Letters to the Editor: How we the people are letting Trump destroy our democracy
by Kevin Spera
When I first joined The Mercury, I was surprised and disappointed by how much we focused on politics and the news. I thought that if we did a political column it would be about elections year after year after year. I was wrong.
The Mercury focused on politics and the news a lot in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. And it has continued that way today. But I’m not done writing as a political columnist. There’s so much more that I want to say about politics and how it has impacted our lives, our nation and our world.
That’s why on Wednesday, I write about Trump and the Russia thing.
What concerns me is that, from my perspective as a citizen, it is our country’s political structure that is letting Trump get away with what he is doing. It is our political system (or should I say, our political structure) that is allowing someone like Trump to be the leader of the country. We elect people in our country to positions of leadership. We elect them to serve us and serve the country.
That is not the way that politics works in our country.
There are no questions in my mind who would be our next president. It’s an open-seat contest. One of them, or all of them, would be a great president. But, we the people elect and re-elect people to be our leaders in our country. We vote for a president and the senators and representatives and Supreme Court justices.
But, in our political structure, we elect the president but not the members of the Electoral College. We elect the president but we don’t elect a majority of the Electoral College. If that group of electors who are needed by law to cast a presidential vote for Clinton were to vote for Trump, that would be the end of his presidency. We