Before We All Go Off the Deep End

Nov. 10, 2024

Both sides are taking it to the extreme in their reactions to Tuesday’s election.

President-elect Trump interprets the result as a mandate.  Actually as “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” One can see where he might get that idea, given the large margin of his victory and likely GOP control of both houses of Congress.

On the other side, the sky is falling. Peter Baker of The New York Times writes, without conceding even the slightest exaggeration, that “Trump has now established himself as a transformational force reshaping the United States in his own image.”

What ties these views together is the belief that this is a watershed moment, that we are embarking on a new era and there’s no going back. There’s little doubt the next four years will be tumultuous. Unfortunately, all the apocalyptic talk only adds fuel to the fire. Extreme views repeated over and over have a way of becoming self-fulfilling.

As always, however, we should approach such unbridled assessments with considerable caution. There are two ways to construe Tuesday’s result:

 The one supposed above suggests we’re witnessing a long-term structural change. Trump is deemed to have created a movement that extends well beyond his MAGA base, for instance among Latino voters, who have re-aligned behind him and his successors for the long haul.

 The other perspective is much more short-term in nature. In this view, Trump’s new-found support could be here today, gone tomorrow. That’s what happens in a democracy.  Whenever blocs of voters are unhappy with the state of the country, they shift their weight in the other direction. As a result, the political pendulum swings back and forth on a regular basis.

The sitting president takes the blame, fairly or unfairly, for anything that goes wrong on his watch. Voters unhappy with their lot in life (think pandemic) rejected Trump in 2020. In similar fashion, voters unhappy with their lot (think inflation) rejected Joe Biden, and by extension Kamala Harris, in 2024.

This is not anything new. Since 1988, neither party has occupied the Oval Office for more than two consecutive terms. And on top of that, control of Congress has slipped from one party to the other in sometimes disastrous midterm elections.

Our system of democracy is self-correcting. The extensive polling done by Our Common Purpose over the past few years shows as much as anything that the voting public wants balance between too much of this and too much of that. The system has a sixth sense that the country is drifting too far in one direction or another, and it tries to fix that by reversing course in the next election.

So which was it on Tuesday? Is the new support for Trump permanent or provisional? No question, Trumpism is a phenomenon.  But then so was Barack Obama in 2008.

Here’s a humble prediction. Caught up in the aura of a mandate, the Trump administration will overreach. It will ram through too much of one thing or another, with damaging consequences. Voters will react accordingly.

Assuming Democrats can get their act together between now and then, our system will again self-correct by electing a Democrat to the White House in 2028. The victor’s substantial majority will be deemed a mandate, and excited observers will proclaim the dawning of a new era. All that will soon prove overstated. In truth, it will be just another case of the system trying to re-balance the country.

These wild and frequent swings back and forth wouldn’t occur, wouldn’t be necessary, if someone were to put a premium on establishing and maintaining balance in the first place.

— Richard Gilman

Women United on Abortion? Not Entirely

Oct. 13, 2024

A strong majority of American voters favor assuring access to abortions, and yet not all women are on board.

Just as many men as women are pro-choice.  On the other hand, just as many women as men are pro-life.  Gender is hardly the deciding factor as voters go to the polls with abortion on the ballot in 10 states and looming large in the presidential race.

The biggest nemeses for pro-choicers are Republicans, evangelicals, and rural communities.  No news there.   What is a little surprising, however, is that those groups are predominated by women.

These observations come out of the latest nationwide public opinion survey conducted by Survey USA for Our Common Purpose.  Topical questions such as abortion were not the primary purpose of the survey, which you’ll be reading much more about in the coming months, but the results do kind of jump off the screen.

This particular poll has Kamala Harris running neck and neck with Donald Trump, 45% to 45%, thanks in good part to disproportionate support from women.  Harris had an 8-point lead among women; Trump a 10-point lead with men.  The confidence interval of this nationwide voting sample of 2,300 registered voters conducted from Sept. 13 to 19 is +/- 2.6 percentage points.  While the sample size is not sufficient to predict the outcome of the presidential election in battleground states nor predict the outcome of abortion measures state by state, it does provide an ample window on which way the nation is leaning.

The poll shows 62% of respondents favor allowing some level of access to abortion, represented by lines 2, 3 and 4 on the table below.  Men tend to giving less leeway, by a small margin.  Women lean a little more to no restrictions, again by a small margin.  Overall though there is no gender gap.  In fact, of the six topical issues explored in this poll, abortion drew the smallest percentage differences between men and women.

