Al Green, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Texas, had formally introduced a vote to impeach President Trump.
The measure was defeated...by his fellow Democrats.
We have all witnessed the enormous irresponsibility of this man in his tenure in office, which feels long already, but has actually been quite short, at not even one full year!
During that time, he has shredded the Iran deal, announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris Accord on the grounds that he does not feel that climate change is actually as serious an issue as the rest of the world does and does not believe that humanity is responsible for it. He also just announced that the United States would be moving it's Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, so that in yet another way, the United States stands alone, this time as the only nation to officially recognize the disputed city as the official capital of Israel. In an incredibly short period of time, he has managed to turn off numerous other world leaders, most notably traditional allies. Now, we have Pope Francis showing visible dismay after meeting with this king of narcissism. Just after Trump's meeting with European world leaders, several European heads of state - most notably Germany's Angela Merkel, the head of the largest and most powerful European nation - announced publicly that the United States could no longer be relied upon, and Europe needed to take matters increasingly into it's own hands.
Of course, that is just some of what he did before the rest of the world. What has he done domestically? Well, after several failed efforts at repealing Obamacare, he finally gutted it with Executive Orders - the very same kinds of Executive Orders that supporters of Trump acted so offended and outraged by when President Obama did them, and they blasted him for executive overreach at the time. And now, the Trump Tax Plan, which many are rightly calling the Trump Tax Scam, which feels like a more apt and honest description of what it actually is. It will hurt the middle class and the poor, and very predictably, will benefit the most privileged Americans, and the major corporations, of course.
Through all of that chaos - and this presidency has been nothing if not chaotic - we have had to endure Trump's lies, his excessive narcissism, and classlessness and cluelessness, and his damn tweets. His approach is not only beneath the office that he is supposed to represent, but far, far beneath it. When you think of some of the great minds and great men who have held the office - for all of their imperfections - and you think of Donald Trump, it just makes you shake your head and wonder how in the hell we have reached such depths in this nation now.
Out of 194 Democrats in the House, 127 Democrats (roughly two-thirds) voted against the measure to even bring up a vote on the impeachment of President Trump.
I can understand politically why they did it. After all, next year is an election year, and Democrats supposedly want to wait until they have a majority (they are assuming they will have the majority) before they take any such action. After all, with Republicans in control, they clearly will not actually go through with getting rid of a Republican president. If they bring the vote up before Congress, than numerous Democrats would have to explain during an election year why they voted against impeachment. Also, President Trump is very unpopular right now, but a vote to actually impeach him might galvanize his base, even those who's support was wavering. Suddenly, we might see a political resurgence of what is increasingly being referred to as Trumpism, which frankly, should never have come into existence in the first place.
However, I think the Democrats are, predictably, miscalculating. They only think in terms of conventional political strategy. In other words, they think only of the results, which for them is all about winning elections. And they think that a more conventional approach works, or will work.
They learned nothing from their humiliating defeat last year.
The Democrats, obviously, are supposed to be the opposition party. We were told by many Democrats that there should be no normalization of Trump, because there was nothing normal about this guy. Yet, for all intents and purposes, we have seen exactly that here, domestically, in the United States, even while Trump himself has produced nothing but chaos for the United States, both domestically and especially internationally.
This is exactly how most of us skeptics expected the Democrats to react. They acted outraged at first, but before too long, it was overly cautious and opportunistic. Yes, opportunistic, like Trump himself, just waiting in the grass like a coiled snake, ready to pounce.
Except that Trump and the Republicans are much better, and much more natural at it, which is why they continue to win election after election. That is why Democrats keep losing major elections in supposedly shocking fashion, despite polls showing a vast majority of Americans being opposed to Donald Trump, and a ridiculous majority of Americans being opposed to the Republican controlled Congress.
