Dear America,
Since the release of the Mueller report, there has been all this talk about impeachment, but absent from the conversation has been realism. Nancy Pelosi addressed the real issue obliquely from the beginning, and many others have echoed her coded message. She said that impeachment should not be considered unless there is bipartisan agreement that it should be pursued, but her message--other than the fact that it was reported widely--has gotten very little of the attention it merits from the media. In fact, I can recall only twice when I have heard a news reporter point out the actual impediment to impeachment, and it has only a limited relationship to consensus, but a profound one...one that relates to the election in 2020.
The elephant in the room is Republican. It only takes a majority of the judicial committee in The House to report out a bill of impeachment to the entire house. And likewise, it takes only a majority of The House--now Democratic--to send the bill to The Senate, which is where the impeachment trial must take place. Then, after a trial presided over by the currently Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a majority of sixty seven senators have to vote for conviction. That is the real, virtually insurmountable hurdle to impeachment: conviction at trial. The Senate is populated by a Republican majority of 53 and a minority of only 45 Democrats with two independents who tend to vote with them, so the prospect of successful impeachment has to weighted against the flexibility of the partisan divide.
To be more explicit, the dissembling of the Republicans in both houses has been so overtly partisan...so obtuse...so obviously casuistic and self-serving that the likelihood that even a simple majority favoring conviction of Donald Trump, the new face of the Republican Party, could be obtained in The Senate. Pelosi's point was that unless Republicans leave off rationalizations in Trump's favor that are tantamount to complete lies, impeachment would be like the Democratic Party metaphorically falling on its sword. The most likely consequence would be what the Republicans reaped when they impeached and tried Bill Clinton but failed to convict him along party lines after the trial when the vote was taken; they got creamed in the next election. Clinton deserved conviction for his subornation of the perjury of Monica Lewinsky when she was asked about her affair with Clinton under oath if nothing else. Similarly, Trump deserves an impeachment trial and ultimately conviction, or impeachment after trial as it would properly be referred to, for his attempts to obstruct the Mueller investigation--to obstruct justice--the evidence of that obstruction being copious and indisputable given what the Mueller team unearthed. The protestations and attempts to divert attention from the profound inculpation that Mueller's report constitutes--demands for an investigation of subpoenas derived from references to a now largely discredited dossier composed by a former British spook from Great Britain at the behest of Democrats,for example--are nothing but pretexts. They are intended to obfuscate the fact that Donald Trump has been caught with his pants down, once again, and nothing can cover that up.
I might be less critical of the Republicans if they hadn't used their power in Congress to hound Hillary Clinton prior to the 2016 election, but they did far worse than Democrats have done to Trump. There were at least a dozen investigations of the Benghazi consulate attack that led to the death of our ambassador to Libya, all inspired by the contrived insinuation that somehow Clinton could have prevented it. And the constant references to her email practices, the same practices in effect as Trump's daughter and son-in-law have been using in the White House without consequence, were nothing but a smear campaign, or as Trump might say, a witch hunt. For the Republicans to now sanctimoniously decry those tactics that they used in multiples against Clinton is the height of hypocrisy, but the Republican base seems oblivious to the virtue of candor and intellectual honesty. Thus, the loyal Republican base is apparently undaunted by its party's sins. They're still loyal Republicans...and Trumpists.
So in 2020, while the outcome of a Trump bid for reelection in a country with the kind of integrity and virtue that our country claims would be a foregone conclusion, it isn't here, America. It is unbelievable, but in 2020 Trump could win. He could win while losing the popular election by a significant margin as he did in 2016, or he could win again by the technicality of winning the electoral college though he and his party lost at the polls in both The House and The Senate as well as the popular vote. It's up to us to prevent it. The truth isn't always obvious, but it is in this matter. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, vote morally, America. Otherwise, the immorality that currently rules will prevail again.
Your friend,
Mike
