If we try to project how this impeachment saga will play out, we ought to be left with a distressing prognosis.
It is that no matter how it ends, the upcoming 2020 presidential campaign is likely to be dragged into the deepest dietch you can imagine.
Donald Trump at this moment is likely to survive a trial in the U.S. Senate after the House of Representatives impeaches him for various high crimes and misdemeanors.
If you’re a Democratic challenger, you might want to talk about issues of the day. Things that ought to matter to Americans who will be voting for president of the United States. But then you’ll have to deal with Trump’s manic obsession with the impeachment.
He is unable to set impeachment into one cranial compartment while concentrating (more or less) fully on the upcoming issues debate. No way! He is obsessed with impeachment.
When the House impeaches him, my hope is that it is done soon. I also hope the Senate can dispense with the trial soon. I do not want the impeachment and trial to hang over the campaign. Alas, it will hang anyway, given Trump’s inability or unwillingness to put it into perspective in the event he survives the Senate trial.
I can imagine now that he is likely and quite willing to keep mentioning the impeachment as he campaigns for re-election. He will use the impeachment and trial as a sort of shield against legitimate criticism that could come from his political foe.
You know: his refusal to acknowledge climate change as the existential threat it has become; his continuing effort to pi** off our valued allies; Trump’s inability to cut the deficit as he promised he would do; the president’s poor choice of key aides and Cabinet members; the fact that so many top level positions remain vacant or are filled by “acting” Cabinet members or agency heads.
The president will ensure that we do not forget that the House impeached him and that the Senate “acquitted” him, although it might be on a technicality, given the high bar set by the Constitution for removal after a Senate trial.
Yep, the 2020 presidential campaign is heading for the ditch.