Want to know the sad truth of the extent of how warped politics has become in the United States? President Trump's approval ratings not hover around 35 percent, according to recent polls. He is lower than any other man who has held the White House this early into their term. Yet, he remains firmly in power, and some are suggesting - with legitimacy - that he could, and probably will, win the 2020 election. The Republican Congress is even lower, at about 16 percent. Yet, Congress members are re-elected over 95 percent of the time. A majority of Americans want a better, more affordable healthcare system, yet we never seem to get that. What we got was Obamacare, and even when a majority of Americans wanted to keep that, Trump killed it with his Executive Order, as well as some sneaky additions in this ridiculous tax plan. Speaking of that tax plan (or rather, tax scam), approval ratings for that were never higher than 25 percent. Yet, it passed the Senate, and it seems like a mere formality before it is on President Trump's desk, where he will sign it into law. Never mind that it passed the Senate in the middle of the night, before any single Senator was actually able to read the approximately 500-page bill.
Yes, this is where we are in American politics. We have a President who lost the majority vote last year by nearly three million, yet he claims to have won a historically dominant vote, claiming that it was a wide mandate. We have a majority of Americans increasingly catching on that trickle-down economics does not work and has not worked historically, yet this tax bill effectively reformed the American economy to make it the very picture of trickle-down economics. Marijuana legalization is now supported by a majority of Americans, yet the Trump administration wants to crack down on this wave of legalization in individual states. According to polls, 70 percent of Americans believe in climate change and feel that we need to do something, while the Trump administration officially wants to do nothing. No, worse than nothing. They pulled us out of a binding international agreement, have made dumping in streams far more easy for major polluters, and have opened up national parks for drilling and for plundering.
What does it matter what the polls say, when we so clearly are being occupied by a hostile force?
And by that, I mean both President Trump's Republicans, as well as the complicit, mainstream Democrats!
Most Americans now feel that the Democrats stand for nothing except opposition to Trump. That is why they lost the 2016 election, because all they talked about was why Trump would be so bad. They were right, he is bad. But what did the Democrats stand for, exactly? A majority of Americans could not say. Hillary Clinton claims that she talked at length about some of what she stood for, but what were those things again? All I remember her doing last year was "defeating" Bernie Sanders while effectively controlling the clearly rigged Democratic primaries, thus reinforcing doubts about her honesty and integrity, and then talking at length about how bad and unstable Trump was. She could hardly stand on solid ground when discussing what she stood for, because she only stands for things when she could possibly get some measurable political gin from them. That, or some money, like those speaking fees she received by those big Wall Street banks.
So, can anyone really tell me, concretely and with no ambiguity, what Hillary Clinton actually stood for, rather than allegedly stood against? And even if there some ideas or proposals that she stuck to, were they detailed, and did she truly possess the consistency in character that would allow most Americans to believe that she would actually fight for them once in office? I mean, the mainstream Democrats seemed to have no problems with her character, but it seems that they also were to dismiss clear indicators of her not being trustworthy. When she is caught lying about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia, mainstream Democrats too easily dismissed it, while the rest of us paid attention to something truly revealing about her. When she told the Wall Street banks that she felt that it was fine to have both a public and a private position on banks, they too easily and quickly dismissed it, but the rest of the country paid attention. When she asked for help from Democratic party leadership, like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz outright stated Clinton did, the mainstream Democrats too conveniently dismissed it, but the rest of the country paid attention. Is it any surprise, then, that they too easily and quickly dismissed unfavorable polls that showed Trump beating her before she officially got the nomination?
Some might dismiss this as old news, as irrelevant, because it is part of the past. But it is not the distant past and, most importantly, the mainstream Democrats have not shown any serious signs of having learned any lessons. They are still turning their hopes towards other mainstream Democrats, dreaming of a Joe Biden run, or perhaps to Kaine, or other very mediocre, frankly untrustworthy candidates. I saw one person writing about their hopes that Al Franken would basically get past these recent allegations against him, and make a run for the presidency, even though he himself has suggested that he would never run for the White House, and this was well before these charges were brought up.
