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The Political Martyrdom of Donald J. Trump
Thursday’s impeachment inquiry vote went down as expected – the only crack in the partisan divide came on the Democratic side where two representatives, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota voted “no.” The frothing-at-the-mouth opponents of President Trump were downright gleeful. But the anti-Trump forces might be well to heed the immortal words of Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes, Minister, “If you’re going to do this damn silly thing, don’t do it in this damn silly way.”
The closed door, locked in the basement, no questions allowed from the other side is a bad look. If they wanted to design a procedure to bolster the President’s witch hunt claims they couldn’t have done a better job. Then there’s the Bulwarkian cheerleaders on the Right, awash in the money of Leftist activists such as Pierre Omidyar, cementing the view that his foes within his party hold the ordinary voter in disdain and only cater to the donor class. “They’re coming after me,” Trump said at the recent Values Voter Summit, “because I’m fighting for you.”
So far, the only thing that these unlikely political bedfellows have accomplished is to take a man of limited political skill and limited political capital and turned him into a martyr. Instead of cleaving his supporters away from him they’ve merely cemented the “them vs us” appeal of his presidency.
Then there’s the timing of everything. One of the unintended consequences of the 22nd Amendment was to more than triple the length of the quadrennial campaign season. Where once an Eisenhower could declare in June of an election year, now challengers start debating 18 months out. So why not just wait another six months and take the President on in the electoral arena? Probably because his opponents realize the current generic polling that has so many amateur observers in a froth are meaningless. At this point in the 2012 race the Quinnipiac University poll showed that a solid majority of 54% said Barack Obama did not deserve to be re-elected. Yet he won by 4 percentage points and a hefty 126-vote margin in the Electoral College.
The words “binary choice” are the things that make up the nightmares of the President’s foes. Impeachment would not only remove Trump, but part of the punishment could be making him ineligible to run again. They know that the Sanders/Warren economic plan is not the winner the true believers think it is. If the choice is between another four years of Donald Trump and replicating the Venezuelan disaster on the world’s largest economy, Donald Trump wins hands down.
Impeachment makes sense for the Democrats if it’s successful. If it fails it will fail spectacularly. For “Never-Trump,” it is an exercise in self-righteous stupidity and is a lose-lose proposition. If the President’s most ardent supporters – the ones they label “cultists” – only make up one-third of the electorate, then permanently alienating them is a path to permanent rump status. Politics of principle without ever having the means to govern reduces those principles to a useless mental parlor game. Their fantasies of a reconstituted Bush/Romney party in the post-Trump era are just that – fantasies.
So, here we go. They’re going to do this damn silly thing in this damn silly way and take a flawed and wounded President and make him a martyr. You can wish for an event but you can never control the outcome. And one should always be careful of what one wishes for as you just might get it.
Published in Politics
Yes to your idea that it is: Time to spend less time grumbling about them and move on towards the future.
When I posted about the recall efforts for Gov Gavin Newsom here in Calif, and asked who could replace him, someone immediately suggested James Woods.
The world is still on its axis but there is a different tilt to things these days. In the past 6 weeks, two acquaintances detained me at the local shopping mall, to tell me how fed up they are.
“You lived here all your life? Why is everything being given away to newly arrived immigrants?”
This might not have been so surprising, except both these women were immigrants themselves. One hailed from Mexico, the other from the Dominican republic. They came with their parents 35 years ago. They did everything right, but are worried about how they can cope with the continual increases in rent, rising food prices, continual hikes in gas taxes and sales taxes, and the fact that their family members need to have the money to attend college. While newly arrived immigrants will be getting free tuition, and so much more.
If this is so, then how is Alcee Hastings, who was impeached as a federal judge, now serving in the House?
Is a seat in the House neither honorable, trustworthy nor profitable?
Because after the vote to convict the Senate failed to hold a vote on that. They only voted on removal.
I almost short-circuited, not swinging away at that softball.
I think there are only 3 to 5 Republican Senators who are likely to vote to remove Trump from office: Murkowski, Romney, Collins and maybe Alexander and Isakson (since they are both retiring, but Isakson might be out of the Senate by the time the Senate votes). So, max 4 votes among Republicans for removal. So, if all 47 Democrats voted to remove Trump and 4 Republicans also did, the Senate would be far short of the 67 votes for removal.
