Impeachment: YES!!! Conviction: In Our Dreams! A Continued Tale of Two Countries

With the House vote to formalize the impeachment inquiry and proceed toward public release of deposition transcripts and public hearings, the march to impeachment looks inevitable, despite the likely absence of many key witnesses and documents due to effective White House stonewalling. Unfortunately it seems very likely that this entire process will remain entirely or nearly entirely along party lines. No matter what evidence comes out against Trump, the House Republicans all appear to be willing to deny and/or excuse ANY bad behavior, no matter how obviously unethical and/or illegal to the rest of us, due to the unshakable support of Trump’s base and their own cowardly self interest. This will continue to allow Trump et al to claim that this is just a partisan witch hunt. Although I still think impeachment is necessary given Trump’s behavior, conviction and removal in the Senate remain completely unrealistic wishful thinking. Even if a couple of Republican senators like Romney end up voting with the Democrats, it is still a virtual impossibility for 20 Republican senators to put their country above their party and defect without Republican base support for Trump significantly weakening, which still seems as likely as a blizzard in July! This very much remains a story of two countries within our borders populated by two groups of people who do not share a common perception of reality, largely fueled and reinforced by the incredible power of the Trump/Fox propaganda apparatus, which appears to be tailor-made for this situation! Constantly branding the mainstream media as fake news also conveniently helps keep Trump’s cult followers insulated from and immunized against the facts. The latest reporting includes Trump promising to help fund Republican senators’ reelection campaigns from his bulging campaign coffers if they stick with him! Talk about bribery! Unfortunately, as Nancy Pelosi and many others have feared, Trump’s impeachment and acquittal in the Senate could very well end up helping Trump and Republicans politically and hurting Democrats, as this will add a lot of fuel to Trump’s constant message of being the always innocent victim/martyr, which resonates so well with his base. Pushing the false narrative that the House Democrats are not doing anything other than the impeachment process is also an effective Republican strategy which has not been effectively countered by the Democrats, partly due to the understandable lack of media coverage of House bills passed, given everything else going on. It would probably be very helpful if Rudy Giuliani were indicted in relation to his Ukraine activities, although I can imagine Trump denying any knowledge of Giuliani‘s other activities and even eventually blaming Giuliani for getting him into this whole situation, which would be another convenient Republican excuse for letting Trump off the hook. In any case, we are witnessing a historic event!