Many of these people, and like-minded people, were as dismissive of Bernie Sanders and his ideas, as they were with any seemingly glaring imperfections associated with Hillary Clinton. I saw a number of them dismissing what they called "pie in the sky" ideas, such as a single-payer healthcare system that covers everyone, or free college - even though both of these things exist in numerous countries already, and are hardly unrealistic goals for us to achieve. The message from mainstream Democrats for people who believed that these things were not only possible, but downright necessary for the nation to keep improving and for our standard of living to remain competitive with these other nations is that we Americans could not do it. Talk about defeatism. Why would these things not only be possible, but have already been done in so many other nations, yet somehow impossible here in the United States?
Most Americans now feel that the Democrats stand for nothing except opposition to Trump. That is why they lost the 2016 election, because all they talked about was why Trump would be so bad. They were right, he is bad. But what did the Democrats stand for, exactly? A majority of Americans could not say. Hillary Clinton claims that she talked at length about some of what she stood for, but what were those things again? All I remember her doing last year was "defeating" Bernie Sanders while effectively controlling the clearly rigged Democratic primaries, thus reinforcing doubts about her honesty and integrity, and then talking at length about how bad and unstable Trump was. She could hardly stand on solid ground when discussing what she stood for, because she only stands for things when she could possibly get some measurable political gin from them. That, or some money, like those speaking fees she received by those big Wall Street banks.
So, can anyone really tell me, concretely and with no ambiguity, what Hillary Clinton actually stood for, rather than allegedly stood against? And even if there some ideas or proposals that she stuck to, were they detailed, and did she truly possess the consistency in character that would allow most Americans to believe that she would actually fight for them once in office? I mean, the mainstream Democrats seemed to have no problems with her character, but it seems that they also were to dismiss clear indicators of her not being trustworthy. When she is caught lying about coming under sniper fire in Bosnia, mainstream Democrats too easily dismissed it, while the rest of us paid attention to something truly revealing about her. When she told the Wall Street banks that she felt that it was fine to have both a public and a private position on banks, they too easily and quickly dismissed it, but the rest of the country paid attention. When she asked for help from Democratic party leadership, like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz outright stated Clinton did, the mainstream Democrats too conveniently dismissed it, but the rest of the country paid attention. Is it any surprise, then, that they too easily and quickly dismissed unfavorable polls that showed Trump beating her before she officially got the nomination?
Some might dismiss this as old news, as irrelevant, because it is part of the past. But it is not the distant past and, most importantly, the mainstream Democrats have not shown any serious signs of having learned any lessons. They are still turning their hopes towards other mainstream Democrats, dreaming of a Joe Biden run, or perhaps to Kaine, or other very mediocre, frankly untrustworthy candidates. I saw one person writing about their hopes that Al Franken would basically get past these recent allegations against him, and make a run for the presidency, even though he himself has suggested that he would never run for the White House, and this was well before these charges were brought up.
Many of these people, and like-minded people, were as dismissive of Bernie Sanders and his ideas, as they were with any seemingly glaring imperfections associated with Hillary Clinton. I saw a number of them dismissing what they called "pie in the sky" ideas, such as a single-payer healthcare system that covers everyone, or free college - even though both of these things exist in numerous countries already, and are hardly unrealistic goals for us to achieve. The message from mainstream Democrats for people who believed that these things were not only possible, but downright necessary for the nation to keep improving and for our standard of living to remain competitive with these other nations is that we Americans could not do it. Talk about defeatism. Why would these things not only be possible, but have already been done in so many other nations, yet somehow impossible here in the United States?
But, of course, private interests and the profit motive trump everything else here in the United States. These profit motives kill the good ideas that could truly improve out national standard of living, and both the Republicans and the Democrats are guilty of this. Why do we not have some kind of truly universal, affordable healthcare system in this country? Because it cuts into the profits of the healthcare industry and big pharmaceutical industry. Why do we not have free college? Because it would threaten the profits of private education institutions, as well as for those wealthy Americans who can actually easily afford the costs, and want to keep the wealth, and the most plum positions, within family, rather than having to compete for them. Why do we have such an unfair and outrageously oversized prison system? Because doing away with it, dismantling that system, would obviously hurt the for profit prison system, because people are obviously raking in the dough from what has become a new version of slavery in this country. Why do we not have legalized marijuana? Because it would cut into the profits of the alcohol, tobacco, and paper industry, to name just a few.
