IS NOW ESSENTIAL

We stand on the brink of war, await a Senate trial for Presidential impeachment and teeter on a revolution.

Snap elections are not even contemplated in the Constitution, and for good reason! They are clumsy, expensive and should never become a habit.

BUT, the next election is still 10 months away. In the meantime, the Middle East is heating up, our elected officials can’t even agree on the process for an impeachment trial, hate crimes – against Jews, blacks, immigrants of all sorts — are climbing steadily, and the country is more divided than ever before. We are, in short, in a stalemate, unable to agree and therefore paralyzed — to everyone’s great disadvantage.

If we could simply postpone things and wait until next November, perhaps that would be best. But, the world is careening out of our control and unlikely to agree to press “pause” for a year. And, because global chaos and domestic acrimony play to his benefit, Trump is likely to continue stirring up trouble, even at the cost of war, simply to hold office longer, as he clearly did with Ukraine. Also to everyone’s great disadvantage.

Everyone says, ‘it is up to the American people’. So, fine, let’s do it that way.

The vote would be in place of a Senate impeachment trial and would be better because it would be what the people want. No one could be accused of trying to “undo” an election. Instead, a new election, a little early, would give the people what they want. And, that is foremost!

Obviously, there is no mechanism available for something like this to actually happen. And even if it did, it’s unlikely Trump would voluntarily step down if a national plebiscite went against him. Instead, I propose the idea largely out of desperation. We’ve been exceedingly lucky for three years now, but circumstances suggest that luck is running out. The risks ahead are both real and great, and we can’t simply sit idle until November, when the people will next have a chance to be heard.