Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2019 1:07 pm
I heard that on the news yesterday.
Guess we wait to see what happens.
Guess we wait to see what happens.
It really looks like they might just impeach him after all.
I'm on record as saying that, first of all, Trump is manifestly unfit to be president, an amoral narcissist and corrupt to the core. You could draft articles of impeachment a mile long with the things he's already done already. These new allegations are very serious, and very credible: he is basically extorting the president of Ukraine, to the tune of $400 million dollars in aid, in order to conduct a baseless investigation targeting Trump's most likely political rival (and his son). If you looked up the word "corruption" in the dictionary, this is the exact sort of thing you'd find.
It's no secret I'm not a fan of Republicans generally, but what we see in Trump is light-years beyond the worst thing that could be said about GWB or Reagan or any other president. Trump is not just next level, he's a hundred levels beyond anything we've seen in our entire national history. Frankly, if Trump manages to leave office without getting impeached, then without exaggeration -- we owe Richard Nixon an apology.
But also, I'm on the record as saying I don't expect Pelosi to come at the king unless she is sure not to miss. I don't envy her job. The choice to impeach will have enormous consequences, both for good and for ill, as will the choice not to impeach. It is almost guaranteed at this point that she will not find 20 Republican Senators willing to remove Trump. At the current trajectory, we will go into the 2020 General Election with the Senate acquitting Trump of anything he is accused of, and Trump claiming that it was all a witch hunt and that he's been totally exonerated.
And yet, even with that very foreseeable result, I'm beginning to think the Democrats must move forward anyways. They have to try. I think we can't be too concerned about impeachment backfiring on the Democrats. I think, at this point, people's minds are made up about Trump. Short of an economic downturn (which is very possible, but the timing can never be well predicted), his approval will stay at 40%, enjoying the support of 90% Republicans. That's basically what it's been since January 2017, and nothing is likely to change that one way or another.
More importantly, the Democrats have to move aggressively. They cannot be passive. Trump will control the narrative, if they allow him to. If they remain silent, Trump's actions will be regarded as normal and acceptable; and if left unchallenged, Trump's baseless claims about Biden will become credible by mere repetition of them. It'll be Hillary's Emails 2.0 all over again. Just like Russia investigation -- when the Mueller report finally landed, it only described things that had been done in plain sight for the past few years -- and because there was no "news", no one cared, even though it was clear that the only reason why Trump is not sitting in jail awaiting trial today is thanks to the OLC rule that says, even if Trump shot someone on 5th Avenue, a sitting president cannot be indicted.
It's still good that the Mueller report happened. It didn't lead to an impeachment itself, but it prepared the ground. If this were the only charge that could be brought against Trump, you could credibly claim a witch hunt -- but not with an established pattern of constant, relentless criminality in every aspect of his public and private life. Had Trump's conduct been exemplary throughout his administration, you could credibly argue that Trump's motivations were innocent and misunderstood. It is another thing to see a continuing pattern where Trump welcomes and encourages the influence of foreign governments in our political process.
