Impeachment!

Trump has finally crossed enough lines that the Democrats have been forced to try and impeach him.

And Trump’s predictable, rote response:

And a bit more whining:

So what everyone knew was going to happen has happened, and the President is not even trying to deny it: he has asked a foreign government to help him win the 2020 election by digging up dirt on his opponent, and unlike when he was merely a candidate, he possesses all the weight of the Presidency to get countries to go along with his request.

Trump is releasing the transcript tomorrow, which he obviously thinks will exonerate him since, according to him, he asked nicely.

It’s really no wonder that Trump would be shocked by this resulting in his impeachment: after all, it’s something that he did, live, on camera, during the campaign (“Find those emails”), something he admitted to considering when he fired Comey, this time during a recorded interview (“And I was thinking, this Russia thing…”), something he openly stated he would do again, and would not tell the FBI about (“I think I’d take it”). The Mueller report, while not finding that Trump directly hacked DNC computers, did find that he accepted foreign help in winning the election at every conceivable opportunity. Yet nothing happened. Trump had every reason to believe that he was, in fact, above the law.

So it’s really no wonder at all that Trump simply assumed that if he dangled frozen foreign aid to the Ukraine while nicely asking their President to investigate his chief rival in 2020, nothing would happen. Given Nancy’s reluctance to impeach him following the obvious attempts at obstruction of justice as well as his legal but highly unpatriotic acceptance of Russian help, it’s hard to blame him.

But apparently there is a bridge too far for the Speaker and her house colleagues. The only remaining question is to what degree Republicans choose Trump over the constitution and rule of law. We have seen no bottom to their lack of accountability to the Constitution and total disregard for the norms of American politics, but one thing might be changing.

People are sick as hell of Trump. And it’s no wonder. He’s a fool, a bully, and a troll. His attacks, or jokes, or whatever the hell he tries to do on a daily basis, are stale. He seems hellbent on ruining the only good thing about his presidency, the economy, and he now has primary challengers, which under normal circumstances would be unheard of for an incumbent Republican president riding a record-breaking economy.

Pelosi and other less aggressive democrats have resisted impeachment for two reasons: 1) lack of a true smoking gun; 2) giving drama-queen-in-chief a victimhood rallying cry for 2020. Well, scratch 1 off the list, and given the obvious trend of people finally tiring of this ass-clown, no matter how fat their pockets get, I don’t think 2 matters.

Trump’s dyed-in-the-wool supporters would support him if he gangraped a busload of nuns. That is not hyperbole. They would make up stories about how the Clinton’s financed a vast conspiracy, that the raped nuns weren’t actually nuns but paid crisis actors, that it wasn’t a real school bus, or that the whole thing was Obama in disguise. This is sad but it is true: Trump’s base, especially his evangelical base, have literally given up everything they ever believed to support the biggest conman in American political history, and one of it’s most ineffective Presidents.

So yes, this will deeply energize Trump’s base, which is about 35% of the country, who already would have gladly killed for him if he just asked. They are members of cult-Trump and simply can’t consume any more kool-aid.

The rest of the country either vehemently opposes him, or were already pretty tired of his daily drama. These fatigued centrists have heretofore weighed the economic benefits against the constant stream of idiocy, mendacity, and cruelty emanating from the White House, and have kind of shrugged and decided to see where it all goes. An impeachment inquiry of the President repeating the same illegal and abhorrent behavior that has embroiled his administration in scandal since day 1 may just be enough to switch them to voting Democrat, push them to support one of his now three primary challengers, or just abandon the process altogether.