Tag: Nixon

The Misunderstood Legacy Of Watergate

Now what you think.
Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Watergate gave us a false sense of how easy it might be to shame a president out of office. In a way, we can blame this on Sen. Barry Goldwater. It was he who organized a trip to the White House in August 1974 to tell Nixon it was time to go — he didn’t have the votes.

But, really, the now expected endgame of Watergate in all likelihood was not an example of “the system working” as was often said in post-Watergate America. In fact, it’s the opposite — Nixon resigning short-circuited the Constitutional process. We would have been better off decades later if Nixon had allowed the process of trial to take place. We would have a far more better understanding of how the impeachment process could successfully work.

And now here we are in 2019. Everything is different than 1974. Fox News exists. This is happening as a presidential cycle is reving up, not as midterms approach. Apologists for Trumplandia simply want to run out the clock in the name of “fairness.” They don’t give a shit about fairness, all they care about is getting us so far into 2020 that Trump survives to win re-election corruptly.

Bill Barr hasn’t even done a criminal referral for a sweeping list of notable anti-Trump names. What better way to end an impeachment process than to indict Hillary Clinton for “secretly” being behind the claim that Russians colluded with the Trump campaign. That’s a real possibility at this point. Let that sink in.

As I keep ranting about to anyone who will listen — not only is Trump not some sort of political genius, he’s also his own worst enemy. He has an entire support apparatus at his beck and call and he still may not get impeached but convicted. That’s a pretty astonishing — if cold hard — fact.

But he may still survive.

Of course, purging Trump is just the first step. All the dangers associated with MAGA are still going to be there. Kris Kobach and Tom Cotton have be watching and taking notes about what worked with Trump and what didn’t. So, keep your political powder dry, folks.

The Apocalyptic Rock Fight: Why I Doubt Trump Will Ever Be Removed From Office

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

Here are some scenarios explaining why I think Trump is never going to leave office until (hopefully) he’s forced to leave by the constraints of the Constitution.

1. There’s No Blue Wave
In this case, Trump pardon’s everyone, fires everyone and the United States goes full autocracy. There’s no free and fair election for the rest of my life — at least — with the Russians being given free reign to do whatever necessary to throw elections if dark money, voter suppression and gerrymandering doesn’t do it first.

2. The Election Is Thrown By The Russians
In this case, the end result will be exactly the same as the above. The Republican Party is no better than the Vichy French at this point and we will officially enter a surreal dystopia where there is a complete disconnect between the will of the people and who actually runs the country. Either there will be a revolution (of sorts) or people will be so fed up that they will give up and the Republicans will gut the social safety net, eliminate taxes for everyone but the poor, outlaw abortion and end gay rights. You know, the usual.

3. There’s A Blue Wave…But…

a. But The Republicans Refuse To Honor The Results
I honestly think half the reason the Republicans are so unwilling to protect elections is doing so gives them the ability to question any result they don’t like. They’ll hold hearings during the lame duck session and do everything in their power to question the legitimacy of the results as Trump eggs them on on Twitter. In fact, they may simply refuse to certify any vote they don’t like and the American Republic will, in effect, be dead.

b. Trump Whips Up The Base On Twitter
Trump could very well actively encourage his supporters to start killing people between election night and when the new Congress is sworn in. This might be the excuse he might need to declare martial law “until things are sorted out” and we’re exactly where we would be had the Republicans won in the first place.

c. Trump Starts A War
I could very well see Trump pick a fight with either Iran or the DPRK — or both — at any point between now and whenever the actual vote in the Senate is held to remove him from office, should that actually ever occur (I doubt it.) Throw him Trump also beginning to mull in an extremely passive-aggressive on manner on Twitter about how everyone seems to want him dead and things could grow pretty surreal, pretty quick.

d. Trump Is Impeached But Not Convicted
Getting this far, having said everything above it, is a real longshot. But if there is a Blue Wave and we do manage to get the House to impeach Trump, there’s pretty much no endgame I can think of where you can get 67 Senators to vote to convict Trump. So, in essence, Trump for political reasons is a tyrant. A king. An elected dictator. You only get one shot to convict a sitting president and so should Trump be impeached but not convicted, he will be only emboldened and his supporters will have their final argument: so what if he’s this or that thing, the Senate didn’t convict him now shut up and watch while we cut taxes, gut the “administrative state” and outlaw abortion. Of course, there is a very slim possibility that what would happen is from the point Trump isn’t convicted to whenever he should happen to leave office (hint Jan. 20 2025) we will have a situation similar to the Andrew Johnson Administration where the legislative branch essentially ran the country because of the political power of the Radical Republicans. There is a very small chance that the political frustration associated with the inability to convict Trump will lead to the rise of the Radical Resistance. Trump will tweet all the time how he’d going to declare war or martial law but it’s all bluff and we suffer through a surreal political siege in Washington for years.

dA. The Republicans Intentionally Botch A Snap Lame Duck Impeachment
Should the election be a true Blue Wave and the Republicans get shellacked despite all the headwinds (which I doubt will be overcome, but still) there is a small possibility that soon after the election, the Republicans will do a last ditch effort to save things by impeaching Trump themselves for two reasons. 1) They would have control of the narrative. 2) They would have the absolute ability to pick Pence’s successor should Trump miraculously leave office or be somehow accidentally convicted. Waiting the shadows, of course, is Ivanka Trump. What better way to grease Trump’s decision to leave office but to assure him he’d get a full presidential pardon — as would his family — and Ivanka would be cued up to have a national political career of her own as veep? This is pretty unlikely for various reasons, but it is within the realm of possibility given the sneaky motherfuckers we’re dealing with.

e. Trump Is Convicted By The Senate, But Goes Nuts
This is, by far, the least likely scenario. This is 1 in 100 (or 1,000) territory. But here goes — after Mueller releases his report and after months and months of Congressional hearings, Trump’s poll numbers finally edge down towards 20% or less and Republicans actively begin to talk about the merits of a President Pence. The sheer scope of incriminating material dug up about Trump will be so extensive and damning that somehow, someway 67 Senators conclude that Trump has to go.

eA. Trump Refuses To Accept The Conviction
There’s a decent chance that should this extremely unlikely scenario occurs, that Trump will flip the fuck out and do any number of active counter measures. He could start a war or wars. He could unilaterally declare martial law. We would be in the murky, surreal world of not quite knowing who was running the country as Trump used all his political power to rally his supporters to the White House to fend off his actual physical eviction from the Oval Office. We could very well slide into the unprecedented territory of the military making the final call on all of this. The Constitution is pretty clear about it all, but this will be a political decision to the very, very, very, very end and while if we actually get this far I suspect Trump will be gotten out of the White House for no other reason than this would mean a President Pence, things could get extremely hairy as we all worry about who, exactly, has the nuclear launch codes and what would happen if Trump decided to take the world down with him.

eB. Trump Leaves Office, But At A Price
It seems pretty obvious that Trump might, as suggested above, be forced out of office only if Ivanka was named Pence’s successor. But this, in a way, is the murkiest, most extreme scenario because it would suggest that the only way we physically get Trump out of the Oval Office is one last bending to his craven insane reality TV star political needs.

So, there you go. As of right now, I think it’s over. The bad guys are going to win, no matter what for economic, demographic and generally fucked up legal reasons and we’re doomed to a surreal dystopia where plutocrats and the deporables run the country into the ground and within 20 years the United States will be a quasi-theocratic fascist state that has completely receded from the global stage and that, as they say, will be that.

But it’s up to you to prove me wrong.

Vote!

Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He is working on his first novel. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.