It's Been About Impeachment From Day One

As I look at the political divide in America, I wonder how it got to where it is. Politics used to be somewhat polite, excepting the occasional kook from one party or the other. Political opponents in Congress were diplomatically tactful when they referred to a member of the opposite party as my esteemed colleague even though in real life they didn't really like them much. In the 2016 election, the Democrats were feeling pretty good about things as election day neared. They figured Clinton was a shoe-in and all the polls seemed to agree. CNN even put Clinton up by about 10 points a week or two before the election.

It didn't go well for the Democrats. They lost, and they lost pretty good. Trump surpassed the minimum electoral college number (270) by 34 votes (total of 304) and would have had 306 if two electors kept their promise and didn't defect. Hillary Clinton fared worse with the electors, 5 bolted from her and voted for somebody else.

Since then, it's been total political warfare on the part of liberal Democrats. Refusing to acknowledge that Trump won, they came up with a plethora of excuses, everything from Fox News playing on the TV in corner bars and uneducated rednecks voting for Trump to James Comey wrecking Clinton. Never mind that Clinton wrecked Clinton, the excuses kept coming. Impeachment resolutions were introduced even when the House was still under a Republican majority; these early attempts at impeaching Donald Trump went as far as the Speakers waste basket. They attacked the electoral college and vowed to get rid of it (good luck with getting 37 states to pass an amendment getting rid of Article II, Section I). Seriously, do you think the states with a small number of electors are going to give up their say in a Presidential election to a handful of populous blue states?

But then the Democrats took back the House of Representatives in the 2018 election, and the soup de jour since then has been getting rid of Donald Trump. They were pretty sure the Mueller-Russia collaboration investigation was going to bear fruit, and when it didn't, they dedicated themselves to finding something else to pin on him.

Donald Trump certainly has his share of enemies in government and after the Russia-Mueller disaster, it didn't take long for one of them to don an anonymous cloak while proclaiming himself to be a whistleblower; now we see the results of what was a forgone conclusion: The Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is going to impeach Donald Trump and send the articles to the Senate for trial as prescribed in our constitution. Never mind the lack of facts, witnesses that gave hearsay testimony (somebody told me somebody said ...), and never mind that Joe Biden is on video bragging about forcing the Ukraine to fire a prosecutor or withhold more than a billion dollars in aid (quid pro quo, if there ever was one).

Never mind the tepid performance put on by Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. Never mind that they blew their chance at convincing the American public that Donald Trump committed a high crime. After 3 years of constantly attacking Trump, they blew it. Americans are getting tired of this dog and pony show and they're showing it. The good news is, weak Democrat Congress reps in Republican territory are going to get their ass kicked in 2020 for going along with this circus and the likelihood that the House will return to Republicans is a pretty good bet as it stands today. Could change tomorrow, but as it is now, Trump is gaining strength off of this theater in the absurd. And Trump isn't stupid, it's another pretty good bet he will campaign in the Republican toss-up districts which will help Republican candidates retake the House.

In the meanwhile,we have to sit back and watch the Democrats waste time and truckloads of money while things that need real attention are pushed aside. We could have had a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico by this time, we could have had an infrastructure bill to rebuild our highways in progress ... but no. This is how the Democrats wish to use their power in the House and there is -nothing- we can do about it right now.

Oh, but in November of next year, there is something we can and will do about it. And that is to send another shock into liberals by kicking as many of them as we can out of office... all while sending Donald Trump back for a second term.

I'll close by telling another tale of why I believe it was always about impeachment from day one:

My family members are all liberals (I apologize in advance for their stupidity) and my nephew is a rabid liberal. I mean a Trump-hating foaming at the mouth liberal. Other than politics, we get along. A month or two into Trumps Presidency, I ran into him out and about and of course, Trump came up. After offering his opinion of him, he offered a bet that Trump would be impeached by March 2019. It was his idea, not mine, but I accepted the bet knowing more than a year would elapse before we knew who would win. We both took a $20 bill out of our wallet, signed and put them in a sealed envelope in a very secure place and waited. On March 1 of this year, I went and opened the envelope. I won; the money is mine. (I'll happily take doubling my money in ~2 years). I even started a internet time countdown clock to periodically remind him I was not only going to take his money, but I was going to enjoy taking his money, especially seeing as it was his idea to begin with.

But we both knew that the Democrats were eventually going to impeach Trump ... on trumped-up charges, no less.

Someday, there will be an unpopular Democrat in the White House, and the precedents being set now are going to come back to haunt them when Republicans turn the tables on them.

So, I'll take the both the money and the lesson learned from my nephew:

It's been about impeachment from day one.