by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
The question of why we haven’t begun impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump, 45 president of the United States, is something I struggle with on a daily basis.
The short answer is, of course, that even though his high crimes against the Constitution are legion at this point, there simply isn’t the political willpower to do anything about it.
This comes in no little part from the basic paradox of Democrats impeaching a Republican President — they won’t do it unless they feel they have some bi-partisan support. Republicans, meanwhile, are always locked and loaded to impeach a Democratic president, damn the consequences because they’re shithead dipshits. As such, Democrats simply won’t do anything until either a Mueller Report comes out that would give them some sort of cover, the economy collapses or some sort of enormous bombshell drops independent of Mueller’s investigation. The only place I can think of that this might happen is from the SDNY.
Remember, it was SDNY, not Mueller, who gave Cohen an investigative root around about as deep as you can get without seeing sunshine on the other end. To date, of course, they, too, haven’t really come up with anything that would be the tipping point.
What really, really bothers me is we have Trump dead-to-rights about several things and because the economy is doing well and MAGA people are cult members, nothing is happening. Any other president would be at least impeached for the Stormy Daniels crimes, but as it stands…nothing.
I don’t really expect this to change anytime soon, either. Trump has a bloodlock on about 37% of the electorate, enough to defeat any attempt to convict him in the Senate. So, in a sense, Trump is a king right now. An elected dictator who is, for all intents and purposes, above the law.
And this isn’t going to change.
What I fear is it won’t change in time for it to really matter, even if Mueller drops a bombshell. If Mueller doesn’t drop a bombshell within the next six months, then the people who would otherwise think about impeaching Trump will kick that particular problem down the road into 2020 and say, “Let the people decide.”
The problem with that, of course, is the “people” won’t really decide, but rather a bunch of craven plutocrats who are rather content with the traitorous, felonious nature of the Trump Administration.
This whole thing of waiting for Mueller to “save” us is such a huge cop-out. It’s a national tragedy. For me, there’s no excuse at this point not to immediately at least impeach Trump. We have him dead-to-rights on massive violation of campaign finance law…and yet the Democrats are being fucking wussies on this one.
Our only recourse may be to start to be Radical Resisters and to primary anyone in the Democratic Party who doesn’t make it part of their basic policy to do everything in their power to impeach and convict Trump ASAP.
Because Trump is going to be re-elected, no doubt about it. What damage Russian fuckery doesn’t inflict, asshole American plutocrats will happily take up the slack.
Like I said, if we don’t get Trump by August 2019, we’re going to have to wait until August of 2021. And, really, it’s very possible that because Trump is an avatar for the rotting of the American civil society, it’s very possible that all of my personal gnashing of teeth over the lack of impeachment of Trump will simply bleed into my personal gnashing of teeth over Trump hurding someone like Sen. Tom Cotton to the presidency in an effort to protect his “legacy.”
Fuck MAGA.
Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer in Richmond, Va. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com. He’s working on his first novel.
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