I have predicted from past trends that 2020 will probably be the last democratic election, and the proverbial hits the fan around 2026. (Though chances are that we will still be holding elections for a very long time to come, as the Roman Empire did, and the Queen still rides in a stagecoach to open Parliament.)
The current impeachment crisis is that Social Justice Warriors always project. When Trump investigates Democratic crimes, they perceive him as committing the crimes that he investigates.
It looks as though the 2020 election is going to be decided by which side puts the other side’s leading candidates in jail, which is not all that democratic and is on trend for the end of democracy very soon.
In Britain, the remainers are planning to imprison the British Prime minister. So far he has not done anything towards getting the remainers imprisoned, but he is calling them traitors, and what do you with traitors who are attempting to overthrow the government and the constitution and are acting in service to a hostile foreign power?
The remainer plan is that the permanent government imprisons the merely temporary government. Might work.
The Democrat plan is insane, since the constitution puts the impeachment process squarely with the merely temporary government, who are starting to realize that they are next in line for prison after Trump.
The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present.
Judgement in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgement and punishment, according to law.
If they follow that process, impeachment in the House followed by an actual trial in the Senate, the trial will be a disaster for them. All the Democrat dirty linen gets aired in the trial, the public will be outraged by the blatant attempt to steal the election, and the inevitable acquittal renders Trump bulletproof. Attempts to steal the election will continue despite the acquittal, and those attempts will blatantly be treason and insurrection, justifying and necessitating a crackdown that will render the election irrelevant, even if public outrage did not guarantee a landslide.
So when reality sinks in on the Democrats, if it ever does, their plan is going to mutate to raising a mob to interrupt the trial, raise the mob by allowing them to knock over the liquor stores and the supermarkets, and then lead the mob to the Senate where the permanent government is supposed to piously announce it is helpless before the power of the mighty and justly enraged mob, and let the mob grab the Republicans. The democrat rump in the Senate would then impeach the president. This plan is only marginally saner than their current plan.
If, as is likely, the impeachment trial in the Senate winds up nailing Democrats, the Democrats will likely boycott the hearings and go out to raise a mob, but I doubt that their mob will follow them from the liquor stores to the Senate. They will find themselves with a bunch of ngo employees and students sent by their professors for course credit, plus some homeless there for the free food, which, as with “Occupy Wall Street” fails to make a mob capable of occupying anything in the face of three determined rentacops.
The Democrats are talking about having the Washington police arrest the people around Trump. If they try it, and it works, then they will arrest Trump – which is approximately the British remainer plan.
What are the crimes for which those around Trump are to be arrested? The Democrats are kind of vague on that, but what they all amount to is obeying Trump (when they do, which is not often) If those orders are illegal, then the remedy is impeaching the man who gave the orders, not arresting people for obeying the president. Arresting members of the permanent government for obeying the merely temporary government is an obvious violation of presidential privilege. And they cannot impeach him – at least not constitutionally, though they seem inclined to make up their own process, call it impeachment and read it into the constitution. They are already denying the need for a Senate supermajority.
If Trump gets “impeached” and arrested (or more likely arrested then retroactively impeached) the irregularity of the process is going to make it dangerous to allow him to live, for a power struggle will ensue, pursued by means even more irregular, and one side or the other will want to spring him, by means even more irregular still, so that they can wrap themselves in a dead constitution and in legality that no one except Trump has been complying with for nearly a decade now. And so the other side will very likely kill him, on charges of conspiring with the side that wants to spring him. And then it is off to the races.
What I hope for is that at some point in the process, Trump has his people do dawn raids on the Democrats, ending the matter (and rendering the election largely irrelevant). But Trump has not got people, so this could get sticky. The FBI, the state department, even the DOJ (despite Barr) has been dragging its feet on the crimes of the Democrats.
I hope that it is then announced, as Augustus announced, that the dead constitution has been miraculously resurrected and legality strictly observed, and everyone will believe it, as they believed Augustus, and today believe so many things that are contradicted by the facts in their faces.