God knows we all want the clown out of office.
Every day is like a month with this guy. Constant chaos. Ineptitude. Blabbing away state secrets. The narcissism that defies belief.
And, as illustrated again so recently, there is the matter of the president*’s devotion to Russia and his attempt to derail the investigation into Russian influence on our elections, his campaign, his businesses — and his own damn self -- by trying to talk the FBI director out of pursuing Mike Flynn, and then firing him because the whole Trump-Russia thing is, you know, all made up.
Does Trump deserve impeachment? Of course. Or, the 25th Amendment remedy — declare him insane and ship him back to his gilded palace in Manhattan.
But impeachment of Trump now runs big risks.
We’d get Mike Pence, a sane and savvy politician, and a very, very, very conservative one. The country would breathe a sigh of relief, and Pence would get a “honeymoon” — and the GOP would take advantage of it to unite themselves again.
Before you know it, they’d pass an awful health”care” bill and tax cuts for the rich and fetus-sparing laws and God only knows what else.
Right now, Trump’s chaos has been working in favor of everyone who rightly fears what a Republican Party in charge of all three branches of government can do. With so much energy being devoted to the insanity and crimes of our so-called commander in chief, the GOP doesn’t have enough political wind at its back now to pursue its nasty, mean agenda.
We need to keep it that way.
So, what’s the best course?
As a veteran of the Watergate years, I believe the best thing for Democrats (and the country in general) is a long, drawn-out investigation. No impeachment until at least 2018, and the closer to the mid-terms the better. The longer the country has to grow to loathe Trump, the more it gets exhausted of Trump and his lickspittle Republicans, the more likely the Dems are to recapture the Congress, as they did in the 1974 post-Watergate mid-terms.
It’s going to take some stamina on our part. It will be exhausting. There is the risk that Trump does something really stupid, like nuke Uruguay or the New York Times. But if we survive, we’ll be better off for having slowly wrung the life out of Cheeto Jesus rather than kicking his ass out of office right this minute.