Trumpeachment ends, and the real fight begins
A few Republicans "distinguished" themselves. Murkowski, who at least does actually buck her party occasionally, settled for both-sidesing the issue, a stance as fundamentally dishonest as it always is. Since inauguration Trump has been the living embodiment of why the founders put impeachment in the Constitution. If Democrats were slow to launch the process, it was solely because the cravenness of the Senate majority made it obviously futile.
Joni Ernst, best known for her introductory video describing how she "grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm" to make her seem folksy and relatable (because who among us doesn't like to relax and unwind now and then by hacking the nuts off of a few farm animals?) threatened to impeach a future president Biden; her later feeble "walk-back" was nothing of the kind, still accusing Democrats of "lowering the bar" by going after Trump who has, in fact, committed several times more impeachable offenses than all previous presidents combined. Of course, such threats are inspired purely by revenge. They'd try to impeach any Democratic president -- except that it's hard to imagine a scenario in which a Democrat wins the presidency but Republicans take control of the House.
Romney? His lone vote to convict took little courage or principle, since Trump has never been as popular among Mormons (who dominate his state's electorate) as among other Republicans. And he may have been serving the party in a different way. The real man of principle today was Doug Jones.
Unlike some, I can't say I'm disappointed or angry about the outcome. Disappointment implies that some outcome other than a phony trial and acquittal was possible. There was never any possibility that impeachment would remove Trump. There was never any way anyone even remotely in touch with reality could have believed there was any possibility that impeachment would remove Trump. It would have required 20 Republican senators to vote for removal. There was never any chance that that was going to happen. As for anger, I maxed out my anger with the caging of migrant children and the betrayal of the Kurds. This impeachment fiasco is nothing compared with what Trump and his enablers have already inflicted.
The fact is, for most of Trump's term our side has been hypnotized by futile hopes for a deus ex machina that would let us reverse the stolen election of 2016 without the hard work (and frustrating four-year wait) of winning in 2020. First we -- and I was briefly guilty of this too -- fantasized that the Electoral College would do its job and refuse to install Trump. That didn't happen. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, we pinned all our hopes on the Mueller report. At last the report came out, had exactly zero impact, and was quickly forgotten; today nobody mentions it any more. Then impeachment became the magic word -- even though plain math made it obvious that the Senate wouldn't remove Trump, too many activists insisted that there was hope of removal because something something [stamps foot] I just damn well want it to be that way!!! I'll never forget how Pelosi, a far smarter and more capable leader than her gaggle of are-we-there-yet backseat-brat critics ever deserved, was excoriated for resisting a course of action that could well have ended up strengthening Trump by allowing him to claim exoneration after acquittal. (In fact, it won't -- the "trial" was too much of an obvious sham to convince anyone but the most blindly-committed Trumpanzees.) Well, now that's over too. I just hope we don't come up with yet another shibboleth. With only nine months left to the election, we don't have any more time to waste on such things.
The election is the only option we have, or ever did have, for lifting this curse off of our country. After all, the House win of 2018 was the only thing that has managed to mitigate it somewhat, by putting some real power behind investigations of Trump's shenanigans and stopping Republicans from passing destructive legislation. And this year's election is the only thing that gives us the chance to complete the rollback of wingnut minority rule by doing the same with the White House and hopefully the Senate.
Because it's not just Trump. There's no comparison between the two parties any more. Only one party is trying to destroy separation of church and state and give special recognition to Christianity. Only one party is systematically attacking abortion rights around the planet on the basis of a religious taboo. Only one is trying to give religious employers the right to discriminate against gay employees and deny birth-control insurance coverage. Only one is trying to wreck Social Security and Medicare to save money for tax cuts for the already obscenely rich. Only one just took a giant shit all over the Constitution for the sole purpose of shielding a narcissistic wannabe fascist dictator from paying any price for his blatant corruption. Only one is passing restrictive laws in state after state to deny as many black Americans as possible the right to vote which their ancestors fought so hard to win just a couple of generations ago. Only one is actively leaving the door open for a hostile foreign dictatorship to meddle in our elections.