Yes, the profit of the few is the reason that we have seen our standard of living decline for decades now, and it is also the reason why we are unlikely to raise that standard of living, at least if we continue to vote for the mainstream parties, the two major parties. Why? Because they are like auctions for special interests, who look to purchase investments in essentially owning politicians, who will then do their bidding. When corruption becomes endemic in the marbled halls of Congress, this becomes the real agenda, the real priority, for these politicians, which is how we got to the point we find ourselves now, with a de facto corporate supremacist state. Everyone knows it, but no one knows how to dismantle it.
I will tell you one thing, however. We are not going to see this end if we keep electing the same types of corrupt politicians. That is why Hillary lost, because for far too many, she represented exactly a continuation of the same old same old in Washington. At a time when people were fed up with politics as usual, the mainstream Democrats truly believed that her experience, which was seen as tainted, should stand to her benefit. As unbelievable as it seems, despite how everyone knew that Trump had such an extensive and well-documented history of being a liar and a con artist, he was more trusted than Hillary, and probably precisely because he could rightly claim not to be a Washington insider, and he correctly identified that Washington corruption had reached epic proportions and needed to be reigned in. True, most people, including myself, had absolutely no faith that he could bring integrity back to Washington. But many believed his claims that he could not be bought or sold, and they would never believe Hillary if she made the same claim, and really, that was not without some justification. Also, many just voted for Trump to shake things up, knowing that he would piss off "the establishment." That he did not represent serious improvements in people's lives seemed to be lost on them, when he convinced people that he would do for the country what he had done for himself, in building up his financial empire.
That is why so many of his supporters remain loyal to him, and why they get so outraged whenever there is any mention of possible impeachment. Indeed, with the current political climate in this country, such an action might just wind up triggering an actual second civil war. Why? Because to them, it would be the corrupt elitists in Washington trying to get rid of a threat to their privileged status. Again, facts do not matter. That Trump has proven himself to be an elitist, which he has been all of his life, does not matter, or is not believed. The fact that Trump has proven himself to be incompetent as leader according to many around the world is also easily dismissed, because when the president throws this absurd notion that any and all criticisms of him automatically fall into the category of "fake news" and his supporters buy into that, there really is no arguing against it.
And so, Democrats once again predictably walk away, despite how bad things are getting. Trump clearly is a threat to our democracy (what remains of it, anyway), and is a dangerously unstable leader. He predictably pushes a narrow, elitist agenda, yet he claims otherwise, and his legions of gullible supporters believe his every word, while he laughs all the way to the bank. And the Democrats, who see opportunity in all of this, are once again very cautious, to a fault.
That is why they will lose, because they are trying to outmaneuver the current Republican party at the game that Republicans themselves have long ago mastered: profiting from manipulation and propaganda.
Really, it is not a secret why Republicans continue to win, and even to dominate, what is going on in Washington. It is not a secret now, and has not been a secret for decades. As Harry Truman once said, "If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time."
The Democrats will continue to swirl the rope of opportunism around in hopes of drawing attention, and getting a large crowd to donate money and, ultimately, to vote. In their attempts to lasso golden opportunity, and they are doing it now as we speak, they are attempting to appear like a unified opposition party, while simultaneously trying to purge Bernie supporters from the party. They believe that the middle ground will continue to win elections, even though it clearly did no such thing for them last year. And all too predictably, the Republicans will give the Democrats enough rope to allow them Democrats to hang themselves with. Really, this is something that we have seen time and time again, like Charlie Brown lining up to kick that football that Lucy is holding, only to have it pulled away at the last moment, and to fall flat on their backs. If they keep going this way, you can bet that after the 2020 election, they will once again, also predictably, be finger pointing towards anyone and everyone but themselves for yet another dismal and dispiriting failure.
ABC News: Majority of Americans Say Democrats Stand For Nothing Except Being Against Trump (VIDEO):
Trump impeachment vote shot down as majority of House Democrats join Republicans to kill resolution by Emily Shugerman, December 6, 2017:
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