A less favorable way of looking at the same results is that a differently constituted majority, in this case represented by lines 1 and 2 above, would like to impose tighter restrictions than existed under Roe v. Wade, either by prohibiting abortions entirely or by allowing only a shorter timeframe.

The highest number of opponents, no surprise, are Republicans, evangelicals, and rural residents.  What is something of a surprise is that within these groups, the more frequent opponents — albeit by small margins — are women.   Their belief systems overcome any bond of sisterhood.

The latest iteration of the women’s movement has succeeded in making the abortion issue front and center, managed to energize supporters, and likely will draw a number of women to the polls who otherwise would not have voted.

The incongruity is that other women have made a choice of their own, and that’s not to allow the right to choose.

Election Reforms Could Curb Extremism

Sept. 15, 2024

For those who believe the division and dysfunction within Congress is structural in nature, some amount of help might be on the way this fall.

The faces of the problem are hard-liners such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and their polar opposites Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, but they are not necessarily the problem itself.

The real culprits are features of our election system, specifically gerrymandering and closed primaries, that make it easy for extremists to land in Washington and then face no accountability back home.

It’s one of the great paradoxes of modern politics that independent voters are becoming ever more prevalent, yet because of closed or even semi-closed primaries in many states they have little or no say in choosing the candidates they will vote on in November.

Take the case of Arizona. It gets well-deserved recognition these days as a swing state, with the voter rolls showing as many unaffiliated voters as there are Republicans and far more than Democrats. The state went for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

By contrast, the state’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives won’t be mistaken for middle-of-the-road. In fact, its nine-member delegation is among the most extreme in the country.

Four of the six Republicans in the delegation belong to the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, which is saying something when one considers that the group only has 39 members. Arizona matches the four from Florida and Tennessee, and exceeds the three from much bigger Texas.

With the caucus’s most ardent obstructionists, including some of the Arizonans, once again jamming up discussions on the federal budget, it’s fair to say that these individuals don’t make it their first priority to work together across the House.

But what is one to expect when two of the four ran unopposed in the last general election? Their districts provide them unassailable registration advantages, with roughly twice as many Republicans as Democrats.

This is not entirely a one-way street. The pattern is repeated on the other side of the aisle. Two of the three Democrats in the delegation belong to the most liberal group in the House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They’re able to do so with impunity because they also enjoy huge registration margins back home. One of the two represents a district with three times as many Democrats as Republicans.

That’s Arizona. High percentages of Republicans live in rural counties and certain portions of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Then the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission comes along, and in the course of “fulfilling” its cautious interpretation of certain requirements, tilts the table even more.

Even with all this, however, the extremism would take a hard hit if the state’s plentiful independent voters had an easier time of participating in primary elections. The good news is that this could change in a major way this fall. Arizona is one of seven states that will vote on reforming how elections are conducted.

Initiatives in Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon are going after the whole enchilada. They seek both open primaries, in which all candidates and all voters are treated equally without regard to their political party affiliation, and converting to ranked choice voting in the general election. Oregon would take it a half-step further by applying ranked choice voting to its primary elections as well.

Activists in the remaining three states – Arizona along with Montana and South Dakota – are content just to seek open primaries.

Arizona is going at it in roundabout fashion. For starters, it has two conflicting initiatives on the ballot. The one enacts open primaries. The other keeps primaries pretty much the exclusive domain of Republicans and Democrats. If both initiatives somehow pass, the measure with the higher vote total will prevail.

If that confusion isn’t enough, the open primaries measure doesn’t specify whether, like Montana, the top four candidates make it to the general election or, like South Dakota, just the top two candidates move on. Arizona will leave it to the Legislature to decide. What a mess that will be. To top if off, depending on what the Legislature decides, the state could back into instituting ranked choice voting in the general election.

Even with these zig-zags, it still is worth the trouble. Bringing to bear the moderating voice of all those independents will have considerable impact on congressional primaries across the board.  Their influence surely will be felt in the two or three districts that could flip to either party.

And even in the six districts with lopsided registration advantages, the single primary ballot and the size of the independent bloc will encourage moderate candidates to throw their hats in the ring. We have to hope that just the prospect of such will cause the incumbents to think twice before going to the extreme.

— Richard Gilman

Which Value Will Capture Middle America?

Aug. 18, 2024

The two candidates for vice president were selected in part because they represent, and are hoped to attract, Middle America.

