Depressing things I’ve read in the past week:
- Reports, by Bob Woodward and Anonymous Op-ed, confirming that Donald Trump’s behavior is as troubling as we’ve heard;
- News indicating that the Republicans in Congress and many voters don’t care.
The importance of what Anonymous wrote has been overshadowed a bit by a debate over whether Anonymous is a coward because he or she prefers to remain Anonymous. Should Anonymous have resigned and then gone public? I don’t know; at least we know that a few people in the White House are trying to resist, on occasion. That’s more than what we’re seeing happen among the Republicans in Congress.
The more important thing is that Anonymous and Woodward have added to the evidence: The country is led by a volatile, immature man who either doesn’t understand the basic principles of the government he heads or doesn’t care about them and doesn’t intend to uphold them.
And at the moment, there’s not much anybody can do about it. Democrats can posture all they like, but Donald Trump will serve out his term. Some members of his administration may be trying to undermine him, but if they tried to remove him using the process spelled out in the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate would have to approve. If the House impeached him, two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to remove him. That won’t happen.
Even if the Democrats take back both the House and the Senate, it’s not likely to be by that big a margin. And Republicans in Congress have made it clear: Some of them may think he’s not fit to serve, but most of them are happy with his record.
The odds are, then, that Donald Trump will be president at least through 2020. The salvation: the November 6 Congressional election.
This is just a terrible, terrible time. Voters can dismiss people like Woodward and Anonymous, but it’s hard to do that with members of the federal intelligence community, who have been writing their own op-eds and signing statements expressing their concerns about President Trump. They, too, have been criticized.
But in a sobering Washington Post op-ed over the weekend, former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin explained their actions. “For many of us,” McLaughlin wrote, “keeping our mouths shut about what we see in our own country would be akin to not alerting our government to a threat from abroad.”
“Failure to warn,” McLaughlin wrote, “is the ultimate sin in the intelligence world. It feels equally sinful in the world of citizenship.”
People in the intelligence communities have studied countries where democracy and the rule of law “don’t exist or are under attack,” McLaughlin said. “So our senses are finely tuned to the classic warning signs: attacks on institutions, neutralization of opponents, cowed legislatures, publics numbed by repeated falsehoods.”
“All of these are now visible here to various degrees,” McLaughlin said. “While others may say our democracy can’t erode that way, we know we’ve heard that before, somewhere else. The stakes are too high for complacency here.”
The stakes are apparently not too high for the Republicans in Congress, at least not yet. Congress can’t change the president’s behavior, but it can help mitigate the results of it. The country will likely have to wait until the end of Donald Trump’s first term to get a new president. It doesn’t have to wait until then to get a new Congress.
This article appears in Sep 12-19, 2018.
Oh, but there something the Democrats can do–win elections with a great plan. Winning on a platform of “Trump is bad” will be a short lived and hollow victory. So far, I don’t see a great, cohesive Democratic plan that can effectively challenge Trump and the Rebuplicans.
I agree that our Tweeter-in-Chief will remain in office until 2021 (not 2020). But this begs the question of what happens then. If nothing else, in 2020 he will be running for re-election as the incumbent. And who will he be running against? At the moment the Democrats have no clear front runner for their nomination. Although Bernie the Hypocrite will doubtless make another run, he’s no more a viable candidate now then he was in 2016, his naive followers notwithstanding.
Biden is the most qualified potential candidate, but he’s even older than Trump, far too old for the stress of being president. And the Dems have no one else to run except a collection of second stringers and third raters. So right now, the odds seem to be that we’re stuck with Demagogue Donny until 2025. As to taking back the House this year (the Senate is out-of-the-question), at best that’s a 50-50% proposition given how Democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot with talk of “democratic socialism”, “abolish ICE”, and “impeachment”, views which may thrill part of the party, but do far more to energize the Trumpster opposition. And this is all before Donny (and Vlad) launches the inevitable “October surprise”.
OK, so other than “Hillary is bad” and “MAGA”, what great cohesive plan did Donald Trump use last time to win the White House?
The concrete and very simple ideas that got Trump elected (clear vision for simple people)
1. Build the wall
2. End Obamacare
3. Cut taxes
4. Cut regulations
5. Deny climate change and science
I think Hillary’s platform was “I’m the frontrunner”, continue Obama’s policies and “Trump can’t possibly win”
“Democrats can posture all they like, but Donald Trump will serve out his term. “
I am not sure that Trump will last much past the new year, 2019.
——————————————————————————–
The pressure on him keeps building up. Democrats are likely to take the House this year and they will accelerate investigations on Trump, for sure.
The Republicans may start to attack Trump, after the min-terms, blaming him for the loss of the House of Representatives. They may start to look for presidential candidates for 2020.
I would be more optimistic, Mary Towler.
————————————————-
The tide is turning away from Trump…
http://www.SavingSchools.org
Democrats could run on “abolish ICE” only if they make it a part of budget cuts and elimination of an unnecessary agency.
So Tom, can you make up your mind? First you complain that the Democrats don’t have a great, comprehensive plan. Then you admit that Trump won on
a very simplistic “plan”. Can’t have it both ways. As to Hillary’s 2016 platform, to denigrate it as nothing more than, “I’m the frontrunner”, and “Trump can’t possibly win” is a misrepresentation worthy of The Donald himself. As to saying that she would continue some of Obama’s policies, did you expect her to say she was going to dump them?
When did I say the Democrat’s platform could be simple?
I think everyone knows Trump was the “build the wall” candidate.
Does anyone know what Hillary’s immigration plan was?
For Hillary to adequately battle Trump, she couldn’t (and didn’t) oppose Trump’s weird and radical ideas with “stay on the Obama course”.
Tom – Better reread what you posted. First you stated that, ” So far, I don’t see a great, cohesive Democratic plan that can effectively challenge Trump and the Republicans.” . Which clearly means you believe such a plan is needed. Then you admitted that Trump won without such a “great, cohesive” plan. So please explain why the Democrats can’t win with a simplistic approach yet Republicans can. We also understand that you didn’t like Hillary as a candidate. many of us didn’t. But we realized that she was far and away the most qualified on domestic and international issues of any candidate in either party. But I did find your claim that building a wall with absolutely no details on how it was to be accomplished constituted an immigration plan. By the way, here’s what Hillary proposed: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/immi… Not sure how you missed it.
I don’t recall Hillary supporters chanting her immigration policy. Trump supports where chanting “build that wall” which indicates knowledge of the plan.
Tom – So Democrats mimicking the GOP’s chants in their Nuremberg-style rallies is what you’re now looking for as that” great, cohesive Democratic plan that can effectively challenge Trump and the Republicans”?