I wish we still had two parties a sane person could consider voting for. We don't. In November I'd crawl over broken glass to vote for every Democrat against every Republican. The Republicans have left me no choice.
posted by Infidel753 at 5:22 PM
9 Comments:
I give Romney some credit if only because there is not a lot of gain (some Trumpanzees are rabid, as a recent charge against a ne'er do well riled up enough by FOX News to take possible action against Schiff shows) in his decision, and the tone of his speech cast his fellow Republicans in exactly the amoral light the House managers were also aiming for. In the long run, however, his gesture was more relevant to himself than to its effects for posterity. What I will say about the acquittal overall is that it serves roughly the same benefit as McConnell ramming Kavanaugh "down our throats"--it may serve to invigorate Democrats via a sense of grievance. In a way, that is why the final number--all Democrats for conviction, all but one Republican against, seemed ideal. Also, Trump Unbound is sure to be a rare and distasteful spectacle.
Theater it was. All those senators who voted to acquit know IMPOTUS is guilty. The idea of a trial without witnesses or documents was and is ludicrous. Cheeto was not acquitted, really.
Romney's display of a backbone was a surprise, though. Never thought one of the most amorphous political figures in the last years would actually show a hint of morality.
Let's hope people vote those senators and Twitler out. It would be the only way to help America recover from this disaster.
XOXO
Romney's backbone comes and goes, but glad it took up residence in his body again for the impeachment vote.
A superb post.
The last chance is November and trump and gang will try their best to destroy that possibility, through every kind of fraud they can get by with.
I fear the outcome.
I wish I had your more positive outlook about the long term effect of all this, that I saw you comment on in another blog. I try to look at this long term...probably beyond my lifespan, but it’s difficult.
I so often feel we are living either in an alternative universe or we are living in a simulation and the gamers are saying "let’s have some fun with this."
Sickening - I know I never fail to be disgusted by my Senator Cory Gardner.
I agree with you, the Senate was never going to Impeach Trump. It was never going to happen.
I didn't really follow the impeachment, besides just a couple brief reads in news and a couple clips on the tele news. But the reason I didn't follow, is because, I couldn't see it going anywhere, I wrote something about it in a previous posting, that wasn't related, as far as why I wasn't following it. This whole thing was a mess ... I would bet money, that if this wasn't this President, with what I see out of this guy (Trump), that you can find some deep corruption, and get a conviction, that is how confident I am. I would have took my time on this, because of his defense in the Senate, and his legal team ... meaning I would have wanted to come into this with a few more charges, a more full plate, if you will, because of how strong his defense will be, and considering all, such as even his public following, what they will twist this into if I fail, etc. Then we had the majority Senate in his favour, I was also looking at, because we have to try to sway them (like a jury), but being so partisan, is almost a total loss on trying to convict ... after all, this is an election year, even if republican senators didn't like him, they would have kept their mouth shut, because it would damage the party in an election year. What was a bit shocking in this to me, was that Trump had such a hand to play and defense, that they actually managed to not allow testimony and critical documentation and transparency, even to the public peers ... that blew me away. I was thinking how injust it was, and if I was a defendant in any court, or you, or any regular person (although, this isn't a typical criminal court, but some basics still apply under rule of justice, law, constitution, etc), can you imagine the what the court's response would be to "us" as defendants, if we told the court, we refuse to allow any witnesses, testimony, transparency, and critical documentation, that is essential to a jury (senate), and case, and all members of the court? I'll tell you what it would be ... the court would tell us to basically f*ck ourselves, and if we got even half as cocky as Trump, lock us up for f'n "contempt". No, I shit you not, I been in court several times, and am a convicted felon myself ... and yes, I was guilty of everything I was in there for, and more.
It's a toss up on who is the bigger scumbag, tRUMP or Moscow Mitch.
Well said, Infidel. Of course the writing was on the wall that Trump would not be removed thanks to GOP control of the Senate and Mitch McConnell tearing up the Constitution.
But impeachment was still the right thing to do, and all praise to Pelosi and the Democrats for presenting an ironclad case that proved that Trump abused his power and obstructed Congress. It's not their fault that the GOP is a party full of nihilist, racist cowards.
Which leads me to this from you: "There's no comparison between the two parties any more." So very, very true--and it has been true since, well, since the Clinton years of the 1990s. And yet some in the media and some on the far Left continue to push that canard out there, despite the clear evidence to the contrary. As the blogger Driftglass said, there really is only one decent political party right now, and it is clearly not the GOP. To claim that both parties are essentially clones of each other is to accept a delusion that is, well, dangerous on so many levels. And the people spewing it out clearly will not suffer under Trump or GOP rule, so they have chosen to throw the rest of us under the bus while they smugly sit back and wait for their "revolution".
Well, fuck them. If there is some consolation to come from these past three years, it has been the victories of Democrats in major state elections, taking back governor offices in red states and finally taking back the House in 2018, which is why we had impeachment and thus accountability for Trump.
Apologies for the rant...
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