Fuck that. Just because it was largely a foregone conclusion that congressional Republicans would abdicate their responsibility to hold the Executive branch in check doesn’t mean congressional Democrats should have done the same.
If not for the House’s impeachment investigation we wouldn’t even KNOW a lot of what we now know of Trump’s crimes. That may not matter for Trump’s sycophants but it should certainly matter to everyone else.
I didn’t say they shouldn’t do it; just that it’s not something to celebrate. I mean, the impeachment is there to memorialise that the concept of decency was still known in 2019, and I guess that’s something that deserves a tombstone, but it’s no substitute for decency actually existing in practice.
Prior to the Ukraine bribery story, the House did pass up on a vast number of reasons to impeach him, but in retrospect I think it is fair to say that, faced with a smorgasbord of options, they were just holding out for the simplest, clearest, most unspinnably obvious charge possible. It was a genuine attempt to see if they could unearth a single atom of moral backbone among Republican senators.
Unfortunately they couldn’t, so the exercise has snuffed out hope even more decisively than it would have in a more controversial scenario.
In the end, it was never about what the forces of good could achieve. What we now know is that Evil had already won before Turmp even showed up. I guess it is best to have exposed the true depths of Republican filth, though. At least no one can still pretend there’s anything there to compromise with. Apart from Joe Biden.
I think you just addressed your own cynicism with some hope.
A good thing, maybe a great thing, that came from this impeachment is exposure to a lot of voters, and potential voters, of the depths of Trumpian and Republican mendacity. I’ve long thought that one thing the over the top evil of Trump is doing is firing up the left. The self-serving, heartbreaking, sickening mendacity of Republicans, virtually en masse, have been exposed even more to a lot of people. Many of whom will be inspired to vote if they weren’t going to bother to do so before, and many of whom will vote Dem instead of Repub, and many others of whom will actively work to get still others to vote Trump, and Republican senators, out of office.
The failed impeachment is a scary thing for American democracy, and for other reasons, that democracy seems sick and on the verge of dying, but it ain’t dead yet.
I’m clinging to pedantry as hope: the impeachment succeeded, the removal did not. No amount of GOP inaction changes the impeachment status of 45.
what if it emboldened Trump?
I honestly cannot imagine any scenario that would humble the man. He’s a decades-long ego storm blowing the hot winds of self-importance up the skirts of civility… or something. Nothing deflates the man, but defeat irritates him enormously.
Expect the State of the Union speech to be self-congratulatory, egotistical, childlike, partisan, and unlistenable. He’s lowered the bar for presidential behavior so far that it’s a trench. I care not a whit for his emboldenment: we’re there now, living the nightmare. No way was Moscow Mitch and comrades ever going to draw the ADHD focus of the nincompoop-in-chief their way.
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