It is becoming crystal clear that the Democrats have interpreted their partial victory in the 2018 midterm elections as a license to promote openly socialist policies. But it will soon become equally clear that they also believe their mandate includes unending investigations of President Trump and, dare we say, the I-word.
Impeachment. On what basis, you ask? They will figure that out later.
With Russian collusion apparently failing to materialize in the Robert Mueller investigation and the Michael Cohen show hearing in the rear-view mirror, the Democrats have now sent forth dramatically revised talking points in their never-ending quest to overturn the results of the 2016 election: The special counsel probe is too narrow. It does not cover enough about obstruction of justice and financial crimes, so it is their duty to carry on.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) has demanded documents from 81 Trump associates.
Yes, they believe that Mueller and his nakedly partisan team that has investigated Trump for almost two years, once their lifeline but now looking like a major disappointment, has not uncovered the damning evidence on Trump they so dearly desired. So damn it, they’ll go out and find what they want by themselves. And thus they have turned their lonely eyes to a fishing expedition aimed at no less than 81 individuals associated with Trump, from administration officials to members of his own family.
In addition to providing a surfeit of talking points for their 2020 presidential candidates, they appear convinced that their hunt under every rock will produce enough dirt to justify articles of impeachment, even with the certainty that it will not result in Trump’s removal from office. That would require 67 votes in the Senate.
You need know little more about their plans than this loaded remark by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on ABC:
"It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice …. It’s very clear, 1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a witch hunt, he tried to — he fired — he tried to protect [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired [former FBI Director James] Comey in order to stop the Russian thing ..."
Asked why his certainty that such obstruction of justice would not lead to impeachment proceedings right now, Nadler said, ‘"We don't have the facts yet … we have to do the investigations and get all this." If these remarks do not represent a foregone conclusion, nothing does. So the plan will apparently be to prepare articles of impeachment, and then backfill the reason(s) for it.
This, in America.
...hellbent on revenge ...
It may be that the Democrats’ increasingly radical base demands impeachment -- for any reason or no reason. Or, as the party has repeatedly demonstrated, they may simply be hellbent on revenge for an unthinkable defeat in 2016 by a man they revile with every fiber of their being. Or they may actually believe this is what the voters want.
On the risk/reward scale of such a strategy, it would appear the downside risk of impeachment-at-any-cost easily outweighs the upside reward. After all, the American people knew exactly what they were getting in Trump. He survived the Access Hollywood tape, for heaven’s sake, not to mention countless vicious personal attacks from the left. Obviously, his 62 million voters did not care. They were not electing a Pope.
Trump could, as he famously said, fire a shot down Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose a single vote from his base. Conversely, he could walk on water, and the Trump haters would likely call it proof that he can’t swim. It’s the mass of citizens in neither camp who will decide the 2020 election. And if Mueller’s report turns out to be the dud the Democrats evidently are expecting, just how much more of the left’s bottomless cup of hatred for Trump will the voters be willing to countenance?
Considering the dust-up over his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, on top of the usual torrent of slings and arrows aimed at his heart, Trump’s approval numbers are not looking bad. The Real Clear Politics average has Trump at 43%, Rasmussen, the only major polling firm that called the 2016 election correctly, has Trump at 48% approval..
Democrats seem to forget, or ignore, that the midterms hardly represented a wave election. Their victories in the House were accompanied by losses in the Senate. In the lower chamber, where more than 90% of incumbents get re-elected every two years, the Democrats were gifted with the abandonment of seats by 40 GOP House members seeking higher office or retiring. Almost half of those seats were subsequently captured by Democrats. And then there is the clear historical pattern of new presidents suffering losses in their first midterms -- more than 30 House seats on average -- but the Democrats seem convinced that their mandate is socialist policies and shop-till-you-drop investigations of Trump.
Good luck with that.
