Who Needs Evidence When We Already Know Which Side We’re On?

There are physical examinations and tax returns and and oil changes and various other unpleasant things that can’t be forever avoided in this life, no matter how one tries, and the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is one of those things. It’s an acrimonious topic, best avoided over family dinners, but there’s nothing else in the news that allows getting around it.

The very differing versions of the very complicated facts of the matter will surely dominate the headlines for the coming weeks, as the very complicated machinery of the constitutional system grinds how to proceed with the trial. At this point, most people have chosen their side.

So far as we can tell the damned Democrats want to introduce to the trial all the testimony they’ve elicited in congressional testimony and sworn documents from respected Trump-administration civil servants and a Trump donor and political appointee who allege Trump withheld congressionally authorized aid to our Ukrainian allies in exchange for help in his reelection, along with recent media interviews and the documents provided to Congress and perhaps the sworn testimony by an indicted associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who seems tied up in all this. They also impeach the president on the charge of obstructing their efforts to get to the bottom of it.

The Republican response has been that it’s all a “deep state” conspiracy by the damned Democrats to depose a wildly popular president, and that no testimony evidence should be allowed to dignify such a sham trial, even the presumably exculpatory testimony and evidence that might come from Trump’s Secretary of State and moonlighting Chief of Staff and Secretary of Budget and Management and Office and defenestrated national security and the still ongoing personal lawyer who seems up to his neck in all this. We have friends and family who find this quite persuasive, but as much as we despise the damn Democrats we like to hear and consider all the relevant information before making up our minds about anything. There’s also no plausible argument that Trump and the congressional Republicans aren’t obstructing that constitutionally mandated effort.

According to the latest polling a slim 51 percentage of Americans want Trump removed from office, which is well within a margin of error that might allow Trump to win again in the Electoral College, and there’s no denying the polls only predicted the popular vote in the last election, but it does not bode well for his reelection chances. A closer look at the numbers reveals even more bad news for Trump, as women voters and black voters and Latino voters and young voters and other growing demographics of voters want him out by landslide numbers, and even a slim plurality of us aging and increasingly outnumbered white male Republican respondents want a full trial with documentary evidence and sworn testimony and anything else that might either convict or acquit the president.

Barring any bombshell testimony from witnesses Trump and the Republicans might reluctantly allow to testify, at this point their best argument is that yeah, Trump withheld the aid to get election help and publicly refused to comply with congressional efforts to find out about it, but so what? “Get over it,” as Trump’s moonlighting chief of staff and Officer of Management and Budget said, adding “it happens all the time.” Maybe so, but we find that distressing, and suspect that “many people,” as Trump likes to cite, do as well.

The non-partisan Government Accountability Office has decreed it is indeed against the law for a president to withhold congressionally authorized appropriations, and that pretty much comports with our layman’s understanding of how the legislative branch legislates and the executive branch executes according to the Constitution, and so for the judicial branch that adjudges these things agrees. As for obstructing the damned congressional Democrats in their constitutionally approved “deep state” conspiracy efforts, Trump has made quite a show of that, and the fans love him for it, but they’ll change their minds the next time a Democratic president gets in trouble, which might be soon, and for now the rest of the pubic doesn’t like it.

Trump and his Senate allies might be damned if they allow any damning testimony and evidence into a Senate impeachment trial, but they’ll also be damned if they don’t, especially if they don’t introduce any exculpatory evidence or testimony that Trump has previously blocked, as it looks very bad. Maybe it won’t be so bad for Trump if the stock markets are still up and unemployment is still low on Election Day, and the damned Democrats go crazy left, and Trump’s support is sufficiently spread around the Electoral College map, but it still looks very bad.

— Bud Norman

Another Generation of Disillusioned Youth

Some of those youngsters who adorned themselves with Barack Obama tattoos are probably regretting the choice. The tattoo craze might prove as permanent as the ink, but the Obama fad has begun to fade.

Anecdotal evidence of the president’s declining coolness is abundant, from the jokes that the late-night comedians are at long last making to the conversations overheard at the hipster hangouts, but more quantifiable proof is now available from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. The impeccably prestigious institution has published a poll showing that 52 percent of the under-25 set would now like to see the president ousted from office, with only 41 percent still approving of his performance.

Obamacare is cited as the reason for the president’s sudden unpopularity among a cohort that overwhelmingly supported him in the past two elections, and this strikes us as the most likely explanation. Most of the young people we know had somehow gleaned the impression that Obamacare would provide them with unlimited health care at some rich guy’s expense, and now that it has become unavoidably apparent to even the most determinedly uninformed among them that they will be paying hefty fines to remain uninsured in order to subsidize some geezer’s hip replacement in the biggest generational transfer of wealth in history their enthusiasm for the law seems to have waned.

The difficulty of finding a full-time job that will generate the wealth being transferred might also be a factor, although many young people have yet to contemplate the possibility that a president’s policies might have anything to do with that and are still open to the suggestion that it’s the Republicans’ fault for failing to fully fund green energy or something, and it would be pure wishful thinking to imagine that young people have noticed the president’s failed foreign policy or any of the various scandals that have long swirled around the White House. Young people love their cell phones and are well aware that Obama’s National Security Agency is keeping tabs on them, and even though they post every thought in their hairy heads on Facebook or Twitter they express outrage at the violation of their privacy, but the Internal Revenue Service’s harassment of dissident groups and the Justice Department’s gun-running to Mexican drug gangs and such things are of little concern.

The Harvard poll indicates that the young folks’ disillusionment with Obama has not resulted in a newfound affection for the Republicans, and we suspect that rather than becoming conservatives they’re still nurturing class resentments and hoping for the unlimited health care at some rich guy’s expense, but the numbers are bad news for the Democrats nonetheless. If the young voters stay home in next year’s mid-term elections the Democrats will miss them bad, and there might even be a few former Obama supporters showing up to vote for a Republican. Looking further into the electoral future, the Democrats’ dream of a life-long lock on those voters now seems somewhat far-fetched.

Worse yet for the Democrats, many the recently wised-up young folks will be less inclined to fall for political fads in the future. They might even begin to question the Democratic premise that government knows best and can always be trusted so long as the right party is in power, and be willing to at least consider the arguments of those mean old Republicans. Back in an earlier era of disillusioned youth The Who had a big hit with a song called “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and today’s youngsters could do worse for an anthem.

— Bud Norman