The Senate, yesterday, voted down both articles of impeachment against President Trump, as pretty much everyone predicted from the start. Trump stands Impeached but not Removed and seems ready to stand for re-election in November.
The process is now completely over and I'm still in the same place I was at the beginning: what was the point of this? What were the House Democrats trying to achieve? I don't get it and I never got it. Two takeaways: the House lost track of the crime committed and Trump's refusal to participate has given future presidents a brand new game plan.
The crime Trump stood accused of was holding up aid to Ukraine as allotted by the Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department. The whole business about an investigation of Hunter Biden was the motive for the crime, not the crime itself. The crime was never properly laid out because since the White House chose not to defend itself, the House Dems never bothered to actually follow through on the crime. They brought a steady diet of ambassadors that had their thoughts on what was going on and why, but none of them concretely showed that the aid was ever actually held up. They were able to talk about Rudy Giuliani-led shenanigans into the Ukrainian political scene but none had any worthwhile knowledge about the aid itself.
As for the aid, it went out by the deadline without any strings attached and the President of Ukraine has said numerous times that he never felt pressured or extorted. Now the crime may well have been committed but the House never really got around to making that case. A few reasons the House didn't go down this road: 1) the White House never showed up and forced them to lay out the case; 2) the aid was in fact delivered without penalty, so was there actually a crime?; and 3) pointing out the White House isn't actually able to hold up aid begs a further question: if the POTUS isn't allowed to do this, then why was the POTUS allowed to do this?
The circumstantial evidence did not look good for Trump; it certainly looks as if Trump held up aid in hopes of getting the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into the workings of Hunter Biden, which presumably would help Trump's re-election efforts. But because the House never went beyond the circumstantial evidence, they left enough room for the White House to maintain a shadow of a doubt: there's enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Trump's queries all related to the 2016 election, which is the POTUS's job to potentially investigate. And that withholding aid is actually standard procedure, as shown by VP Joe Biden holding up aid in the same place in the same manner in the previous administration. Did Trump look guilty? Yeah, but not guilty enough to my eye to make it a slam dunk. If this was a real trial in a real court, there's plenty there for Trump's lawyers to work with.
And even if he was guilty...guilty of what? Of doing the same thing the previous administration had done? That makes Trump look no more guilty than Obama, and is that really where the House was intending to go with this? And, again: guilty of what? If a crime had clearly been committed, why was the 1st article of impeachment for the abstract accusation of 'Abuse of Power' and not an actual crime? (*)
It sounds weird to say that Trump didn't participate, doesn't it? Trump was still there every single day in one form or another. But he wasn't ever in the Congress. He wasn't ever in these hearings or in this process. Such is the layout of modern media: the President gets to talk all god damn day long without really ever having to do anything. So when I say Trump ignored the proceedings, I mean he ignored them in the Houses where they took place, he stepped outside of the actual processes and went straight to the American people. Not every president is willing to just be impeached by a grumpy House but Trump will wear this as a badge of pride. And he knew full well that he had the support he needed in the Senate (with or without Mitt Romney, who groveled pretty hard to be Trump's Secretary of State, you may recall).
But more than any of this: impeachment is strictly a political act, not a proper trial, and the votes for removing Trump from office were never there. So why on earth did the House move forward with this action at this time? The House assumed that just flinging around the potential of Trump's electoral paranoia would lead to more revelations and bombshells (not really, mostly just more of what we already knew) and ideally galvanize public opinion against him and/or the Republicans up for reelection in 2020. But the case was flimsy and Trump's masterstroke of ignoring the whole thing worked perfectly. It made the House Dems look like, well a bunch of fantasy-driven masturbators with no real sense of what the truth is or how to get to it.
If the point of this was to remove Trump from office, well that never had much of a shot of succeeding.
If the point of this was to simply convince everyone that Trump is sleazy and self-aggrandizing, well....who didn't already know that?
If the point was to show that House Democrats are fighting for America while everyone else is not, well the shoddy case didn't win me over and the cynicism necessary to do all of this is anathema to any of that high minded feeling.
If the point was to derail Trump's chances of getting reelected, well I don't think this did the job--though it may well have knee-capped Joe Biden for the final time!
If the point was to galvanize Democrats heading into an election year, well the disaster of this year's Iowa Caucus pretty well shot that in the foot.
I just don't see it, I never did see it, I still don't see it.
If the House never bothered to prove the crime, then why on earth were they trying to get to trial? The Senate did the right thing in keeping this to a minimum and getting it over with. We now know that impeachment is just a political tool like any other, hardly the fail-safe device the Founders imagined--and the House has foolishly laid out a blueprint for future presidents to avoid their comeuppance.
I just don't see how any of this was good for America, for Americans, or for the federal gov't. I don't even see how it benefited the Democratic Party, which looks worse in every way today than it did six months ago. (**)
(*) As for the 2nd article, well that was just bullshit from the git-go: the House was eager to remind us over and over again that the Constitution leaves all impeachment power to the House, but I don't see anything in the Constitution that says the Executive has to participate, so citing him for not participating is just manufactured nonsense. Indeed the Founders are the same guys who invented the 5th Amendment, its not hard to imagine that they would've seen Impeachment as something that happens in absentia or with a hostile Executive, so why would the President be expected to participate? And how do you cite him for not doing something he's not required to do?
(**) So do Mitt Romney and Joe Biden get together to form a new party? Can they suck George Soros and the Koch Brothers in? Or how about Michael Bloomberg and Steve Forbes? Can Rand Paul and Amy Klobachar co-exist in the middle? Do Susan Collins and Tulsi Gabbard join the new team? Yeah...none of that sounds right, does it?
