(Context: 1, 2)
I don't know whether Trump's actions with respect to Ukraine and investigating Joe and Hunter Biden's Burisma-related dealings (qua point man on Ukraine for the Obama Admin, and not just qua potential 2020 political rival as the dishonest anti-Trump fake news would have you believe) amounts to an impeachable offense. This is why I eagerly look forward to next week's progression of "the House impeachment inquiry" to the Judiciary Committee, where apparently constitutional experts will give the American People some testimony on what is a high crime or misdemeanor. We can then find out whether the two major political parties are being consistent in their application of the rules. A bonus feature of the next week's hearings will be committee Republicans grilling the witnesses about cases such as Clinton, Nixon, Obama, Reagan, et al. Some questions these experts should help us to answer:
- How are Trump's actions similar to or different from those of Presidents Clinton (who was impeached by the House but not removed by the Senate) and Nixon (who avoided impeachment by resigning...)? How does this scandal differ from a non-impeachment-level scandal such as, say, Iran-Contra?
- How are Trump's actions qua "using the levers of power to gain an electoral political advantage" different from the following by Obama: (1) Having his IRS make it a lot more difficult for "tea party" groups to gain tax exempt status like any other such advocacy groups; (Obama said there was not a "smidgen of corruption" there, a claim belied by then- IRS director Lois Lerner invoking the Fifth in front of Congress.) (2) Telling Vlad Putin's aides (caught on a hot mic) that he would have more flexibility for whatever Russia-related dealings after the 2012 election; (3) Overseeing an intelligence investigation into a Trump campaign aide apparently on the basis of spotty information. (The Dems are convinced, after all, that any action whereby a lever of power is used to gain an electoral advantage is impeachable, in Trump's case. Are they consistent?)
- Is it really more than Trump being Trump, including his causal relationship with the truth? Trump was under the impression that Biden used aid funds for Ukraine as leverage to prevent a prosecutor from looking into Burisma (where his son appears quite strongly to have benefited from nepotism). According to Trump it "sounds terrible to me." Well, if it sounds terrible to him - whether or not he was misinformed by overexposure to the zealously partisan rantings of Hannity & Co. - then what would be unlawful about wanting it looked into, irrespective of whether the guy may be a political opponent? (The question, then, is whether he would have brought up Biden if Biden weren't running in 2020. But then we also have Trump milking his usual obsessions about 2016 in the phone call as well, with the Crowdstrike server thing and supposed or confirmed Ukrainian meddling in 2016. So if we can't read Trump's mind, what do we conclude here, impeachment-wise?) And what difference does it make to all this that, plausibly, Trump was looking for evidence that Ukraine would be serious about fighting corruption generally?
- What's the evidence that Biden/Burisma was such a big deal to Trump, over and above his having mentioned it in the 7/25 phone call, that he was pressuring people this way and that, sending Rudy and others to home in on that specifically, and basically trying to recruit other government actors into his corruptly-intended plan? (Basically, the sort of Watergate-related actions that Nixon was involving or trying to involve others in?)
- Does it make a real difference whether Trump was asking for help from Ukraine on finding serious misdeeds/corruption by Biden, vs. asking Ukraine to manufacture dirt? If there were real corruption there, wouldn't we all want to know about it, irrespective of who benefits electorally? (The anti-Trump media which have done themselves no favors by pretty much completely squandering their objectivity and credibility, have used the phrase "dig up dirt". Like, just make it up, or find something real? The confusion dishonestly generated here may show up in polls, but I wouldn't expect the House GOP committee members or other reasonably skeptical folks to accept that characterization.)
- Does the evidence of wrongdoing need to be overwhelming and unambiguous before removing a president from office? (Was Bill Clinton's wrongdoing, for which there was overwhelming and unambiguous evidence, and for which he was stripped of his law license, still not enough to be impeachable? [See here for analysis on the latter.]) Is that standard met here?
2/3 of the Senate is needed to convict and remove the president; that would suggest the requirement of overwhelming public support commensurate with such a supermajority. Clear and convincing answers to questions such as the above are necessary for public support to shift in the direction of conviction/removal, particularly as consistent with traditional constitutional practice. 51 percent of the country "supporting impeachment and removal" as of a couple weeks ago is not evidence of overwhelming public support commensurate with a Senate supermajority.
The Dems and their media enablers have squandered too much credibility at this point, from their behaviors during the Trump years alone (not the least of which were their shameful and reckless attempts to smear Brett Kavanaugh), for their interpretations of things to be taken at anything close to face value.
(Can people who recklessly smeared Kavanaugh be trusted to honestly carry out a judicial proceeding? Sens. Biden, Harris, Sanders, and Warren believed Blasey Ford's not-believable testimony, hence believed Kavanaugh's guilt, either before all the facts/testimony were in [as in the case of Scumbag Harris, and Scumbags Gillibrand and Hirono], or even after all the testimony and sworn statements were in, including Leland Keyser and others' crucial debunking of Ford's "memory," and, not least of all, the fact that Ford and Kavanaugh were in different social circles and so their being anywhere together was highly improbable. If you were accused of a crime, would you want the likes of Biden, Harris, Sanders, Warren, Gillibrand and Hirono on your jury? The question should answer itself. BTW, when yet another bullshit NYT story about an allegation against Kavanaugh surfaced a couple months ago, almost all of these people immediately tweeted in support of Kavanaugh's impeachment. Biden, prudently, didn't tweet such support along with Harris, Sanders, Warren and also Mayor Pete and a couple obvious clowns now out of the '20 running. IOW, with the exception of Biden, all of the poll-leading '20 Dems would impeach an office-holder even on the flimsiest of bases. The flouting of judicial and epistemic standards here is severe/perverse enough that Biden almost surely emerges as the least-worst option of those named above, pretty much by default.)
The likes of AOC (and other manifestly foolish Dems) seem to have wanted to impeach Trump for pretty much anything, including "racism," from the get-go. (If you still aren't convinced what an obnoxious little nitwit AOC is, check out her vocal fry with the word "racisuuuum" in this excerpt.) They milked a Trump-Putin collusion narrative for ratings for two years until their time- and attention-wasting charade fell apart after the Mueller findings. The reasonable presumption here is that they have partisan motivations and hold GOP people to a more unreasonably demanding standard than they hold their own.
The reasonable presumption about the GOP with respect to their political opponents is also the same. Let's say that a left/Dem SCOTUS justice dies in the next calendar year, a presidential election year. If Mitch McConnell & Co. decide, contrary to their stance in 2016, to go ahead with a SCOTUS confirmation process denied to Obama nominee Merrick Garland, then they will self-convict as partisan pieces of shit. The Dems, in their own partisan-POS way, will jump on the partisan GOP POS the split second any such thing happens. But they were the same people calling for Judge Garland to be given a chance, after having said back in 1992 that SCOTUS nominees should not be given a chance during a presidential election season. So there. Perhaps the only serious question at this point is which of the two sides is more of a partisan POS, which side has squandered more intellectual credibility than its opponents, etc. Philosophy awaits.
