History attests Democrats time and again have fought through gusty political headwinds to get great things accomplished for the benefit of all Americans. Ridding the nation of the self-serving, traitor Trump must be the next great thing on the list.
Have you noticed how many Republicans are telling Democrats that impeaching Donald Trump would be a mistake? I mean besides the serial disgrace himself, who said this as recently as Friday: “I don’t think they can impeach somebody that’s doing a great job.”
I’ll stop typing for a second while you pick yourself up off the floor.
One after another, Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and Alan Dershowitz have been saying impeaching Trump would “backfire” and “blow up in the faces” of Democrats. Hmmmm … Why would they say such things? And those ‘best words’ they are using … Notice anything scripted about them?
Wasn’t so long ago that Graham said, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.” But now …?
How about we stop listening to Graham and the Republicans for good, and start believing in ourselves and our instincts. How about we keep doing what is good for America and make good and damn sure Americans know who did them.
Not enough has been made of the Democrats’ history of ineffectual messaging. You’d think a party that inhabits the moral high ground on scores of issues that have truly made America great would be better at conveying their life-changing impacts to the American public. It’s as if Democrats think it simply enough for their stellar results to speak for themselves. While that might be the polite and noble approach, it is also completely naive, and even dangerous as we’ve seen with the spurious election of Trump.
Over the decades Democrats have fought for civil rights, equal rights, the environment, animals, women’s rights, equal pay, wise diplomacy, social security, medicare, Peace Corp, Job Corp, the GI Bill, and 1,000 other etceteras … Many, if not all of these issues, were once unpopular with Republicans. Now? Go ahead, just try to take our social security away, Mitch.
Take 2010 … President Obama and the Democrats were in the early stages of resurrecting an economy that was completely savaged by the Bush Republicans. Things had not been that bad — devastatingly awful –since the Great Depression. But they were slowly turning around. Obama, Pelosi and the Democrats had rescued us from the abyss. Hell, they had even passed a law that had the audacity to provide healthcare for everybody. Up to that point, the healthcare industry had put handguns to the heads of legislators, who for years and years willingly did their sleazy bidding.
So what happened thanks to all this history-making work to rescue the economy and make sure sick children were covered by insurance? The Democrats were positively battered in the Midterms and lost the Congress. And the truly ‘sick’ irony? The very same GOP which ran against the Affordable Care Act that year and proudly and disparagingly named it Obamacare, watched with horror as that issue boomeranged and harpooned them in this year’s Midterms. Turns out people really, really like having an opportunity to purchase affordable healthcare — especially the kind that doesn’t punish you for having the audacity to have any preexisting conditions.
If only the Democrats messaging around the ACA had been crisper, not so defensive and ultimately drowned out by the Republicans’ go-to play to their base: Obamacare, like the man himself, was anti-American and anti-Christian. Simple messaging for such simple people.
So here we are today …
Democrats just outvoted Republicans by over 7,000,000 votes in the Midterms but are being told it will “blow up in their face” if they impeach Trump. Remember, only a few months ago Republicans were warning Democrats and America of the perils of having Nancy Pelosi lead the House again. “Don’t try it,” they said. “America won’t go along with it. It will cost you at the polls.”
For once, Democrats ignored them. Then they proceeded to smash the Republicans and proudly elected Pelosi to be our Speaker. And speaking of polls … Here’s one that shows Pelosi is now more popular than Trump. How do you spell, w-i-n-n-i-n-g?
The New York Times’ David Leonhardt just laid out the best case I’ve read yet why the Democrats must move to eradicate Trump from the Capital landscape. Essentially, it is a moral imperative, or as Leonhardt types, “The unrelenting chaos that Trump creates can sometimes obscure the big picture. But the big picture is simple: The United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for the office as Trump. And it’s becoming clear that 2019 is likely to be dominated by a single question: What are we going to do about it?”
Further …
“He has already shown, repeatedly, that he will hurt the country in order to help himself. He will damage American interests around the world and damage vital parts of our constitutional system at home. The risks that he will cause much more harm are growing.”
This is precisely what Democrats need to be saying.
When Trump says, “I don’t think they can impeach somebody that’s doing a great job,” the Democratic response needs to be this, “You, in fact, are a delusional loon, who does not have the slightest notion of what ethics or competence look or smell like. Time and again you have served only yourself and your family during your two-year vacation to the White House. You have sided with Putin and thrown your country under the bus. This is not great. It is without precedence and much of it is against the laws of the United States of America. You are done.”
Much like the landmark Civil Rights Act or the New Deal, turning out a destructive traitor and sending him off to abuse only his family may not be wholly popular by some in this country yet, but history will undoubtedly show that it will have been the right thing to do.
After all, Democrats have been doing the right thing for all Americans for many, many decades. It’s about time they made good and damn sure everybody got that message.