On the surface, this would seem a gross miscalculation on someone’s part.  How could two men who are so different in their worldviews and their politics be considered worthy of consideration by the same basic constituency?

The answer is they can be, albeit in contrasting ways.  How this plays out in the next few months not only could have a major bearing on the election but will serve as still another litmus test of where we are as a nation.

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican J.D. Vance wasted no time in trading barbs over whom is more authentic.  Their posturing about “camo-hats” and the like is good fun but, beyond the fact that neither Walz or Vance hail from New York or California, their backgrounds really aren’t that comparable.

Walz is drawing plenty of attention for growing up in remote farming communities of northern Nebraska.  To Democrats, who long ago wrote off the heartland, he is the best thing going.  Vance, who well chronicled his troubled upbringing in Hillbilly Elegy, grew up in the shadow of a struggling steel mill in a densely populated corridor between Cincinnati and Dayton.

Of much more significance, they place differing emphasis on two values that are core to Middle America.

While I don’t pretend to speak for the heartland, my conversations five years ago with community leaders of another Nebraska farming community contributed greatly to Our Common Purpose’s 10 core principles for America.

Many topics were covered in those lengthy discussions in Superior, Neb., located just 225 miles to the south of where Walz grew up, but two overriding impressions endure:

• Hard-working townspeople willingly contribute to their communities every way they can. This is the blessing, and the curse, of living in a small town.  When there are only so many to do it all, everyone has to do their share.
• Correspondingly, they have little patience for able-bodied individuals who aren’t pulling their weight. Small towns offer no place to hide for those they see as living off the system.  Complaints about locals they believe abuse the food stamp program quickly turn into disparaging references to welfare queens in New York City.  They expect people to take responsibility for themselves.

The two vice presidential candidates are different manifestations of that culture.

Walz likely would place the accent on the first of the values, beginning probably from boyhood.  While much has been made of his football background, small schools can field a team only if every kid turns out to play.  Teacher, coach, National Guardsman, all that stuff, Walz seems to have been a contributor to his local community.  I haven’t heard him express himself on those who don’t but he likely takes a gentler position than his opponent.

The second value is a long-standing viewpoint of conservatives, and Vance eagerly takes it up.  He has been hammering the “lazy poor” ever since Hillbilly Elegy.  On the other hand, given the dysfunction of his childhood, I don’t know he would have been exposed to much of a community-minded commitment in his youth.

The two men offer a choice between honoring the way people have tried to live their own lives versus the impatience they feel toward those who don’t work so hard.  I suspect many Middle America voters identify to varying degrees with each of those perspectives. Which will speak loudest to them over the next couple of months is yet to be determined.

Either way, Middle America has been given a boost.

The political theorist Isaiah Berlin, about whom you will be hearing a lot more from me in the coming months, has conjectured that large groups are just like individuals.  They hanker for status and recognition.

Middle America obviously is an amalgam of many such groups.  Between small towns and big cities, there is as much diversity as one would find anywhere else.   At the core, however, they all identify themselves as being part and parcel of flyover country, which to them is long overdue for a little recognition and respect.  Now with the brain trusts of both political parties reaching into their midst for VP candidates, they find themselves in an enviable position.  But what will they choose to do with that?

The answer to the question “who shall govern me?” is, according to Berlin, somebody or something who “I can represent as ‘my own’, as something which belongs to me, or to whom I belong.”

Many of these are red states, and that isn’t about to change, but which vice president candidate would these voters choose if that were a separate ballot question?  Who are they going to feel most comfortable in representing as their own?  Walz or Vance?

This is a true test of how midwestern sensibilities fit today’s political landscape.  In flyover country, I’d guess it’s very much up in the air at the moment where they will land.

— Richard Gilman

Olympics Offer Chance to Pull Together

Aug. 8, 2024

Good ‘ol Team USA is once again piling up the medals at the Olympics.  Across the country we’re cheering.

Cole Hocker Wins the 1,500
Steph Chambers / Getty Images

We exalted as swimmer Bobby Finke valiantly led the grueling 1,500-meter freestyle from start to finish in world-record time.  Familiar faces Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky again came through in the clutch, adding to their story tale careers.  Cyclist Kristen Faulkner surprised everyone by suddenly breaking away from more seasoned competitors as they raced toward the Eiffel Tower.  On the track, it seems like every day another USA runner is sprinting from behind to win.  Gold, silver, bronze, at last look the medal count is approaching 100.

