A Short History of Impeachment, 2016–2019
After Mueller failed to deliver a smoking gun on Russia, the media and progressives pivoted to a whole new arena, obstruction. Forget the last two years of Russia-baiting, our bad!
When Mueller failed to charge Trump with obstruction, they made up a string of explanations: road map, hidden duty call to Congress, he would have except president, etc., none of which Mueller actually made explicit when he could have.
The Report has been out for two months. Nothing has come of it. Reality stands as no charges filed. About the most noise has come from various Dems announcing this is a constitutional crisis.
Mueller doesn’t want to testify. Maybe he has no interest in people trying to put words into his mouth for partisan purposes under the guise of information gathering.
Anyway, no matter, impeachment is the only answer. Delete Trump’s account to save the United States! Trump is Hitler, etc., etc.
The new meme is the House will need to re-investigate obstruction, delve into taxes and pre-election business, and with Putin gone, dig around looking for something Mueller missed to impeach on. Maybe a perjury trap for Don Jr? Disbar Sekulow? Cohen said Trump under-valued some real estate in the 1980s! Deutsche Bank, that sounds nasty. Fine Bill Barr, no arrest him. Gotta be something.
That’s called Going Back to Square One.
OK, OK, the taxes. Let Twitter see Trump’s taxes and they’ll find all the crimes the IRS audits have missed. We swear there’s something in the taxes, please let us have just a peak.
When Trump invokes due process to block that overly-broad process, they claim that is a new form of obstruction and maybe they can impeach on obstruction of investigation into the investigation of obstruction.
So, a process crime as the basis for overturning the 2016 election three years into Trump’s term. Even impeaching over a blow job seems to make more sense.
While fretting over the end of the rule of law, Dems signal they might open impeachment hearings as an expedient way of going around the courts’ ruling on the validity of their scattershot subpoenas. The justification is the Supreme Court justices are now partisan hacks who can’t be fair. Blocking Merrick Garland’s appointment was unfair. Also the Senate are partisan hacks who won’t vote against Trump no matter what and that’s not fair. Trump didn’t even win the popular vote. None of this is fair to Dems.
Meanwhile, per a Reuters poll, 57% of Americans think impeachment is preventing the government from addressing other issues of concern, the kitchen table stuff that drives elections.
The mania over an impeachment process which will end in a political whimper will drive a deep sense of failure within Dem voters. The 24/7 urgency will be paid off with… nothing much. Discouraged voters are not motivated voters, especially if Biden is the best they are offered.
