Any doubt that “the I-word” is coming at us fast evaporated with Robert Mueller’s Byzantine, double-negative laced statement a couple days ago.
” … if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.” (Hello! Copy desk!)
The only question(s) now are, “By what name” and “when”?
The fundamental problems of accusing Donald Trump of gross corruption and criminal conduct remain the same. To reiterate: (1) Mitch McConnell will not permit a conviction of Trump under his watch. (2) Any chance Democrats had to promote their policies — climate change, women’s reproductive rights, gun control, consumer advocacy, yadda yadda — will be buried under a landslide of constant, hourly, tweet-by-tweet impeachment insanity, and (3) Impeachment plays to Trump’s only real game, which is chaos and supercharged partisan warfare.
But I have some confidence that Nancy Pelosi, who is steering this bus, understands the game she is playing. Despite the criticism of her for “slow walking” impeachment, I have to believe she appreciates that impeachment in 2019 is much more a competition with Mitch McConnell than Donald Trump.
The strategy as I see it is to commence impeachment by another name, reducing media hysteria as much as possible, and orchestrate a steady run of damning hearings that conclude (or not) as close to November 3, 2020 as possible. The effect being to give the extraordinarily cynical and diabolical McConnell little or no time to hold a fraudulent show trial and acquit Trump before election day.
Pelosi is well acquainted with McConnell and certainly sees him as someone fully willing to abuse and violate whatever law or tradition necessary to protect his tribe. Only a naive fool would expect McConnell (and Bill Barr) to behave honorably and within the bounds of accepted standards in an full out impeachment brawl.
Pelosi’s problem, in addition, to wrangling all the Democratic firebrands demanding “impeachment now, goddamn it!”, is staging and coordinating a long series of televised hearings that connect all the characters and dots in the Trump-Russia saga in a way that is understandable to the millions of semi-informed Americans who only read headlines or listen to Rush Limbaugh.
Day to day I’m constantly struck by how few people — even among those disgusted by Trump — are conversant in what has actually been revealed over the last two and a half years. On one hand, those people can be admired for not being the kind of sad pathetic bastard who follows this sprawling story obsessively. They clearly have lives I don’t.
But the point of an orchestrated series of hearings — not called impeachment — is to explain to “those with lives” how second and third-tier Trump-Russia characters like, for example, Trump Inc. CFO Allen Weisselberg and Deutsche Bank “private banker” Rosemary Vrablic fit into the story. And to use revelations from their public (i.e. televised) testimony to explain how Trump is fatally compromised by his long (long) association with Russian “investors”, i.e. oligarch gangsters.
Explaining in common language — unlike the very old school and convoluted vernacular of Robert Mueller — how Russian money has propped Trump up for decades then allows Pelosi to explain how and why there was obstruction of Mueller’s investigation into “collusion.”
The wild card — and I do mean “wild” — is Pelosi preparing for the sheer hellstorm of lies, rage and seditious threats Trump will — not “may” — unleash to protect himself against defeat in the 2020 election. Her understanding being pretty much what us sad bastards have come to appreciate.
And that is this: Trump may not fear impeachment so much knowing that his 91% approval rating among Republicans requires McConnell to contort the constitution to do everything possible to protect him on Capitol Hill. But defeat in the 2020 election, and the (no doubt messy, howling) removal from office means finding himself suddenly naked and exposed to a torrent of indictments from a dozen different jurisdictions.
Put most simply, Trump is in a fight for his life.
Removal from office, which will not happen by impeachment, means both the very high likelihood of financial ruin, (for a guy who is nowhere near as wealthy as the MAGA-hat crowd believes he is), and total, unequivocal exposure as arguably the most legendary fraud and con man in American history.
Pelosi’s strategy is to tell the story of Donald Trump’s long, sordid con well enough and long enough that Mitch McConnell never gets the opportunity to acquit the guy … by any means necessary.
This is all really frightening, but what frightens me even more than all of this is the fact that so many people I know (family members included) or know of don’t find anything frightening about any of this at all.
Yes, some have lives and don’t follow the story line, but others follow it and think our system is working just fine. After Trump is gone we will still have a bunch of Americans who — somehow between the present moment and Watergate — lost any sense of what makes good governance and leadership.
I don’t care what is said, no one will pay any attention unless you call it a Formal Impeachment Inquiry. Even Democrates who have followed this and have practically memorised it will turn out without the passion of the Impeach. I think you are a. Fool.
I started a new job and none of the women knew who Bob Mueller is and the work he has done. I understand how people can tune out politics, but something as serious as this? For 2 years? I live in Wisconsin and this IS frightening…the lack of critical thinking.
It’s remarkable how many people are ignorant of what’s going on, what the meaning of the word *impeachment* is and what the process is, and how many people simply don’t care about their country and its democracy. I trust Nancy’s judgment about the timing and coordination of the investigations to impact the election, because that’s the only way to get rid of Trump and Pence. When she said people don’t understand about impeachment, she’s right. More than half the country are tuned out, and when they tune in, they’re horribly misinformed by our terrible, lazy, complicit media who have normalized it all and treat everything like a reality show.