So the Senate acted as expected – voting along party lines to acquit Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of congress and leave him in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To paraphrase my favorite TV shepherd<\/a> “I’m not even sure I think they were wrong.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump is undoubtedly guilty of the offenses he was charged with. Mitch McConnell is undoubtedly a toadying ass. And Mike Pence is undoubtedly more adept at manipulating the US political establishment than his boss, and thereby likely even more dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If you strike me down, he shall become more powerful than you can ever imagine.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit\u2026”<\/p>\n\n\n\n That Pence is not in charge is cold comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no winning move. To not impeach Trump was tacit approval of his behavior. To impeach Trump mandated giving the Republican controlled Senate control over the outcome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn\u2019t lose any voters,\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The odds of the Republicans breaking ranks and removing Trump from office – regardless of the charges, or the evidence – were basically zero from the outset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats fall apart. Republicans fall in line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, save Mitt Romney<\/a>, it turns out. And his behavior over time has made it<\/a> really difficult to think about his actions in any rational way (or maybe difficult to think about his actions in any way other than a rational actor).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically, McConnell was correct in saying<\/a> \u201cIf this was all about politics, and it was, at least at the moment I think it is fair to conclude that we won and they lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take a second to unpack “we” and “they.” “We” is pretty clearly the Republican party. “They,” as far as I can tell, includes the Democratic party, rule of law, and whomever tries to reign in presidential power in the future<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Including “American Democracy” in that list feels like hyperbole. Just because something’s hyperbole doesn’t mean it’s false. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As of this writing, FiveThirtyEight<\/a> gives Sanders nearly even odds<\/a> of gaining a majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic primary. A self-described socialist that has or will alienate moderate voters, regardless of which side of the aisle they lean toward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve been saying it since he was elected, and I see no reason to amend it now – “If he [Trump] runs again, he wins again.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t think it’s likely that Trump wins the next election – I think it’s nearly guaranteed that the Democrats lose it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Please, America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prove me wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So the Senate acted as expected – voting along party lines to acquit Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of congress and leave him in office. To paraphrase my favorite TV shepherd “I’m not even sure I think they were wrong.” Trump is undoubtedly guilty of the offenses he was charged with. Mitch McConnell … Continue reading “…but a whimper”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-the-universe-and-everything"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}