WS Chronicle

By Tom H. Hastings

Russia hacked and attacked our 2016 presidential election and installed Donald Trump. This requires annulment.

Trump didn’t even come close on the actual popular vote, losing to Clinton by some three million votes, and yet seized the White House by the arcane and anti-democratic Electoral College, but only due to Russian illegal interference. This makes our 2016 presidential election fraudulent and illegitimate. 

Annul it.

Impeachment is a poor second choice. It leaves us with the impossible job of forcing Mitch McConnell to do the right thing, something he avoids at all costs again and again, most recently his blockage of election security bills that would take much of the foreign influence fraud out of elections. Impeachment would possibly clear the House, but would be pried from the cold dead hands of the U.S. Senate under the command of Mitch “Swampy” McConnell. As they say in New Jersey, fuggetaboutit.

Even if the U.S. Senate Republicans (full oxymoron alert) grew a conscience and impeached Traitor Trump, forcing him from office, we’d still be stuck with #KillTheGaysMikePence. Yeah … no.

Annulment is a do-over. Yes, it would be messy, since a special election would not happen much quicker than our next election, but annulment would correct the record. It would regain American democracy, so grievously wounded by Trump and Russia. It would at once also be the cleanest outcome, setting aside the invalid 2016 election and starting again from scratch, but with Donald Trump out of office and facing criminal exposure to violations ranging from obstructing justice to failure to declare as agent of a foreign government.

The greatest challenge to obtaining this annulment is the same as impeachment or invoking the 25^thAmendment to declare the president unfit, in that ultimately all require a supermajority of the Senate in particular and the Senate is Republican-controlled, Mitch McConnell-throttled, thus blocking all efforts in all ways from reaching anything remotely undergirded by integrity. 

By far, the most pragmatic path is to focus on the 2020 election, this is true. Still, discussing all possible paths to ending the most disastrous U.S. regime in at least a century and possibly in the entire history of the country is a way to engage a creative and determined citizenry. The Trump/Putin collusion is so bad the Framers didn’t even contemplate a remedy. Collusion? Oh, hell yeah. The evidence is overwhelming, despite the mincing about by D.C. insiders. 

Open impeachment investigations in House and Senate. Build on the Mueller Report and build a case for annulment. All this brings more facts to light, educating even the most obdurate fake patriot Trump voter. Stop the fractious bickering on the Democratic primary side and just back the most electable horse to take down Trump with dispositive, unassailable numbers in November 2020. 

No one with a shred of decency who is eligible to vote in 2020 should shirk. Despite the fatuous snatch-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory tendencies of Democrats, they need unity by convention time and get-out-the-vote mortal-threat levels by Election Day.

Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court.