Serious Democrats Aren’t Serious About Impeachment

Pause for a moment.  Does it make any sense for hard-headed Democrats to want to impeach (charge) and convict Donald Trump with arch-conservative Mike Pence then becoming President… and running for election in 2020 as the incumbent?

Hardly.

Whatever The Sensible Conservative may think of the politics of Speaker  Nancy Pelosi or Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, neither is, despite the labels applied by President Trump, a political fool.  They would not have risen to their leadership roles if they were.

No, Democratic Party leadership is not seeking the ouster –before 2020 elections – of the President.

But they do want to wound him as much as possible.  From a legal and constitutional perspective, the discussions of impeachment are ill-founded.

Article II, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution is not ambiguous:  “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and conviction of Treason, Bribery or other high crimes and Misdemeanors”.

Note the word “other”.  A public officer must be accused of committing a crime as a prerequisite for impeachment to commence.

The President may be intemperate, incompetent and self-serving, but those are grounds for opposing his re-election, not impeachment by the House of Representatives.

So what?  Impeachment proceedings present Democrats with the opportunity to headline on a nearly daily basis (with the media’s cooperation a given) an Anti-Trump narrative.  The 2020 Presidential campaign will begin in earnest.

But because the Democratic leadership (unlike many in the Party’s rank and file) do not want a Senate conviction (even if attainable), there is a distinct probability that there will not even be a formal vote to impeach.

If there is a vote in the House, it would be nearly certain to pass.  The consequences would be trial and acquittal in the Senate (2/3 support is  undoubtedly a pipe dream).  Vindication, in effect, would be the popular verdict.  That is not what wise Democrats desire.  They want Donald Trump ousted on election day, not before.

To be sure, political activity is often not what it seems.  In the “old days,” the media was willing to look behind the posturing and point out real motivations and purposes.  Instead, most of our media is so blinded by ideology that they either do not see what is actually happening or are willingly serving as propagandists for the Democratic Party.