16 August—First, profound thanks—from the bottom of my heart (which is still beating)—to all the people who have expressed concern for my recent cardiopulmonary contretemps and confidence that I’ll be around to enjoy the end of Donald Trump’s reign of error and terror and even of wicked Ayatollah Trump himself. I certainly hope they’re right. The much appreciated good wishes are still coming in through personal and phone contact, snail mail, email, and text messages; from all the usual suspects, as it were, on four continents, as well as from unexpected well-wishers who just happened to hear the news.

I sincerely appreciate the solicitude and look forward to being alive, kicking, and of sound mind and body for some time to come.

On the subject of old farts of sound mind, then, let’s suppose the Democrats in 2016 didn’t screw Bernie Sanders out of the presidential nomination and he went on to win the election in November, with Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton as his vice president. Sure, in reality Sanders may well not have won the popular or electoral vote, but he stood at least as good a chance as Mrs. Clinton. And we’re just supposing.

Putting the extent of Bernie’s self-described democratic socialism aside for the sake of argument (because it’s irrelevant in the circumstance and he espouses a capitalist economy anyway), let’s also suppose that Republicans won thin majorities in both houses of Congress, as they actually did in 2016. Rather that than a Democrat trifecta.

It’s a given, in all events, that Bernie Sanders isn’t corrupt or evil like Donald Trump. Very few people are. The important thing, though, is that neither Bernie nor Congress can get anything done without a degree of cooperation and compromise from one another. And that means moderation.

Cutting to the chase, then, Bernie Sanders, like any non-Trump, would never rule by executive order, glorify himself, monetize the presidency, or otherwise self-deal. More to the point, whether he liked it or not, he’d have to compromise on virtually everything. Compromise is the art of politics, after all, and politics is the art of compromise.

That means, in simple terms and to be specific, when three Supreme Court vacancies needed to be filled during his term in office, Bernie’s nominees would have had to be less liberal than he may have wanted and at the same time less conservative than the Republican-majority Senate may have wanted.

And that means the Supreme Court today wouldn’t have a six-to-three strongly conservative (if not necessarily pro-Trump) bias. Or a six-to-three strongly liberal (but not necessarily pro-Sanders) bias. In the interest of fairness, four-one-four is what SCOTUS really needs, the “one” being an open-minded justice, sort of like Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett can be, but even more so.

Sad to say, it doesn’t look like we’ll see anything like for some time to come . . .