Later this week, okay tomorrow, the United States Senate will begin the trial to impeach the President of the United States. I’d like to believe it will end the political divisions, which have been growing in this nation since the last impeachment trial but it won’t. If anything, it will only exasperate the hordes of those who hate the President because he is a typical New Yorker who believes he knows more than everyone else. Unless there is something totally unexpected in the proceedings the results of this “trial” are easily foretold.
It is true each senator has sworn to try the case fairly and impartially. But seriously! They are all politicians and for the most part lawyers. Who among us believes either side will move far from their party allegiance? I assume there are one or two on both sides that will enter this with some degree of independence, but not enough to make any clear impact in the final outcome.
In reviewing how the House of Representatives conducted their “investigation” it seems highly unlikely, despite all the chest-beating of the two committee chairs (Adam Schiff and Jerrod Nadler) who are now two of the six impeachment managers, about holding impartial investigations the outcome of those investigations was known from the start. If you start from the time Trump defeated Clinton you see nothing but calls for his impeachment by the democratic voices in the House. Brought to us in the nightly news by those opinion experts who had been so badly wrong about the inevitable election of Ms. Clinton.
This outcome is the inevitable result of the 2018 election where the Democrats gained control of the house. If they had gained a supermajority in the Senate the results of the trial would also be fairly certain. Thankfully, they did not.
In a perfect world, the Senate would vote either to convict or acquit with a really significant margin (99-1 would be nice), but it won’t. I anticipate we will see the votes go pretty much along party lines, which will only open the door for a continuation of this foolishness.
The victims in this political circus are, as is always the case, the average American who every two years gets to choose their representatives and then pretty much sits back and watches from the sidelines. What we’ve seen over the past couple of years is the Congress throwing away the rules and traditions that have helped create a fairly stable government as the new members bring in extremist positions and demand the entire nation believe as their districts did when they were elected.
The other victim(s) have yet to be identified, for with the new standard of political vengeance set by the House we can expect that every succeeding President will face the same political outrage if they don’t have a majority in the House. Impeachment will become a fact of life and as such lose its value of restraint, at least until an impeachment actually results in removal from office.
In the final analysis, I think Trump can only win in this case. Most rational voters see this for what it is and while most partisans will vote the way they usually vote the moderates will see the Democrats as the party of radicals and unless some new candidate emerges from the backrooms of the DNC, none of the current crop (including Bloomberg) will stand a chance as long as they stick with their existing priorities.
p.s. I find it interesting to see how our language has changed about the ideas of “Liberal” and “Conservative.” Those who would claim to be liberal seem far more dogmatic than those who claim to be conservative. Wasn’t it the progressive liberals who’ve brought us politically correct speech, and who’ve suppressed opposing views by mob rule? It used to be that a liberal was open to all ideas and a conservative wasn’t. Is that still true today?
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