Today the Senate took a prelimary vote that all but declares that, as Richard Nixon said, “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal”. Of course, there’s an asterisk attached, in that the president in question must be a Republican. But this was wholly expected and we must now hope that the Democrats can get there act together and keep this outrage front and center during the coming campaign.
For my own part, I take some small solace in the following. On Monday I wrote a post in which I asserted with confidence what I thought at the time was conventional wisdom: that of course the Republicans would not allow witnesses, for the following reasons:
A. No matter what, the Republicans are going to vote to acquit Trump. This is an absolute given.
B. Allowing testimony would simply make them look worse than they already look and would cost them even more votes in the November election.
The very next day, the New London Day, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe, each of which is delivered to my door each day, all bore headlines to the effect that it was really looking like enough Republicans would vote for witnesses to make it a reality. For a while there I was worried. I’m not always right, but I certainly compare favorably to David Brooks, Bill Kristol, and a host of other highly paid pundits. (But then, who doesn’t).
Anyway, I started composing a follow up post in my mind, acknowledging that I had been wrong. But by the next morning, all was well. I don’t recall if all three papers had similar headlines this time, but it was now clear that Moscow Mitch would prevail, just as was always clear to anyone actually watching. It remained to be seen whether they’d play catch and release with Susan Collins, who will vote for acquittal in any event. So, I breathed easier, knowing I would not have to confess error. So that’s the bright side to today’s vote, from my point of view.
While composing this post in my mind, I ran across this post at my guilty little pleasure site, the Palmer Report. As I’ve said before, they usually have their facts right, but you can’t place bets on the conclusions they draw from those facts. But their conclusions are not always wrong, and this pretty much tracks the logic of what I said in my own post, so I reproduce it here.
The Republican Senate was never, ever going to convict and remove Donald Trump unless he became so toxically unpopular, the Republican Senators selfishly concluded that their own personal odds of reelection would be improved by ousting Trump. Instead, the Republicans made the calculation that their own careers are better off by acquitting Trump. If anyone in the Resistance thought this was ever going to come down to Republicans “growing a spine” or “not growing a spine,” that’s just not how any of this works. For the Republicans, it was always about math.
It is now up to the Democrats that run against these Trump enablers to constantly remind their constituents that their opponents refused to listen to witnesses and cast a vote for acquittal in the full knowledge that Trump was guilty. Look for Joe Manchin, Krysten Sinema, and/or Doug Jones to make that harder by voting to acquit and rendering it a bi-partisan vote. For Jones, in particular, the vote will make no sense, as he can’t run a campaign without out of state money, and that will dry up if he votes to acquit. But Democrats live in the fantasy world in which they vote against the wishes of their base because doing so will win them more votes from Fox deadheads than they will lose by turning off their own voters. It’s a proven strategy in this fantasy world, but it’s one that never works in the world the rest of us inhabit.
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