But maybe a ton of Republican Senators would vote to remove Trump if Trump’s approval rating dropped substantially, to the point where even about half of Republican voters support Trump’s removal.
This seems unlikely. So, if I were in Las Vegas and had to bet, I’d bet Trump is the GOP nominee in 2020.
I think Trump can beat Elizabeth Warren. If the Democrats nominate Joe Biden, I think Biden would be more likely than not to beat Trump. But even in that case it could be a coin flip. If the economy stays strong, Trump has a strong argument to make.
I would say maybe Murkowski but she might not if it’s only her. Collins will do what she did with Kavanaugh, act fairly. Alexander and Isakson are from red states and will not vote for conviction where there are no acts to warrant. I spent the last decade living in Utah. LDS folks there were not enthusiastic for Trump but driven mainly on religious morality and perception of character based on Trump’s behavior before his election. Trump has been straight since the election and that impresses those who believe in redemption. Romney more or less ‘carpetbagged’ his way into Utah senator on his LDS reputation and Orrin Hatch’s endorsement. Romney will lose a measure of support in Utah if he votes for conviction where there are ‘no high crimes or misdemeanors’.
I think presidents will have to get used to being impeached in the House and acquitted in the Senate. Mid-term elections usually result in the opposition party taking the majority in the US House.
The activists in both political parties usually demand that their politicians support impeachment of presidents of the opposite party. There was pressure on John Boehner to go for impeachment. There was pressure on Pelosi in 2007-2008 to go for impeachment.
In 1987-1988 there was pressure on the Democrat majority to impeach Reagan.
Now that both political parties have become more influenced by the activist supporters, it’s going to be par for the course for a President to get impeached in the 3rd or 4th year or perhaps later if he gets a second term.
So, my advice to this president and future ones is to not worry about it. Two-thirds of the Senate is a tough hurdle, even for the most unpopular president. Only Nixon got booted out (but he resigned, thinking he would lose the Senate vote).
You may be right that they’ll have to, but that’s not the way it should be. I think we ought to add an amendment to the Constitution that we get to take House leadership out and shoot them on the failure of an impeachment to gain a conviction. That might make them more wary of abusing their power of impeachment.
If we’re going to all the trouble of passing an amendment, I think we can come up with other reasons besides that.
I think we should enact a Constitutional Amendment which would use the same percentage requirement for both the US House and US Senate. Currently the requirement is a simple majority for the US House and a two-thirds supermajority for the US Senate.
I think it should be the same percentage for both the US House and US Senate. Maybe 55 percent for both or maybe 60 percent for both.
This way, a mid-term election loss, like 2018, wouldn’t result in impeachment.
I am open to suggestions.
I agree, there is no way Trump gets convicted in the Senate. But, if your scenario is accurate, and 51 Senators vote to convict, the Dems and their media will claim DEMOCRACY! says Trump is impeached and he is only still President because of the corrupt system that is our Constitution. It will be just like the Electoral College 2016 victory by Trump–a victory denounced as illicit by the Democrats to this very day.
This is exactly what Pelosi and crew are attempting to achieve with their crybaby impeachment hearings. They know they can’t remove him. They just want to completely discredit him.
But Clinton received 50 votes for removal in the Senate. That’s a 50-50 vote. Not a majority. But since the US House majority voted to impeach, the same could have been said back in 1999.
It’s good theatre to keep left-wing activists and right-wing activists attentive. But everyone else is just going to wait until November 2020.
Yes, and: That fact will probably will go into the electorate’s calculus. So the tradition or statistical probability of the House switching in the first mid-term will most likely change.
Voters, not as stupid as they think we are.
Yes. I don’t think the 2018 Democrat House majority resulted because those voting were looking toward impeachment. We will see.
@arahanto
Do we really have to wait for the House members to go about an impeachment effort before we take them out and shoot them?
Or what if every time they lie, they get flogged. Especially if it a lie bordering on the outrageous,as when Pelosi stated that if Donald Trump gets his wall, the nation will flip overnight to being a white nation only. (In California, white people are officially now a minority. We rank at 43% of the populace here, and the number keeps falling.)
Well, . . . . we probably shouldn’t shoot them.
But flogging for lies sounds good.
I saw Flogging For Lies open for Jimmy Eat World at the Hollywood Bowl in 2001. Yeah, they sounded real good.