Holding our breath in suspense as each event unfolds is another of those instances when we as a country are able to set aside our political differences to pull in the same direction.  The Games show we Americans are perfectly capable of coming together when we want to.

When asked in one of the Our Common Purpose polls to evaluate whether we are united or divided by each of a potpourri of 28 national institutions, values, services and events, “rooting for American athletes in the Olympics” was among the top finishers.

On the poll’s 201-point scale from minus 100 for divided, 0 for neutral, going up to plus 100 for united, there was no partisan difference on the Olympics.  Those who voted for Trump in 2020 rated it at plus 52, those who voted for Biden at plus 51.

The composite of plus 51 was just a couple of points behind Thanksgiving, liberty and our patriotic holidays, and a few points ahead of how we respond when the country is attacked, the opportunity to vote in regular elections, and national symbols such as the American flag.  Truly, an Olympian performance.

By comparison, politicians from both political parties finished far back in the pack at minus 25.

Not to say we’re totally together.  Our most-pressing differences have nothing to do with Republican versus Democrat but which Olympic sports we’re following.  Some of us stick with the tried and true.  Foil fencing, anyone?  Some are more inclined to experiment. Skateboarding?  Sport climbing?  Kayak cross?  Breaking?  To each his own.  That’s part of the beauty.  Athletes of all persuasions get their moment to excel. We can enjoy the competition on our own terms without anyone forcing their views upon us.

Too bad that the Olympics come along only every four years.

Court Creates False Equivalency

July 19, 2024

Forty years ago there was Nixon v. Fitzgerald.  Then this year along came Trump v. United States. The two proceedings are now linked forever, and not for the better.

In Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court granted the president absolute immunity from liability for civil damages arising from any official action taken while in office.

In Trump v. United States, the court extended the immunity to cover criminal charges for any official actions and a wide swath of unofficial actions as well.

The Roberts court of today references Nixon over and over in its ruling on Trump.  The two cases certainly have basic similarities. Both involve presidents.  Both involve actions they took, or at minimum tacitly approved.  Both landed on a Supreme Court anxious to uphold the separation of powers between branches of government.  And a court hell-bent on seeing to it that there be no further incursions on presidential prerogatives.

All this has obscured the fact that two cases differ markedly in the particulars. And it’s not just that one is a civil matter, and the other is criminal in nature. By using the logic of one as the primary precedent for its decision in the other, the court has made a legal leap to shield anything and everything that happens in the Oval Office.

Nixon v. Fitzgerald was decided in 1982 but it goes all the way back to 1968 when a whistleblower by the name of A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a civilian working for the Air Force, broke the news to Congress that there were cost overruns in the development of the C5A cargo plane.  Lyndon Johnson was president at the time but Richard Nixon was soon to take over.

It was on Nixon’s watch that Fitzgerald’s job was conveniently eliminated in an Air Force reorganization.  The facts are disputed as to whether Nixon himself was directly involved in the decision, although several of his aides certainly were.  One thing led to another, and Fitzgerald eventually sued.  Given his tangential role. Nixon’s name wasn’t added to the lawsuit until a full eight years later.

Even so, the court worried that the president could become “an easily identifiable target” of lawsuits filed by anyone harmed by a government action.  It suggested that “diversion of [the president’s] energies by concern with private lawsuits” would:

• “Raise unique risks to the effective functioning of government.”
• Impede “the maximum ability to deal fearlessly and impartially with” the duties of his office.
• “Frequently could distract [him] from his public duties.”

Those concerns resulted in immunity for the president in civil matters.  While Trump’s case is of course a criminal matter, the Roberts court quotes liberally although not always literally from Nixon.

For one example, one of the court’s stated objectives in Trump to ensure that “the president can undertake his constitutionally designated functions effectively, free from undue pressures or distortions” was said to have originated with the Nixon decision.  For some reason, however, that phraseology is nowhere to be found in Nixon.

Regardless of whether the words have been quoted properly in Trump, the use of them to justify immunity for Trump made sense to six justices but to a common man they are a drastic reach.  

Nixon was a disinterested party, or at most a barely interested party, when it came to Ernest Fitzgerald.  His aides thought they were acting in the best interests of the government, if not the public, in ousting someone they regarded as a disloyal employee.  They might not have made the best decision but regardless Nixon didn’t initiate the action and stood to gain nothing from it.

Trump on the other hand is accused of being the initiator and would have been the obvious beneficiary if the 2020 election results had been overturned.  In contrast to Nixon, the self-interest and the stakes were huge.  Trump had four more years in the White House riding on the outcome.

