Democrats are doing that thing they always do, that same bullshit of questioning every step, every word, every gesture to the point of paralysis in some areas. In just the last few days, we've gotten a report that some Democrats are feeling skittish about opening up investigative whoop-ass on Ivanka Trump, the daughter and fantasy lover of President Donald Trump, because it might make Daddy-kins angry. We've had the entirely unnecessary blow-up over Ilhan Omar's poor choice of words when talking about issues related to Israel. And now we've got Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declaring, "I’m not for impeachment...because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it."
Welcome back to the same fuckin' pothole-filled road we've been down too many times.
The most important of those is Speaker Pelosi's pronouncement, which is more definitive than she's ever been on the subject of impeachment with Trump. For some of us, our stomachs turn and our bowels clench because it echoes what she said in 2006, after Democrats won back the House and she was about to become speaker. "Impeachment is off the table" when it came to George W. Bush, even though he was a goddamn war criminal, even though we desperately wanted him punished.
In the course of her new interview with the Washington Post, Pelosi agrees that this is the most divisive "political climate" since she's been in Congress because "because of the person who is in the White House and the enablers that the Republicans in Congress are to him." She adds, "We have a very serious challenge to the Constitution of the United States in the president’s unconstitutional assault on the Constitution, on the first branch of government, the legislative branch…This is very serious for our country." And, when asked if Trump is fit to be president, she is very clear: "I don’t think he is. I mean, ethically unfit. Intellectually unfit. Curiosity-wise unfit. No, I don’t think he’s fit to be president of the United States."
If the president is assaulting the Constitution, dividing the nation, and is unfit to even be president, then impeachment should be the most important thing that the Congress can do. Fuck the politics. Fuck the Senate. Fuck waiting for the Mueller report. You fucking do the investigations in your committees, you write up the articles, and you vote. You do it because, if you don't, then you're saying, "Yeah, he's a criminal surrounded by criminals who is actually turning people in the country violent, but, damn, the Republicans will just be so mean about it." You do it because history and your goddamn oath of office demand that you do it.
And don't talk to me about Bill Clinton's approval and the 1998 midterms as being hugely affected by investigations and his impeachment. As I wrote last year, that's a garbage argument. Clinton's approval was already above 50%, heading to 60 after his reelection and his disapproval was mostly in the 30s. Trump's numbers are the opposite. And the crimes Clinton was accused of are just a Tuesday morning for Trump while every other fucking tweet of Trump's is him looking us dead in the eye and saying, "I did not have collusion relations with that country, Russia."
As for the idea that the Senate won't convict, well, shit, the House right now is passing all these bills on voting rights, gun control, and more that the Senate won't touch because Mitch McConnell is a total cockmite and, you know, it's run by Republicans. That's not stopping the House from voting on things so that Democrats can run on the legislation that was stalled (and will have to be passed again in a new Congress). Besides, the Senate can't just ignore the House on impeachment. The Constitution requires that the Senate have a trial on removing the president once the House impeaches (although you can bet McConnell will try to say he doesn't have to). That trial won't be about Trump's dick and whose mouth it was in, although it could be. It will be about how, say, he's getting bribed by Saudi Arabia through his family business.
While polls right now have impeachment far down the list of shit people want the Democrats to do, the point is that the majority of Americans think Trump's a fuckin' crook. They will get on board with taking this corrupt asshole down. Jesus, kicking out a rich prick? That's a fuckin' movie ending.
Look, you wanna excite the base for an election? You wanna get people to rally around you? You wanna bring the left and moderates in the party together? Then don't fucking do what President Obama did with the GOP after 2008 and let the bastards slide. Don't let them control the narrative. Go after every single one of Trump's criminal children (so far, Tiffany and Barron seem to have blissfully stayed out of the muck). Anal probe these fuckers until you're up to your elbows in their colons.
And don't take the goddamn bait every time Republicans start screaming about something on Fox "news." It's been days since Trump called the entire Democratic Party "anti-Jewish." And not a single Republican member of Congress has condemned him saying that. So, really, who the fuck cares if the GOP is upset about some insult? If you're a Democrat saying that impeachment should be off the table because it might piss off Republicans, then you're just doing their jobs for them.
Pelosi could have played it coy and said, "Well, we'll have to see where things lead." Or she could have said, "The nation is worth it even if he isn't." She could have said said that the Founders of our nation put impeachment in the Constitution for a reason, for people like Trump. The groundswell of support from Democrats (and a good number of independents) would overwhelm the outrage, and the fence sitters and the nervous Democrats would have gladly surfed on that wave.
In the most generous reading of her words, Pelosi knows something or has something up her sleeve. But I don't think so. I think that, for how great she can be on things like wall funding and other issues, this is one of those times that she acts like the sadly typical, abashed Democrat, afraid to use power to its fullest.
