The obligatory Senate-trial post

This won't be lengthy, as I'm still of the view that the endgame is already etched in stone. Trump will not be convicted, and the odds are better than even that he'll be reelected.

I fully understand how pundits afflicted with Trumpism to varying degrees are continuing the witch-hunt claim, but to see Senators with resumes full of solid conservative bona fides taking the same line is dispiriting. (Ted Cruz, I'm looking at you. In fact, my respect for you took a hit when you never publicly and explicitly said, "Anybody who treats my wife and father like that can go to Hell.")

On the other hand, Democrats have irreparably tainted the case that could have been made for Trump's impeachment, due to their inability to accept the legitimacy of 2016's outcome:

To Democrats, having Trump in office is the problem. Getting him out of office, by any means necessary, is the solution. Be it impeachment, the 25th Amendment, forcing a resignation, or beating him in an election, they simply want him gone. Even crazy talk like Elizabeth Warren’s trashing of the Constitution’s means of electing a president gets a hearing because Democrats will go to any length to achieve a fantasy of not having Trump in the White House.

The phrase “stolen election” still gets plenty of play on Twitter. Democrats have stoked the flames of #Resistance by never accepting President Trump as their president. On one hand, balled into a raised fist, they are serious about removing him through impeachment, but on the other, open palmed hand, they are fundraising like hell on Trump, and letting that dictate their actions on impeachment.

House Democrats never agreed on the means to remove Trump. Speaker Nancy Pelosi always wanted to let Trump hoist himself on his own petard and beat him in 2020. But she was forced to accept impeachment, on a rushed scheduled, engineered by Adam Schiff, who had an impeachment hammer looking for any nail.

The evidence is not flimsy. From the July 25 phone call itself to the testimony that the House heard, to the trove of documents that Lev Parnas has made public, it's clear that Trump leaned on Ukraine to announce investigations into the Bidens and into this Crowdstrike server that only existed in Trump's mind. In other words, to use the power of his office and to exploit policy toward an ally that has Russia breathing down its neck for political gain.

Still, does anyone seriously think Dems can peel off the requisite number of Republican votes?

Now to the question of whether he should be impeached. Here, my bunch - conservatives who find Trump fundamentally unfit - are divided. Some have made "he must be impeached!" their battle cry, and even made the matter of how Republican Senators vote on bringing in additional witnesses, and then the actual conviction of the president, the determinant of whether these Senators are fundamentally people of moral courage or cowardice. Others say, "Let's wrap this up quickly and let the voters decide in November." I can see the merits of both positions.

That's a strange view on my part. I'm generally an absolutist. One rarely finds me blowing hot and cold on anything. (Right, LITD readers?)

I guess it's just that pulling the trigger on the Trump presidency would not have a measurable effect on post-America's spiritual sickness. Trump's base would be more inflamed than ever, and leftists would be emboldened like never before. Pence would have a short time to mount a serious campaign to keep the presidency he gained through impeachment, and he'd have a hornet's nest of disarray to sort through to make that happen.

So we'll get lots of preening and righteous indignation until this thing reaches its foregone conclusion.

I'm not apathetic. I jut understand that we as a nation, as a society, have put ourselves in a dandy of a pickle, and there is not going to be any kind of splendid resolution to that in the short term. The phrase "the way around is through" is disturbingly apt at this moment.