His actions weren’t inhibited at all, as the court fears would happen, “by needless worry as to the possibility of damages.”  And it borders on laughable that the court should seek to protect him from undue pressures and distortions, when the central point of the indictment against him is that he was the perpetrator of the pressure and distortions.

While the court utilizes the similarities between Trump and Nixon to establish the distinction between the president’s official and unofficial acts, as was discussed in this space last week, it is not troubled a whit by the differences between the two cases.

We’ve now learned that it’s not beyond the law to use the language of one proceeding to permit much or all of what happened in the second, even when the circumstances and what’s at stake are so different.  Not beyond the law, and yet well short of reason.

Court Undoes Trump Sentencing Day

July 11, 2024

Donald Trump won’t be sentenced today for his criminal conviction, even if it was red-circled on the calendar. The Supreme Court took care of that.

The court’s six-member majority last week carved out a significant loophole in our nation’s overarching ideals by granting Trump substantial immunity in his election interference case. In so doing, the court wrote its own version of one of Our Common Purpose’s core principles. Its revision reads something like this: We Are A Nation Of Laws — Equally Applicable To All Except Those Who Occupy The Oval Office.

The decision focuses entirely on which if any presidential actions are subject to judicial review, and the answer is not much.  The court pays lip service to “the president is not above the law” then launches into a lengthy rendition of all the ways he is above the law. Trump and all other occupants of the Oval Office have:

 Absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct while performing their official duties.

 “Presumptive immunity” for actions taken within “the outer perimeter” of their official responsibilities so long as they are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority.” As one important example, a “presumptive privilege” protects presidential communications because it “relates to the effective discharge of a president’s powers.”

 No immunity for “unofficial acts,” although the court couldn’t even leave that alone. Noting that there is not always a clear line between personal and official affairs, it warned that any claims that objectionable actions were unofficial in nature “must be fact specific and may prove to be challenging.”

This broad grant of immunity led the court to dismiss outright one of the election interference charges, to presume another also to be covered by immunity unless somehow it can be shown otherwise, and to leave the door cracked open on the other two. The case was sent back to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to sort through which actions were official versus unofficial, and ultimately whether there is enough left to even bother.

Whatever gets decided will surely make its way back to the Supreme Court, unless of course Trump is re-elected and puts a stop to the whole darn thing. The decision also left the other criminal cases against him in disarray.

His scheduled sentencing today didn’t escape, even though it involves crimes that pre-dated his presidency. Judgment day on this matter has now been postponed until Sept. 18, if it happens at all, while Judge Juan Merchan considers how the high court’s ruling affects the case.

That means we won’t learn, at least for now, whether the sentence to be handed down would have treated Trump like any other citizen convicted of similar wrongdoing. Read more on this. The question of whether we are, at this high exalted level, a nation of laws equally applicable to all has now been rendered largely moot by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision.

Trump’s motion dealt only with immunity.  The court’s expansive interest in setting apart his official versus unofficial acts all but forecloses weighing more relevant distinctions such as determining which presidential actions are taken in the interest of the public versus out of self -interest.  We’ll hold off looking at that subject until another day soon.

July 4: A Day of Unity

July 4, 2024

Happy Independence Day!

This seminal moment in our history gives us something to celebrate each year. In these fraught times, perhaps it’s a bit ironic that a celebration of “independence” serves to bring us together rather than split us apart.

And believe this or not, it does draw us together. Two-thirds of Americans strongly agree in poll after poll with the second core principle of Our Common Purpose that Even With Our Flaws, We Have Much to Cherish.

When asked in one of the Our Common Purpose polls to evaluate whether we are united or divided by each of a list of national institutions, values, services and events, our patriotic holidays of July 4th and Memorial Day finished right at the top. They rank with Thanksgiving and the broad aspiration of liberty as our most unifying traditions.

This assessment applies virtually equally among men and women, across educational levels and regions of the country.

True, the harmony isn’t entirely perfect. Consistent with what others have determined, the OCP poll shows Republicans have a slightly higher propensity toward patriotism. The difference though is relatively small. On the poll’s 201-point scale going up to +100 for united, 0 for neutral, and down to -100 for divided, our patriotic holidays scored an average of +63 among Republicans and +47 among Democrats.

Of more concern is that young voters aged 18-to-34 are less enthused about July 4th than are seniors.

