My Sunday Feeling

It will be up to history to judge the present moment.  

The House Judiciary Committee has referred two Articles of Impeachment to the full House.  The Committee vote was strictly upon party lines.  The vote by the full House of Representatives on whether to refer the Articles to the Senate for trial will likewise be along party lines.  It is expected to pass.  

Then what?  

Then Trump will skate.  Period.  Unless he shoots RBG between now and the Senate trial there is no other conceivable outcome.  And I'm not sure even that would be enough for the Rs to turn on him. 

The last thing that I read on the issue had the head "juror", Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated that he is working with the White House on how the "trial" in the Senate should unfold.  There is a good chance that there won't even be a trial.  He may just call for a vote of acquittal and let it go at that.

Many people are outraged by this.  I'm not.  I lost the capacity for that long ago.  The outcome was never in doubt even as the House began work on these issues shortly after the whistleblower made his or her report concerning Trump conditioning foreign aid to the Ukraine upon a "favor."  Said favor being the announcement of an investigation by them into  Joe and Hunter Biden, the former being a political rival.  The latter being a millstone around the rival's neck.

So why go through the time and expense of the opposite of a show trial in which the Republicans fail to present any exculpatory evidence and acquit anyway?  

Don't get me wrong.  I don't blame the Democrats for getting the ball rolling.  What else were they to do?  A good friend of mine was arguing for this over a year ago.  His position was even though the Republicans would never convict, much less remove, the President it was the duty of the House under the Constitution to refer Articles of Impeachment to the Senate.  He felt that the Republicans would own the judgment of history.

Well my buddy's position is about to get tested.  Big time.  

That must explain all of the telephone calls I've been getting lately.  I never pick up a call if I don't recognize the number.  I've had a dozen or so calls, some back-to-back, in the past week or so.  They never left a voice mail.  

A couple of folks at school have had the same experience.  They told me that the callers were all pollsters.  And sure enough one of them texted me in order to let me know they had been trying to call me and would I answer some questions by text?

Delete.  

Fingers are being thrust up into the wind.  There's money being spent because there's money to be made.  God bless.  Leave me out of it.

But back to the circus that is about to occur next Wednesday.  It occurs to me that the House has another option, even after the Senate springs the Dear Leader.  The House can still censure him.  And there's not a damn thing the Senate could do about it.  Granted censure doesn’t mean much legally. And a later House can reverse it.  But, assuming that Trump is again the standard bearer of the GOP and Fox News, which is a good assumption, their candidate  for the Oval Office would be only the second President in history to have been censured by a House of Congress.  

The Dear Leader talks and tweets tough but he has skin of rice paper.  I mean, c’mon. He can't stand the notion that Time Magazine put a climate activist that happens to be a 16 year old girl on its cover as "Person of the Year."  Imagine how much he is going to like having to carry the brand of the "scarlet C" on his undying resume?

But this would merely be a "fact."  And if we have learned anything since 2016 it's that facts don't much matter anymore at this point in time. That and some people are incapable of shame.  Maybe that will change but I do not hold out much hope of that.  At least not in the short term.

That's why it is up to history to judge this present moment.  Because maybe someday facts will matter once again.