There’s not much candidates can say on a political sign—name, office they’re seeking, maybe party affiliation. But Jesse Colvin, Democratic nominee for House of Representative in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, says it all in three words: “Country Over Party.”
Having served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, passing rigorous tests to become an Army Ranger, the phrase is no mere slogan. It speaks directly to what ails our politics today. Partisans on each side talk past each other to score sound-bite points. The only difference, as I see it, is that Democrats, at least in their rhetoric, are more concerned about the needs of ordinary citizens while Republicans pretend that making the rich richer will lift all boats—a theory known as “trickle down.”
The Republican incumbent, Andy Harris, a physician, voted to repeal Obamacare. Colvin favors expanding Medicare as a public opt-in and giving it the power to negotiate pharmaceutical costs. Colvin believes climate change must be addressed as soon as yesterday. Harris hems and haws about whether human activity—burning fossil fuel—is the culprit. Both candidates talk about protecting the Chesapeake Bay. But Harris supports a president whose two nominees to head the EPA have plundered, the first for personal gain, every environmental regulation in sight.
But perhaps more pertinent in this time of toxic acrimony, fanned by a president who demeans anyone who disagrees with him, is “Country Over Party.” Of “People Before Party” as Colvin’s ads declare.
Like any member of the House of Representatives, Harris has no say in the advise-and-consent role of confirming Supreme Court justices. But that didn’t stop him from calling Democratic-led questioning about sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh an “atrocity” while dismissing the nominee’s accuser as “troubled,” essentially endorsing Trump’s trashing of Christine Blasey Ford on the eve of the narrow Senate vote to confirm.
No need to rehash those heated arguments. But it’s vital to recognize that there are now zero branches of government standing between the president’s impulsive, sometimes repulsive and globally convulsive decisions and their implementation. Both the Republican-led House and U.S. Senate, especially since John McCain’s passing, have been obsequious in the face of Trump’s serial affronts to basic decency—such as ordering the separation of children, including pre-verbal toddlers, from their immigrant parents, even if they cross the border at so-called ports of entry. All this with no thought of keeping track to ensure that children could be reunited with their families, even in deportation.
On several fronts, the judiciary has stood as a bulwark against Trump’s most egregious executive orders. But that may change with Kavanaugh tipping the Supreme Court in cases that might include the president being ruled immune to inquiry, indictment or investigation. Imagine the national furor over a 5-4 vote supporting a White House move to block the final Robert Mueller report into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election on national security grounds.
Only a House of Representatives under Democratic control would be in position to thwart or at least expose Donald Trump’s worst instincts. Neither party should be running for or against possible impeachment of the president. Unless the Senate were to flip by a margin of 60-40 Democratic, mathematically impossible in the upcoming midterms, there’s no way the president can be impeached, convicted and removed from office.
But Jesse Colvin in Maryland’s 1st District could be the one who puts Democrats over the top, one of 23 seats the party needs to take control of the House. One seat. One vote. Don’t tell me yours doesn’t count.
Steve Parks, now living in Easton, is a retired journalist who worked for Newsday on Long Island and The Sun in Baltimore among other newspapers.
J t smith, says
I wholeheartedly concur with Mr Parks. Jesse Colvin offer a huge improvement in the caliber of representation enjoyed by citizens of the First District. He is not running as an anti- Trump candidate but all that he has done and stands for implicitly rebukes Trump. And, whatever one’s politics, it is beyond debate that the nation will be much better off with a House of Represntatives that can provide a counterweight to a uniquely capricious President.