Impeach! Impeach, they say! If only he were Buckingham, they would take off his head as well. Trump has become the Democrats' version of Richard III, if he wasn't already. (Okay, he was.)
They even moved to open an impeachment "inquiry" (whatever that means -- a little bit chicken, if you ask me -- they've been doing it for the last three years anyway) after Trump announced he was making his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky public Wednesday in unredacted form. And now he's announcing the whistleblower's complaint, whatever hand it is -- second, third, who knows? -- will be released later in the week. Talk about a reckless jumping of the gun on the Democrats' parts. This reeks of outright panic.
So what's really going on here? Why have the Democrats, to put it bluntly, gone berserk? Why are they risking a backlash of cosmic proportions (other than appeasing their psychotically-inflamed base, of course)?
One, distraction. They live in absolute fear of the coming revelations about the Russia probe, from Inspector General Horowitz but even more from the DOJ's John Durham, who can actually put people in jail. The Dems know -- if they have a brain (and a few do) -- these revelations are likely to point up the line at the leaders of the Democratic Party all the way to President Obama. They were all involved to one degree or another with illegally spying on or undermining Trump and his administration and supporters before and after the election. The extent of this we are only beginning to understand.
To put it mildly, not good. Whether you call this treason is up to you, but you can be sure Middle America (i. e. those elusive independent voters) will not appreciate it.
But there's something worse -- and Pelosi's knows it. The only hope for Democrats to defeat Trump is, remote and quixotic as it may be, impeachment. In the midst of the current brouhaha, Joe Biden -- their great (alas white male) hope -- is being exposed as not just a senile plagiarist, but a senile, corrupt plagiarist with a freaky family out of a Southern gothic novel with tentacles reaching into China and Ukraine. Again, not good.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Dems have tacked so far to the left that they wouldn't be able to win an election in Shenyang. Sanders, speaking of senility, is almost risible. He wants to restrict population for reasons of "climate change" when every one of the myriad social programs he so vehemently urges depends on strong continued population growth for economic survival, irrespective of taxes. (Is he that stupid? I don't think so. He's just a liar.)
As for his somewhat subtle clone, Ms. Warren, her proposals are if anything more extreme because she fails to acknowledge (though Colbert did his best to encourage her) that they are going to cost a ton of taxpayer money that approaches national bankruptcy. Even taxing the rich at one hundred percent won't come near supporting her ideas. Wait until Trump gets ahold of that.
So for the Democrats, trouble ahead, trouble behind. Ergo, impeachment.
Of course it will never happen. (Pelosi knows that too. That's why she never held a congressional vote on this "inquiry.") And indeed the whole spectacle might be amusing in a macabre sort of way if there weren't important things going on in the world. The president is engaged in negotiations of tremendous significance with the Chinese and trying to neuter as much as possible the violent mullahs of Iran, but the Democrats don't care. In fact, they would prefer he fail, and seem to be doing everything in their power to make it so. To call that un-American is an understatement. Actually, it's despicable and deeply immoral, not just for the citizens of this country, but for the world. What children!