I Don't Want Twitterman Impeached

I want him defeated at the ballot box. I want him and those Republican office-holders covering for him -- like Thom Tillis -- trounced by voters.

Yes, I'm preaching expedience… "a regard for what is politic or advantageous rather than for what is right or just; a sense of self-interest." Expedience is the mother of caution, and if Democrats should have learned anything from the 1998 Republican impeachment jamboree of Bill Clinton, it's that caution might have tempered self-righteousness. After they impeached Clinton, the Republicans lost seats that fall. Partisan self-righteousness lacks charm.

I say it again: Trump has been a gift to progressive resurgence, the greatest generator of new Democratic leaders, the propulsive (and repulsive) instigator of a counter-movement that flipped 40 seats in the US House, several governorships, hundreds of state legislative seats, and at least one Supreme Court seat in North Carolina. That casus belli in the White House is the gift that keeps on giving.

He will continue to drive activists and voters and new candidates to the Democratic side during the next two years, and why would we unplug that energizing incubator? Why would Democrats risk making him a more popular martyr with his base and more sympathetic to independent voters who don't like hyper-partisanship? Why? It would be suicidal, especially as Mitch McConnell would stonewall any impeachment by House Democrats. I'm not that into useless, futile gestures.

And let's say House Democrats go forward and vote impeachment and let's suppose the Republican Senate by some miracle votes for conviction … you get Mike Pence, whose very fecklessness and accidental elevation to the Oval Office will invite sympathy and throttle down the resistance to The Man Who Isn't There Any Longer. Pence is a zero, but he isn't a bully, and he'll have good will on his side to pull the nation together. Or at least pretend to try to pull it together after the chaos of DJT.

Expediently speaking, that ain't a scenario a Democratic activist wants to entertain.

Leave Twitterman in office. Let prosecutors indict him after he's defeated in 2020 and then leave him to history.