Impeachment is a Rabbit Hole 

It’s a safe bet that more people want Trump out of office than want him in. Hell, that was true on Election Day 2016. But he’s in there now, doing his best to bankrupt the country, both monetarily and morally.

The Science Fiction writer in me wants to see him and his Republican sycophants sucked into a worm hole and spit out on the other side of the universe. Or just sucked into a black hole. Pick either! Just be gone.

But I do wish more people would understand that impeaching him will not remove him from office. He must then be tried and convicted by a supermajority in the Senate. That’s 67 votes, requiring some 19 Republicans to convict along with all of the Democrats and Independants. I dare you to name me one Republican who would vote to impeach.

Then you can name eighteen more. It’s an election year; you even can’t count on all Democrats.

Do you see the problem? Impeachment is a rabbit hole. It sucks up legislative time that House Democrats should spend formulating and passing bills that would improve people’s lives. Hey, they could even pay attention to Trump voters’ lives! Then we can all watch the Senate either vote down or not even take up these same bills. Democrats, you can run on that!

But back to the impossibility of 67 Senators voting to convict and remove Trump from office. Find me one prosecutor—anywhere—who would go to trial knowing that the chance of conviction was zero.

Trump wants to be impeached, you understand. He thinks it would give him an advantage, and I think he’s right. The drama would occupy most news cycles right up to the 2020 election. Democrats would be the do-nothing-else aggressors, and Trump is already painting himself as a victim. I can synthesize his likely pitch: 

“The Democrats are trying to take The People’s Choice—that’s me!—out of The People’s hands. Out of your hands!” 

All those Trump voters who’ve been disillusioned with his inability to keep promises? The whole futile drama could make him sympathetic enough to get their votes again. And please stop citing polls to me. Trump was losing in every damn poll that I read, right up to Election Day. 

And I need to repeat this: Impeachment would NOT remove him from office.

There is but one legal way to be rid of him: Citizen Impeachment! As in: the 2020 election. Only we voters can remove this corrupt con man. Because the Senate won’t do it. If Democrats can get their messaging on this concept clear, they might even wrest back control of the Senate.

What so many forget is that state elections are at least as important as the national election. The party that wins control of a state’s legislature in 2020 will control its reapportionment for the next decade. That is power.

Republicans grabbed a multitude of state majorities in 2010 and gerrymendered themselves into winning seats even when they lost the aggregated vote total. Now those gerrymandered “majorities” are voting ridiculously harsh abortion laws in a half dozen states. 

The thinking is that these unduly harsh laws will be challenged in court, eventually making their way to the Supreme Court, where the conservative majoity will strike down Roe v. Wade. Believe it!

This was known and publicized in the 2016 election, and a majority of voters went for Hillary Clinton—who would have protected Rove v. Wade by appointing liberal Supreme Court justices. Unfortuantely, that ship has sailed, for a generation or more.

It gets down again—as it always does—to our only real recourse: voting. If you have money, then donating is the other. Do what you can. 

Written by


Latest comment



Across the TVolution