Well, that’s a good part of how we got here in the first place. We haven’t entirely moved on from Viet Nam… or the Civil War for that matter…

Think about what this means. A criminal president can wreak havoc in office and the Constitution cannot protect the country. Democracy in the US is fatally flawed – as the evidence before our eyes attests.

There’s a difference though between fatally flawed and fatally broken. An impeached president can still be tried in a criminal court even if his pliant Senate refuses to admit to the articles of impeachment. Impeachment doesn’t carry double jeopardy, and indeed the same articles of impeachment can be brought to the Senate multiple times. So a failed impeachment can still be heard by a court once the criminal is out of the Oval Office.

Matthew Rigdon has already mentioned this but it’s probably worth repeating – there may be benefit in slowly and objectively expose Trump’s crimes over the next 18-20 months or so and then lay the articles of impeachment down just before the next election. Show the electorate what Trump did, but don’t give the Senate the opportunity to refute the case until after the election. This may ensure that Trump and many of his associates are defeated in 2020, and then justice will have its hobbles removed and he can spend the rest of his life in civilian court and then in prison.

The trick will be to keep the Murdoch press and similar rabid-right agencies, and Russia’s cyberwarfare capacity, from contaminating the public discourse. If the truth can be properly aired without misrepresentation there may be salvage from this body blow to the USA’s democracy.

It will still take generations to repair the country though, and to modernise the Constitution and government agencies and to to rout out the corruption of vested interest, but it may bring back the States to a top-level geopolitical force. It’s probably never going to regain its place as preeminent leader though, because Russia and CHina have too much military and economic momentum, and the reality of a ravaging climate in the future is going to profoundly change international power dynamics and influence. The USA has forever lost its moral authority on global warming, and the rest of the planet will never forget this.

It saves thinking about things and making decisions.

https://the1a.org/shows/2018-11-12/president-eject

Billed to discuss different ways to eject a president.

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One problem: Apparently there are literally millions of people in America who actually prefer an authoritarian oligarchy over democracy.

In light of the Michael Cohen story today, I want to offer an additional thought on impeachment.

First, the last thing in the world that Democrats want to do is to vote for impeachment, send it to the Senate, and have it voted down. That’s a losing proposition for Democrats in every way. There are plenty of low-information voters who will go into a booth in 2020 and say, “The system put Trump on trial and exonerated him, so he’s not guilty.” I don’t think they’ll see it as the same thing as Clinton’s impeachment, they may sense that Trump was accused of much more serious crimes and it may color how they see him, but it won’t disqualify him. At best, it’s a wash for undecided voters (and trust me, after canvassing last week, I can tell you they will exist right up until election day). Best thing is for Democrats to say, “We need to allow the investigations to continue,” and work on legislative issues where they can (and it appears that it’s more than just Mueller who may be investigating Trump now in the DOJ, yeah!).

That said, there are two strategic cases where Democrats might want to consider impeachment. 1) a Supreme Court vacancy. Impeachment will eat a lot of Senate time up and if you can halt the Senate for months, putting off another appointment until the election, it may be worth rolling the dice on losing impeachment but possibly getting voters to come out and save the Supreme Court. It didn’t work in 2016, but maybe it will this time. 2) Time an impeachment vote so that the Senate can’t hold a trial and a vote before the November 2020 election. Lay the case out in the House, dump all the salacious details, and then say it’s up to the American voters to decide directly, not the Senate.

I just want to point out that there are many practical reasons for keeping Nancy Pelosi (she’s a great organizer in the House, she knows how to work the system, she knows what’s possible) there are two reasons that are far more visceral. 1) Keeping Pelosi is a big middle finger to Republicans. They’ve done everything possible to convince Democrats to dump her; let’s not give them the satisfaction. They’ve never listened to us. 2) Trump does have weak spots, psychologically. It will infuriate him to no end to have to answer to a woman. He has no respect for women. He only keeps them around so long as they answer to him. Nancy Pelosi will drive him insane and a 70-year-old man suffering from stress is subject to a lot of medical issues.