Now that Democrats have failed in their attempt to remove the president from power, it’s worth asking why they haven’t seriously considered the reverse: removing power from the president.

We have seen, over the 33 months since Donald Trump took the unusual step of firing FBI Director James B. Comey, any number of behavior-specific explanations for why the 45th president must go: For coordinating with the Kremlin, obstructing the Russia investigation, making “racist comments” about four congresswomen, saying he would accept “dirt” from foreign governments about his domestic political opponents and finally the House’s two impeachment articles: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

But what we have not seen is anything like a structural critique of ever-accumulating executive branch power itself. Democrats don’t like the way Trump uses his authority, but that doesn’t mean they want any less of the stuff in the White House, particularly when they get back the keys. To the contrary.

In his response to Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, leading presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) lamented that the tariff-happy president wasn’t being punitive enough toward American companies. “The NAFTA 2.0 deal that he recently signed,” Sanders said, “will not prevent a single corporation from shutting down factories in the United States and moving them to Mexico.”

In her official Democratic Party response, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer focused not on Trump’s monarchical gestures during the speech — granting a scholarship, promoting a veteran, presenting a Medal of Freedom on the spot, theatrically reuniting a military family — but rather, on all the things Democratic governors are accomplishing by executive fiat in defiance of their legislatures.

“Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers unilaterally increased school funding by $65 million last year,” Whitmer bragged.

Full Commentary by Matt Welch @ Reason https://reason.com/2020/02/08/instead-of-removing-trump-from-power-remove-power-from-the-presidency/