Most days I want Trump gone. Pence is terrible too in my liberal playbook. Liberal is a great word, by the way. It does not mean neoliberal. Liberal is what Chris Hedges wants when he talks about civil demonstrating and restoring democracy, I do not want to see rights trampled, the climate scourged, and health undergo a chaotic return to something worse than we can imagine. I want a way out. But today I do not think impeachment is as likely as I did yesterday. At least on Russia. Here's why.
The Russia matter
I am guessing that Trump at some point really dug Michael Flynn.
Trump is not the most reliable friend. When his mentor, the execrable Roy Cohn was dying of AIDS, Trump cut him off as if he had never known the man. It was a remarkable thing. But Trump and Flynn were peas in a pod, fellow conspiracy nuts, men accustomed to lying as a survival strategy. So for the moment at least Trump appears to be loyal. But I believe there is another reason.
The grounds are shaky
The coverup that would be needed to hang Donald Trump is too amorphous to be much more than the kind of garbage that Ken Starr dug up when he was bilking the public on nothing. It is not that there is nothing there. You know that someone will dig something out and we will learn that X told Y that Z was fixing the election and so forth.
But the truth of the Trump Russia tie is the banking he has done with them for years. He now disingenuously denies it. But when he could not get a loan here he went there. Trump's Russia bank ties are clear and obvious and they relate to sleazoid business and little else. If Russia helped him win it is the way Russia is. Donald is slippery, people.
You can bemoan but most likely not impeach.
Sally Yates Tells Senators She Warned Trump About Michael Flynn https://t.co/xi599k4QCH
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) May 9, 2017
So what's left?
Outrage is great if you are Keith Olbermann and can still make a dime on it. But it fades in the hard light of more and more daily nonsense from the White House and the sneaking sense that the slippery one will not be tripped up by Russia.
One clue is the actual language and posture of those who most want to get rid of Trump. They do not act like people on the verge of success.
Resist?
Resist assumes that there is something coming at you. That is correct. But it is the Federalist Society and the one percent. The boy from Queens does errands for them. As in changing the composition of our courts. As in blowing away climate change. As in imperiling the health of millions. These are the outrages that we are becoming numb to. In this situation, it is not a good idea to be comfortably numb unless you thnk you are immortal.
Find better reasons
There are stronger reasons to be rid of Donald than that he has a liking for Russia because they bailed him out when he went bankrupt or when our economy collapsed on W's watch with help from Clinton's embrace of Wall Street. I shall enumerate the ways we could be rid of Trump as time goes by.