Impeachment Articles

There are two. One for hijacking US national security and foreign policy for personal political gain. One for the complete stonewall of Congress doing its Constitutionally-mandated duty. Both proven beyond the shadow of doubt, up to and including public confessions of wrongdoing. No Mueller material, no 2016 redux.

Is it the right play? Who the fuck knows? But I get why Pelosi and Nadler and Schiff et al decided to go this route. They’ve got the administration dead to rights on both of them. The Republican defense has involved a lot of squid ink and rhetorical questions about it could be more outlandish, tho, amirite?

I mean, it’s not like this is over. The Senate will have a trial, John Roberts presiding. In any actual court of law, the case would be a slam dunk. That it’s widely expected the Senate will fail to convict on a party-line vote doesn’t change that, much as the irrefutability of the evidence won’t change the party-line voting, probably.

There’s a kind of inevitability to all of it. But it’s also not over til it’s over. Keeping the prosecution focused on obvious and admitted wrongdoing that goes to the heart of our constitutional republic is probably the best of a bunch of bad options. The Republicans want the situation chaotic and complicated, so people throw up their hands and decide the truth can’t be known. But the truth is very simple. Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses, admitted it in public, and has obstructed justice to keep the consequences from coming down on him ever since. That he’s done a million other things that would be impeachable if we lived in the world we all thought we did til the last few years doesn’t matter.

I’d love him to answer for every last one of them. I really would. But why reopen old arguments? It just muddies things.

Keep it simple is a good plan. Will it work? Probably not. But neither would any of the other options. At least this way it’ll free up Bernie and Liz and Cory to get back to running earlier, and who knows? Maybe it’ll wind up the albatross around those Republican Senators’ necks that it would in a just world. Stranger things have happened.