by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
Before I begin, I have to note that a fish rots from its head. A lot very power, very intelligent and very well educated people are playing defense for an extremely reckless doofus. So, the thing to take into consideration is I’m trying to imagine how House Trump will respond to the upcoming impeachment battle. But there’s an existential weakness, no matter what — Trump himself. There may come a point when just like how I see a fence at the border and everyone else sees a wall, there may be a pretty big difference between what many of can actually see with our senses and what Republicans tell us we see.
Let The People Decide
At some point we will get close enough to the 2020 election cycle that the Republican talking heads will say given that what Trump did isn’t really a big deal, what’s the point in going through the impeachment process in the first place. The critical flaw to this argument — and the one they don’t want us to think too much about because, well, lulz, they have no shame and lust after power for power’s sake — is that Trump demonstrably is so shifty and corrupt that there are no assurances that there will be a free and fair election in the first place. And that, in itself, is the more existential aspect of this clusterfuck. Our entire 200 or so years of republican rule rests on Trump doing something so catastrophically bad that he loses enough Senate Republicans that they vote to convict.
I say this because if Trump is so a craven doofus as to call the president of Ukraine 24 hours after being given a political pardon by the “bad optics” of Bob Mueller’s Congressional testimony, you damn well the moment he’s acquitted by the Senate he’s going to be emboldened AGAIN. If this wrapped ups around, say Feb. 2020, that gives him a pretty long time to use the levers of Federal power to fuck with the election. That’s his thing. He’s so obsessed with winning at any cost that he’s willing to pretty much destroy the entire country and it’s tradition of free and fair elections to do it. Nothing will be off the table. He will be completely above the law. Trump will grow so absolutely brazen that he can bribe Electors or dox them or whatever. He is going to win. There will be no stopping. What are Democrats going to do, impeach him AGAIN just a few days before the election? Or between when he loses the election and when he uses corrupt means to secure an Electoral College victory? Have you been paying attention? So it’s reasonable to assume that if Trump somehow magically lost the election that he would simply use post-Election Day corrupt means to win. And there simply would not be the political will to do anything about it. So, Republicans with no shame and a craven lust for power “win.” This is not a hysterical scenario. This is a scenario using the metrics that have been established in broad daylight about Trump’s personality and motives.
Abject Denial Of Reality
There is a chance that, like I said, Trump will self-own again. There will come a point where is behavior is so surreal and erratic that it is literally impossible not to notice. But Republicans, knowing that Trump has the love of the base and people generally aren’t interested in politics (lulz) will simply not just be party over country, they’ll be party over reality. The way to combat this is, well, make their life hell. A Republican pressure point is cramming through young hack MAGA Federal judges. If Republicans simply deny reality altogether — or refuse to talk about the dick pic Trump tweeted out — you shut down the Senate using parliamentary warfare. I don’t know the finer points of the Senate, but I’m under the impression that if you really wanted to be a dick, you could slow it so much that it essentially ground to a halt.
“Managed Democracy”
The most chilling aspect of the problems Trump is experiencing right now is they are in large part the result of Trump finally figuring out how to use the levers of power. So, it makes sense that if Trump managed to stay cogent enough to realize he may be facing an existential crisis, will simply break the entire liberal democracy that we currently enjoy. He pardons a dozen powerful people. He appoints a Special Prosecutor to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. He leans into how the Judiciary is now but an extension of the GOP. He will figure that most people really won’t care (lulz) about some pretty basic rights as long as they economy is doing well. The only response I can think of this is, on an ideological level, radicalism. Radical Resistance would manifest its in the use of enlisting “civilians” into the fight against fascism. One of the few times House Trump has backed down — the whole kids n cages situation — the bolts popped off civil society for a few days as pretty much everyone on TV looking into the camera and said the policy was horrific. In this case, it wouldn’t be a day, it would be weeks. There would come a point, maybe, when a few Republicans might realize they had gotten all the massive plutocrat tax cut they wanted and Pence would give them the young hack MAGA judges on the Federal bench too. They might not abandoned Trump, but they might lesson his political power.
Again, let me stress something to all the powerful Republicans who still believe Trump is going to establish The Thousand Year Trump — Trump is not just an evil version of Being There’s Chauncey Gardner, he’s also a criminally incompetent self-own artist. If you thought today was bad, there’s a non-zero chance you’re going to be on TV defending a presidential junk pic. Or the president tweeting in the N-word to Obama. Or the president “joking” on Twitter that MAGA should kill the Whistleblower. I know Republicans have no shame and are craven in their lust for power for power’s sake. But maybe I’d like to end this on an up note and speculate maybe, just maybe a Republican with power might at least do The Pence Pivot. They won’t, of course. We’re fucked.
