Even if by some miracle John Bolton is forced to testify in Trump’s impeachment trial, and says out loud (or in closed door deposition) that, “Yup, he did it,” I don’t put the chance of Trump being convicted at anything better than 10%. Which would be up from the .01% it is right now.
It is indisputable that the modern Republican party is a Trump cult and every Republican senator (and hell, every elected Republican official) deeply fears their “head on a pike” by failing to immediately genuflect in every conceivable, humiliating way to the demands of Trump.
But, by contrast, the “Trial of the U.S. Senate”, which is as it has been described by several Democratic leaders as well as strategy-minded pundits, is improving its position with each passing day. Because, with each passing day, some new confirming/damning piece of evidence leaks out, much as it has for months now. More to the point, there is no reason — zero — that leaks of “bombshell” in-the-room, first-hand-witness evidence, recordings of Trump himself confirming everything he’s been charged with and further details of truly grotesque abuses of power and corruption will not continue to pour out right up to election day.
Once past primary season, after Republican Senators (in particular) have staved off the latest siege by saucer-eyed, frothing-mouth Trumpist candidates, they will have to find a way to constantly, and I do mean constantly, explain why they consented to a sham trial and summary acquittal … in the face of roughly 70% of their constituents saying that witnesses and evidence are of course a part of any kind of fair and open court proceedings.
Throwing Trump out of office — as in having a couple beefy bouncers grab him under each arm and drag him out to a chopper on the South Lawn — is every liberal’s and a majority of adult America’s fondest fantasy. But … regaining control of the Senate, crippling Mitch McConnell and neutering Bill Barr, will have a far more immediate and productive impact on restoring some level of lawfulness on our much-debased institutions.
The long-game of the Democrats’ impeachment strategy has always been to hang as much unequivocal shame as possible on Republican Senators. And they’re doing a pretty good job of it.
I have to concede a level of wishful thinking here, but given their complicity in what is known and — importantly — what is yet to be revealed about Team Trump, the reelection prospects of more than just the usual handful of Republican Senators are far from cheery.
The media environment is much different than when Joe McCarthy was ridiculed into oblivion, or when Richard Nixon conceded to Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott. But being fully complicit in so naked and shameless a sham as a witness-free Trump acquittal really is like painting a glowing red “S” on your chest. Not for “superman”, but rather for “stooge.”
Just as those of us in the “reality-based” bubble fail to understand the long-festering, cultish greivances of those in the Trump bubble, so those speaking to and appealing to only those in the Trump bubble fail to appreciate what is going on outside their nearly impermeable membrane.
The usual “pivot” back to the center for cats like Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, Susan Collins and Martha McSally, isn’t going to be nearly as easy given the venomous abhorrence of all things Trump by liberals and a general weariness/embarrassment of Trump’s constant vulgarity and stupidity by that mystical “persuadable” voter.
The greatest victory of all of course would be the defeat of McConnell himself in Kentucky. But despite having the (second) lowest approval rating of any senator in his or her home state (Collins just eclipsed him) no one to date sees any serious chance of him losing.
Not after that multi-million dollar deal with mobbed-up Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to build an aluminum plant in Kentucky and the titanic influence of every 1%-er indebted to McConnell (and Paul Ryan) for so handsomely improving their portfolio with that 2017 tax cut bill.
But a guy can dream, substantively.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting your newest blog. Thanks for this, Brian. The “cult” theory is one that really fits and helps explain things for me.
Thanks, Mary Hope you’re well.
I have to say that my current dream is that Mitch manages to corral the votes, and there are no witnesses called in the Senate. And then to have more and more stuff come out, from the various witnesses that could have been called, and watch all of those GOP senators explain this whole thing away…. And not just in 2020, but also all of those up for re-election in 2022 (hopefully after we have inaugurated President Pete!)
(Seriously, we have never had a President named Pete, and I think it is about time!)
Is there any doubt a all that more (and more) stuff will come out? I mean Bolton’s damn book will be published on St. Patty’s day, and the SDNY is sitting on what? a half dozen investigations? Not that any of that would move a Republican senator off summary acquittal … less they get “piked” in a primary. But yeah. Bring on Pete Power. (I’m working up my argument that young Pete is the true transformational candidate.)
…”saucer-eyed forth- mouthed trumpists”….love it !
I’m entitled to momentary bursts of hyperbole, am I not?
I saw a short video clip–perhaps it is authentic, who can say?–of the maggot with a microphone [“MakeAmericaGreatAgainTrump” = MAGAT] at some church-staged event, announcing “I am the Chosen One!”
Has ever there been so unworthy a mortal permitted to enjoy the exalted honor, galactic thrill, and cosmic gratification of apotheosis?
I don’t think so.
And while you or I might fantasize that “the harder they come, they harder they fall,” there is no rational basis to expect any reversal of the global stampede away from democracy and towards dictatorships, theocracies, and high-tech totalitarianism.
MPR ran a story yesterday about the Iowa farmers staying loyal to Trump while he picks their pockets. Scapegoating works; the Big Lie works. Quoth the sturdy yeoman: “Democrats are all liars and thieves.” He asserts there’s a consensus amongst his peers that the time has come for “locking and loading.”
And, as Boss Tweed so memorably sneered, “What are you going to do about it?”
Maybe one thing to do about it is not to ever, ever, ever again let journalists or pundits describe Trumpery with the inappropriate label of “populism.”
David Hackett Fischer explains that “populism” has acquired “opposite meanings.” Derived originally from the People’s Party of the 1890’s, it ought to connote “A board-based and large-spirited democratic reform movement . . . hostility to corrupt elites, and a determination to restore power to the people and
rights to all.”
Unsympathetic historians like Richard Hostadter altered the word’s meaning, paradoxically, to refer to “regressive politics of popular resentment against established institutions and elites.”
Fischer remarks: “In that mistaken sense it was applied to Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace, and other dark spirits. . .”
I don’t deny that Trump is insanely popular with his followers, but let’s just call this phenomenon exactly what it is: Fascism.
As defined in the American Heritage Dictionary: A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.
It is interesting how “populism” has evolved into a pretty much unalloyed negative. We are deep into “the paranoid style” these days.