearance. His revenge, as he explained it to a friendly panel of Fox News hosts, will be “success” — well, that and perhaps using the federal Department of Justice against his enemies.
That’s neither a new nor an idle threat. Trump rallies in 2016 already featured his signature “Lock them up” chant. After his election to president, as the Mueller report later detailed, Trump spent the better part of a year attempting to compel Jeff Sessions, the attorney general he appointed, to direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute Clinton. More recently, he pledged to appoint a prosecutor to “go after the Biden crime family” in February, months before he became America’s most notorious convicted felon.
This provides an opportunity to get one last thing straight.
Would a judicial system politicized by Biden’s allies reopen the sentencing hearing for the man who assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband on a technicality? Would it prosecute the president’s son on unusual gun charges? Would it prosecute a Democratic senator and indict a Democratic congressman for bribery?
If Donald Jr. or Eric were in court, would Trump promise not to pardon either of his sons the way Biden promised not to pardon Hunter?
The suggestion is, in a word, laughable.
Given the facts above, then, you might have expected some Republicans in Nevada to begin the long and arduous process of distancing themselves from an obviously vindictive liability at the top of their ticket.
That suggestion, alas, is also darkly laughable. We are still in the primary election season, so even the most moderate Republicans must find some way to appeal to the sort of voters who participate in closed Republican primary elections. Trouble is, as one small sample of Republican partisans in Esmeralda County neatly demonstrates, many of those voters no longer live on anything recognizable as planet Earth. Instead, in their reality, Trump’s election in 2024 is “preordained by God” and he will “return to power with loads of gold” collected from countries that will “capitulate to his power.”
So, in response, Gov. Joe Lombardo tried to thread the needle between acknowledging (“I respect the work of the jury”) with the need to stay off the radar of the sort of voter who believes COVID vaccines make men infertile and guerrilla armies are fighting in tunnels underneath their feet (“President Trump will have an opportunity to appeal, and I expect an unbiased process will vindicate President Trump.”).
Did it work? Of course not. How dare a former sheriff respect the work of a jury?
The rest of his Republican colleagues were, of course, less circumspect. My Republican congressman, Rep. Mark Amodei, declared that the day of Trump’s conviction was “an embarrassing and sad day” (this much, at least, is true, but not in the way he meant it). Senate candidate Sam Brown declared it to be a “sham political trial from the beginning, all because DC Democrats are afraid of LOSING” — never mind that there are at least two states between the District of Columbia and anywhere in the state of New York. The state Republican Party announced that it stands “in complete support of President Donald J. Trump and resist the charges upheld in today’s judgment.”
I’m sure the New York judicial system will appropriately weigh the resistance of the Nevada Republican Party when Trump’s sentencing hearing occurs July 11.
Outside of the Republican Party, only 19 percent of Americans believe Trump did nothing wrong. A majority of independent voters, meanwhile, believe he should end his run for the presidency. Trouble is, in order for any Republican to reach a single independent voter, they first must appeal to and get past that stubborn 19 percent of ride-or-die true believers.
There are two possible solutions to this problem.
The first and most immediate solution, if you’re reading this column, is to vote. Vote in person or vote by mail, take your pick, but cast your vote on June 11. As our illustrious editor-in-chief has already observed, primary election turnout thus far has been abysmal, with a little more than 10 percent of all eligible voters having cast their vote.
For what it’s worth and speaking from personal experience, voting in person is extremely fast and easy. Since nobody’s bothering to vote and most of those who are voting are voting by mail, there are no lines at the polling places. Just walk on in.
The longer term solution, meanwhile, is to rip our primary elections out of the hands of those with far too much time on their hands so politicians don’t have to openly pander to the deranged few.
Question 3, which seeks to bring ranked-choice voting and open primary elections to Nevada, was already approved by voters once in 2022. If a majority of us choose to approve the measure again this year, it will become law.
Once passed, Question 3 will not solve all of our ills. It will not immanentize the eschaton, bring peace on Earth or bring the average age of presidential candidates in this country below the U.S. life expectancy of 76.1 years. It will not end partisanship, keep Reno’s mail ballots in Reno or stop the swarm of dark money-funded campaign mail.
What Question 3 will do, however — what it’s already done in Maine and Alaska — is give all voters, including the state’s large and growing body of nonpartisan voters, the chance to select which five candidates belong on their general election ballot regardless of party affiliation. It will also give voters a chance to rank the candidates on their general election ballots by order of preference so that, if their top choice isn’t popular, their second or third choice might still have a chance to win.
What this does is make politicians accountable to all voters, not just partisan voters, throughout their political careers. That’s not much, but it’s not nothing. That change alone may be just enough to move the needle away from delirious fantasy — provided the rest of us actually vote in our primary elections.
If you haven’t already cultivated the habit, you can start in two days.
Correction: The original version of this column stated that Question 3 uses ranked choice voting in the primary to select two candidates in the general election. This was in error — Question 3 actually uses standard voting in an open primary to select five candidates for the general election, at which point ranked choice voting is used to select a winner. This column has been updated to reflect this.
David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected].