But on the whole, today provides an opportunity to put aside our differences to enjoy a moment of unity. Whether evoked by the fife-and-drum corps marching down our Main Streets, the sparkle of fireworks or hot dogs on the grill, or maybe by images of the courageous declaration of independence printed on parchment, today should remind of us of how the Founding Fathers stood together in the face of a formidable foe.

They concluded their revolutionary document with this vow:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.”

July 4th, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving are just three days out of the year but we — regardless of persuasion, regardless of age — could use a good dose of that stick-togetherness now.

Trump Sentencing Tests Key Ideal

June 23, 2024

If someone mentions “July 11,” what pops into your head? Exactly right, it’s the day Donald Trump will be sentenced. The date doesn’t need to be entered on the calendar. It’s on our minds.

The Trump court proceedings have turned into a major test of one of the most widely accepted of Our Common Purpose’s 10 core principles: We Are a Nation of Laws – That Need to Be Equally Applicable to All.

The ideal draws high approval each time it is reviewed, getting strong agreement from a very consistent range of 77% to 79% of likely voters in one survey after another. Importantly, the support comes from near equal percentages of Republicans and Democrats. And of those who don’t strongly agree, almost all others somewhat agree.

From the get-go, the principle was regarded not as current reality but as an aspiration.  Our laws apply to everyone.  None of us should be excused, nor should any individual or class of individuals be treated more harshly than others.  Well before the heightened awareness brought on by the Black Lives Matter movement, the primary concern of the fine folks who participated in developing the principles were the legal inequities endured by people of color and of lesser means.  Read more about the principle.

That concern has not gone away but it has been overshadowed of late by a claim that comes totally out of right field.   All of a sudden, the principle has a political component to it.  Republicans are contending that Democrats have weaponized the legal system to go after them, Trump in particular. Even as he was losing in the New York courtroom, his claim of selective prosecution might have been winning in the court of public opinion.

Then along came Hunter Biden.  Put aside that a whole series of other Democrats are also facing criminal charges, among them Sen. Robert Menendez, Rep. Henry Cuellar, and this past week New Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross. Biden is the son of the president, and his conviction was by itself enough to take much of the wind out of the Republicans’ claims.

Nonetheless, the nation’s judicial system is under intense scrutiny. The district attorney and prosecutor in Atlanta have been accused of impropriety. The federal judge in Florida has been under fire for her handling of the classified documents case.  By comparison, Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial in New York, has acquitted himself well.  However, he too is far from out of the woods.

While there is a standard process for determining sentencing that includes a recommendation from the probation officer and review by the attorneys, all eyes will be on the judge when he hands down the sentence.  Strike the right balance and there will be little grumbling. Too lenient and Democrats will howl. Too harsh and we’ll be right back to where we just were with Republicans crying persecution.  But in this case what is too harsh?  What is too lenient?

Merchan has huge latitude in the decision. What he needs is huge wisdom.

While New York defense attorneys not involved in the case have been quoted as saying it’s unheard of for a 77-year-old, first-time offender in this type of case to be jailed even for a day, theoretically Trump could be hit with prison time ranging from 16 months to four years for each of the 34 felony counts. Or the judge could allow the jail time for each of the counts to be served concurrently. He could also choose from other options, including a lighter sentence, house confinement, or a sentence of probation. Or he could give Trump a “conditional discharge” with some requirement such as community service.

On the other extreme, the judge could skip imprisonment altogether and focus entirely on levying a fine. The maximum in New York for a Class E felony is $5,000. The fine could run concurrently for all 34 counts, meaning it would total $5,000. Or it could run consecutively, meaning it would add up to $170,000.

The sentencing is complicated all the more by whether the penalty should be held in abeyance pending the outcome of Trump’s likely appeal of the conviction and to avoid the damage he and Republicans in general would suffer if his campaign activities were to be curtailed.

Fortunately for us, we are not Judge Juan Merchan. Most of us do not have his background and knowledge, nor the time he and his clerk have devoted to studying this.

There’s no getting around that Trump is a special case. The coverup helped along by the business fraud of which he has been found guilty could have altered the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. Perhaps he more than other individual has the chutzpah and the social media resources to criticize the court even as he is being tried. And any day now the Supreme Court will rule on his appeal that in effect would put him above the law in the separate election subversion case.  If he succeeds in that effort, he will put the lie to We Are a Nation of Laws — That Need to Be Equally Applicable to All.

But if we aspire to the ideal of “equally applicable to all,” a highly worthy standard in the eyes of a great majority of Americans, what would you say the sentence to be handed down on July 11 should be?