The pre-electoral schism in American politics seems now to have reached a point not approached since the Civil War. The Democrats have been successfully hounded by the Republicans for their unauthorized, in camera, selectively researched, and leaked “impeachment investigation.” Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is going to have its existence approved by the House, but with plausible deniability, so vulnerable Democrats in pro-Trump districts can claim they only voted to “look into it”—not to impeach the president for probable crimes of sufficient gravity.
This is just another palliative to cover the egregious antics of U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), intelligence committee chairman and congressman from Hollywood. Now lurking constantly at Schiff’s side in his innumerable photo and sound-bite ops is his yappy attack dog, Rep. Eric Swalwell, also of California, perhaps the first elected Democrat to call for Trump’s removal, and for being the Democratic presidential nomination candidate who had the least support and was the first to be knocked out. Swalwell manfully accepts the invitations on Fox News that Schiff declines.
This can be seen as a tactical victory by both sides, as Pelosi obviously needs to provide some sort of veneer of seriousness to this burlesque, a concession to Republicans, but the White House will continue to ignore Schiff’s subpoenas. With a few exceptions, all Schiff can get as witnesses are anti-Trump ex-government employees whom the president cannot instruct to ignore his committee’s subpoenas.
In fact, in these matters, the system is working as it should: the House has no standing to pretend it can order the executive branch about, as the legislative and executive branches are co-equal and the legalities will be determined in the courts by the third co-equal branch—and not by the flaky-left lower benches where the Democrats have judge-shopped, but by the Supreme Court.
Little But Vituperative Partisanship
Nothing has come to light that is remotely presentable as an impeachable offense. And there appear to be legally insurmountable hurdles getting an article of impeachment that is both susceptible of being adopted by the House—jay-walking would be approved for the purpose by Rep. Jerry Nadler’s (D-N.Y.) kangaroo judiciary committee—and an offense of sufficient gravity to justify removal of the president, if proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have occurred to the satisfaction of 67 senators (including 20 Republicans).
These are a lot of hurdles, and the vituperative partisanship of the Demedia trying to whip up opinion will not much move the Supreme Court.
The president’s position in the polls has apparently eroded by a couple of points, but about 90 percent of Republicans are sticking with him. Even if there is some truth to the polls (from organizations that traditionally underestimate the president’s popularity) that suggest a slight majority favors impeachment and removal, this measure of things is doubtful, fragile, and grossly insufficient.
The Demedia has no charges left to make. Their impeachment charade, if they get it to the Senate, will keep most of the Democratic presidential contestants in Washington during the primaries and it will be crowded out by U.S. Attorney John Durham’s activities.
Meanwhile, the Democratic allegations we have seen are preposterous legal nonsense: that the president’s legitimate curiosity to know if former Vice President Joe Biden’s son was influence-peddling in Ukraine was a misuse of U.S. government assistance to buy an advantage in the upcoming election. This will not move the Republican senators very far.
Republicans would commit mass electoral suicide to desert the president in the face of what we have seen up to now. The Demedia are scurrying about like roaches with NeverTrump whisperings of mutiny in the Senate cloakroom, but it isn’t happening. Senators Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and some others don’t much like the president, but unless an immense rancid scandal is unearthed under the White House floorboards, that has eluded the Demedian excavators and mud-slinging assassination squads for the last three years, the Schiff-Nadler papier-mâché Hallowe’en monster will already be a corpse before arrival at the Senate.
Desperate Rhetoric, Foundering Narratives
While still doggedly trying to have the impeachment issue taken seriously, the Demedia choristers are becoming hilariously disturbed by the approaching juggernaut of the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion fraud that greeted the president as he was inaugurated and was riveted on his back for two years. They demonstrate that they cannot face a President Trump who doesn’t have a potentially lethal investigation hanging like an albatross around his neck. They cannot even abide the idea of him not having a non-recused attorney general—a resuscitation of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ eunuchracy.
Everything Trump is found to be infected and corroding. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough thought his comments of the ISIS leader Baghdadi reminiscent of blood-curdling statements of Saddam and Qaddafi. He and his wife were booed by many of the fans at the World Series game in Washington, (a city where he won 4 percent of the vote in 2016, to Hillary Clinton’s 91—if all Trump’s voters had turned out, they would have been outnumbered 4-1.) In the circumstances, it was a good reception. When he correctly called the increasingly frenzied Demedia assault upon him a “lynching,” they screamed “racially charged” as if African-Americans were the only people who had ever been lynched.
Describing nominal Republicans assisting the Demedia assault as “human scum” wasn’t an optimal choice of words, but it is understandable from someone who has been assailed as few people in American history have been, and the descriptor is objectively accurate in some cases.
In contrast, Hillary Clinton’s charge that Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii, and former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein are Russian agents is not just indicative of her megalomania, but of the surreal and otherworldly ambiance of the Democratic hierarchy.
Despite his constant verbal brinkmanship that frequently alarms even his supporters, the president has had the winning hand from election-night. He gained effective control of the Senate and got his tax program through, which, with massive deregulation, trade renegotiations and the sharp reduction of illegal cheap labor migration has produced comprehensive improvements in lower incomes and substantial reductions of poverty. This has rendered the defamation of him as a racist and sexist effectively “inoperative,” to use the Watergate expression.
The implosion of the Russian collusion coup has reduced this farrago of nonsense of a “whistleblower” claiming frightful election-rigging crimes with the president of Ukraine (who denies it strenuously), a lame tale from the start.
Schiff proclaims every night on our screens that each invocation of the president’s incontestable right to withhold government personnel from Schiff’s subpoenas is “proof of his criminal behavior” and “obstruction of justice.” No sane American could attach a jot of credence to anything Schiff says—he is as believable as the radio traitor Lord Haw-Haw was when broadcasting to Britain from Berlin during World War II.
Demedia credibility has been squandered in years of false charges and now they have no chance of persuading the public that charges laid in the Russian and FISA matters are politically motivated. The president hasn’t spoken with Attorney General Bill Barr about it, and Barr hasn’t attempted to influence the widely respected special counsel John Durham, who has a bipartisan or nonpolitical staff, unlike Robert Mueller’s wolfpack of foaming Trump-haters.
The Demedia has no charges left to make. Their impeachment charade, if they get it to the Senate to be tried, will keep most of the Democratic presidential contestants in Washington during the primaries and it will be crowded to the back of the news-hour by Durham’s activities.
Trump is unbeatable on his record and the Democrats don’t have anyone electable to nominate. The election will be an anti-climax, but the people will speak decisively, and perhaps this president will finally get a honeymoon and will display the convivial personality that those who knew him before his elevation remember.