Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Impeachment

The top 2 results when I searched google news for impeach:

Forget impeachment: Donald Trump can be driven from office, but probably not that way is the headline of a piece by Bob Cesca at Salon.

And The Inevitability of Impeachment is the title of a piece by Robert Kuttner on the Huffington Post.

Alright! Glad we got that sorted out.

So what do I think? I think that "inevitable" is a greatly-overused term. Perhaps even more in politics than in general. Remember how it was "inevitable" that Hillary was going to be elected President, and that the Republicans were going to get it together and nominate someone other than Trump?

The thrust of Cesca piece for Salon can be summed up in 5 words: the Republicans won't impeach Trump. Cesca insists they will put party loyalty above all else. He places a great emphasis on Democrats gaining ground in state and local elections this years, on the mid-terms in 2018, and in 2020. Trump can beejected as soon as the Democrats control Congress, he says.

Over at the Huffington Post, Kuttner insists that the Republicans will impeach Trump, because Trump is just that bad of a President.

I don't claim to know that anything is inevitable, but I tend to lean toward Kuttner when it comes to what is probable. I think Trump will be impeached, before the 2018 mid-terms. Keep 2 things in mind:

1) Assuming that the entire Democratic portions of both houses will be in favor impeachment, conviction and removal -- hardly a daring assumption on my part -- we won't need anywhere near the majority of the Republicans to join us to get it done.

2) Look at it from the Republicans' point of view: which is going to be better political advertising for the 2018 mid-terms: "We stood by the President" or "We helped get rid of that maniac, because we're not insane!" ? Republicans will not agree about which slogan will help them more. But with each passing day, the second one looks better.

Along with my belief that nothing is inevitable comes my belief that we have to keep working hard on removing Trump from office. We can't just lean back and say, "Oh, look, isn't that great? He's self-destructing!" as if it were inevitable that he's going to be removed from office, and that we can relax now. We need to help him with that self-destruction, as much as we possibly can. We can't let up with watching his administration, protesting his actions, and letting our other elected representatives know what we think of it all.

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