I am not as unhappy that the Republican-fascists in the Senate have made it explicit that the Senate trial of of Donald Trump's impeachment is a total and complete and partisan-political fraud, a "trial" in which the so-called chair of the jury, Mitch McConnell announced weeks before that he was coordinating the fixing of the trial with the defendant, that he had no intention of having a real trial, one without witnesses, one without any evidence being presented, originally not even guaranteeing that the House prosecutors would be able to present evidence they'd painstakingly gathered to vote for impeachment.
I'm glad that there is no honest or even formally plausible way for anyone to deny that the Republicans had intended to let Trump off for some of the most serious issues for which a president has ever been impeached imaginable, one that insures tht their own elections cannot be confidently considered legitimate as he has, twice, blatantly committed presidential treason in shattering the Constitutional system of elected government.
One of those things I long ago outraged the idiots on lefty blogs over was their outrage when, in 2007, as they regained control of the House under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, she said she was not going to waste the time of the fragile Democratic majority in the House by impeaching Bush II or the criminal Cheney. I outraged them by telling them the unhappy truth that the removal of an American president by impeachment was a Constitutional illusion, a myth, something that would never happen.
We have to conclude from the total failure of the Senate to remove Trump from office that that is the sad and dangerous truth, that the "founders" method of removing the most dangerous and criminal presidents of the United States is a total and complete failure. Among the reasons for that is the anti-democratic design of the Senate, the empowerment of the most immoral of minorities through their over-representation in the Senate, means that they are more likely to be in the party and on the side of a criminal president who will need to rig elections on their behalf and that of the criminal president of their party. We have seen that over and over again. Making the necessity of the Senate achieve a super-majority to remove even the most blatantly criminal president is to set a bar which will never be approached or achieved*.
That is terrible truth. The Constitution really sets up impeachment to fail, it is set up for the marginally legitimate cases of impeachment, that of Bill Clinton and not for the most legitimate of them, Trump's. The Founders amateur status, their desire to set things up to be anti-democratic, to game it for their own advantage, to the advantage of their families and their class becomes ever more obvious as the various deficiencies in the document are found, studied, gamed out and ratfucked by lawyers hired by rich people, by judges and justices who are so inclined, themselves. And it's getting steadily worse.
I say the less ability to maintain denial of that dangerous truth the better. Now we can safely admit the fact that even Trump will be kept in office by the disgusting anti-democratically structured Senate and the rules in the Constitution governing impeachment and removal from office. Let's all admit that, right now. It's like drug addiction, the first step in recovery is admitting reality.
* In the one case that came close in the Senate trial of Andrew Johnson, Edmund Ross of Kansas, there is credible evidence that the deciding vote was a corruptly cast one, he is believed to have gotten money for it. Though other historians say that at least several of the votes to impeach Andrew Johnson were prepared to vote against his conviction if it were needed to prevent his removal - apparently as with the very unpopular Susan Collins, permission slips to cast votes of convenience instead of conscience were a part of that process too. I've mentioned before that his case as well as that of Robert Taft were among those that made me conclude that John Kennedy's Profiles in Courage was a load of superficial, lightweight, horseshit. It is also worth noting, again, that that lion of late 20th century liberalism, Edward Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy gave Gerald Ford the "Profiles in Courage" award for letting Nixon off the hook with his pardon, one of the most damaging things done to the rule of law and presidential accountability in our history.
I'm quite over the Kennedy mystique. I'm as over that as I am over the 60s.
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