Here's Why He's in Trouble Now

There are indications that 45's in trouble already--not just with Democrats, but with Republicans, too. There are certain things that can't be denied, even now.

First: Nobody had to make up new laws or new rulings for a president to break so they could get rid of him. In the case of Andrew Johnson, the Radical Republicans not only overrode several of his vetoes, but created (again, over his veto) the Tenure of Office Act, making all a president's Cabinet firings--not just hirings, but firings, too--subject to Senate approval. Johnson, in a typical fit, tried it anyhow with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, one of the late and revered Abraham Lincoln's top advisors. Equipped with that, the Republicans fell full force on Johnson with everything else he'd done, and came within one vote of removing him.

Second: The Republican-based investigatory team, led by Kenneth Starr, finagled a Supreme Court ruling that a sitting president can't keep from facing court proceedings while he's still president. Starr then went back to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and demanded that he could expand his investigation beyond Hillary Clinton's Whitewater land matter and look at Bill Clinton's personal life. From there, he got a grand jury formed, Clinton lied to try to cover up the Monica Lewinsky affair, and Starr had his indictment free and clear, whatever that had to do with Bill's conduct as president (The essence of which was completely transparent: If you cheat on your wife, you shouldn't be president. We now have a Republican president at least as guilty of that, and Republicans are sailing right past it.). As we know, Clinton survived impeachment charges of both perjury and obstruction of justice, as the Senate votes fell far short of the two-thirds required and didn't even gain a majority (though the obstruction vote fell 50-50).

Nope, the Democrats made nothing up. They didn't take 45 to court for any other reason than what anybody else has ever been subjected to, such as looking at his back taxes. Still no witch hunt.

Third: The momentum created had little or nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi. As much as she could have turned this into a personal vendetta, she did nothing of the sort. Nope--it was seven Democratic freshman members, from swing districts but with military backgrounds, to write a letter to the Washington Post demonstrating their concerns about 45's complete lack of caring about national security, as demonstrated in the Ukrainian phone call. You can follow her thinking pretty clearly: Well, if they have the guts to put it on the line....

Fourth: 45 screwed up all on his own and while he was actually president. He asked the leader of another country to contact the Attorney General to help him smear the son of a potential election opponent. Nothing--nothing--has to this point been discovered by anyone, including the government of Ukraine, which investigated it independently--to indicate that wrongdoing has taken place.

Fifth: Nixon's screwup--his being taped, not getting rid of the tapes, and his suggestion that the Watergate break-in be covered up, nicely preserved and access to which resulting because of Alexander Butterfield's Senate testimony--was also his own, and also involved no new legislation by Democrats to avoid or blame. That taped conversation was the 'smoking gun' that created the final downhill slide which would have most likely led to his impeachment and removal had he not resigned.

Sixth: Today, someone sent the 45 anti-impeachment talking points to Pelosi's office. To her office. That won't remove any doubt about his staff's utter incompetence, not to mention his own. That can't be unseen, either.

With the gaffes of him and others, the Mueller report can return front and center as additional evidence of incompetence and malfeasance. Impeachment inquiries find what they find, and there's no reason to believe that the Democrats won't weave that into their quilts--or that additional evidence will open up the Mueller report to new scrutiny. If 45's attorneys have a problem with that, they'll have to take it up with Chief Justice John Roberts, who would serve as the lead judge in an impeachment trial.

We have a way to go to get to that point, but much of the potential evidence is already in plain sight, enough so that it might take some doing to keep the Democrats from looking like they're railroading 45 out of town. Here will be my response: Just like the Ukraine phone call, he's done all this himself. Nobody tricked him into it. It isn't like he didn't get any advice. He didn't listen, he won't listen, and he's paying the price.

And watch this: the Senate has just voted 54-41 to stop the Pentagon from moving money toward building the border wall. That has to mean that, if the Democrats voted in a bloc, at least seven Republican Senators crossed over. Seven crossovers won't gain a conviction for impeachment charges: The number for that is 67, and that may never happen anyhow. But it's an indication that the intimidation factor that 45 may have had is already wearing thin. The wall was his baby, every bit as much as health care was for Obama. That the unified support for it is now clearly diminished is an additional shot fired across his bow.

Speaking of numbers: Last week, the number of Democratic House members supporting an impeachment inquiry was all of 134, as it had been for weeks. This morning, according to MSNBC, it's 201--a 50% increase. As Malcolm Gladwell would put it, a tipping point seems to have been reached. The committee hearings tangential to this matter will either quickly accelerate that number, or stall it in place--in which case, the Democrats will fail. But they have fewer than 20 members yet to convince before the number gets to a simple House majority of 218, enough to file and pass a discharge petition to hold an impeachment vote. Again, Pelosi will probably have to advise her Democratic members to hold off on that until the best moment, and make sure the committee chairs--major players now--will do their due diligence to turn over every shred of evidence and conduct their hearings in ways that, despite Republican efforts to delay and distract that undoubtedly will be coming, can still be reinforced as fair and thorough.

But increasingly, that best moment appears to be nearing. It will still be weeks before this is played out, and Republicans will strategize to get new talking points to try to wear down the Democratic momentum, shore up the base, and run out the clock until next November. We will see how far that gets. The battle, though, is now joined. And 45 is in serious trouble. This time, it seems real.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark