Salva Ukrani - Impeach Trump!
This essay summarizes five videos about whether and how Trump can be stopped and why. The links are at the bottom. There are some people on the left claiming that Trump voters should have buyers' remorse – although they are mainly doing party building rather than trying to stop Trump.
Trump could have been stopped if Democrats said the right things about his relationship with Putin. If they had said that the Perfect Phone Call and Hanging Mike Pence were a diversion covering up the fact that Trump was doing Putin’s bidding and both denying Javelins and holding the insurrection were a GRU (think KGB) operation – the GOP would have removed Trump in each impeachment. The Dems instead wanted to embarrass Trump and win the 2020 election, including the House and Senate.
The Insurrection put Georgia in the Democratic camp. They may not hold it. The fact that Biden was Catholic and did not heavily stress abortion rights gave him the swing state win. Harris stressed abortion rights and urged people to vote for her on that basis – with swing state Pro-Life Catholic Democrats staying home as a result. Democrats lost votes in the House in 2020 and 2022 and did not pick it up in 2024 – largely due to Harris.
What is the proof? Asking the people that voted will tell you nothing. Instead, someone needs to poll Democrats who voted in 2020 and stayed home in 2024 in the Swing States why they did not come out. Open ended responses would be entertaining. Asking them if they thought Trump would do what he is now doing would give unreliable answers, especially if asked issue by issue. The key question is whether they stayed home because of the Harris promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act restoring Roe.
If the Center for Reproductive Rights had explained to the Supreme Court that viability meant that a person could be born at that stage, so that under law they cannot be aborted, Roe may not have fallen. If they had cited the civil war as a reason states should not have the power they now have was cited, Roe may have been kept on. Affirming abortion rights as precedent, without compromise, lost. Harris doubled down on the losing argument – and we have Trump.
The Democrats also failed to connect the Trump tax cuts to the economy. Biden did not reverse them, thanks to Manchin and Sinema. Trump should have been given ownership of the economy. Biden cannot claim the recovery, which was mainly in the financial markets. Of course, I doubt that they know such a connection exists, given the me too-ism in much of economic theory. The reality is that cutting taxes on the rich always hurts workers and leads to price increases driven by spending by the rich – as producers cater to a level of product that the majority cannot afford – especially in housing.
A lot of the Musk agenda will be struck down because it goes against statute – although it could be argued that the additional votes for Trump came from Musk getting out the vote for the issues on which he is now acting. Musk said as much – that he had a mandate. This is where the natural tension between the rule of law and democracy is highlighted. You cannot have both perfectly.
What can Trump do that cannot be undone? His relationship with Putin. As President, he can make alliances – although Congress could require that such things be treaties ratified by the Senate. So far, it has not. Trump could, while taking Putin’s side, bomb Ukrainian positions. Ukraine is not part of NATO. For it to become part of NATO, the rest of the alliance would have to expel the United States – or simply dissolve the treaty and replace it with a unified European Union army, taxation and have a single constitutional court and Commander in Chief (as an individual, not rotational).
In either case, could Trump order the bombing of Ukrainian forces? He might get some resignations, but it would be a legal order. He does not have to go that far. He simply has to tell Ukraine that he has the option and is likely to take it. Doing it quietly prevents anyone from having to resign and is a constitutionally protected act. Now, there are parts of his coalition that would not like it – but it is their own fault that they were not listening when Trump said that he trusted Putin more than he trusted the United States government intelligence and military agencies. It is the fault of the Democrats for not making this issue one – indeed the only issue of the last election.
I have MAGA friends who are sure Trump is not a Russian asset – so perception is important to Trump. There are also people in MAGA who like Putin as a strong leader, ignoring the fact that Putin is an unrepentant Soviet. Russia’s government by oligarch and government by commissar are identical – yet Trump followers believe that employee empowerment leads to the latter. They don’t see to mind it for Russia – or the US if you don’t call it socialism or Marxism.
In other words, democracy gave us the current chaos in governance. It gave us the current economy and will assure that it will continue; it gave us payback to Musk for turning out voters who agreed with the Trump-Vance-Musk Agenda; it prevented the enactment (or any action regarding) abortion AND it may have given Ukraine the shaft.
How do we fix this? Can we? Should we? As far as we know, what is happening now is exactly what people voted for. Whether or not these decisions are wise (and they are not), it is how the system works.
If Trump goes through with his agenda, and if all of what he wants is passed through Congress if disallowed by the courts, then he will have to deal with the result. Getting what he wants will let him keep his place as the only President worse than Buchanan (I would argue that Fillmore was even worse than both – but may be just worse than Buchanan). Or he could hire people who can actually help him do great things. Things like enacting regional arrangements to bring government closer to the people – allowing some degree of regional variation. He could get everyone off the tax rolls and abolish the IRS – and without messing up the economy. He could come to a negotiated solution on abortion – taking it off the table.
Most of the conservatives who would do this – and these are conservative solutions – may balk at ethnic cleansing in Gaza and will definitely balk at Trump’s special relationship with Putin.
The Democrats are hoping that Trump voters, realizing that they are feeling pain, will vote Democratic for the long term. It won’t happen without a bipartisan compromise on late term abortion.
Ukraine is the issue – or rather – Putin. While MAGA has been brainwashed to follow the GRU/KGB dogma on Ukraine, a majority of the GOP does not.
Trump will not be removed because of his mental state. That would take a majority of the Cabinet and his Vice President to do. They won’t plus they agree with his agenda. Two thirds of each house can declare him incompetent, but any number less that than cannot survive Trump stating that his is all better after 90 days. They could do congressional governance with veto-proof majorities – which they do not have. It has been done before. The late 19th century was all about congressional government. Speaker Canon ran things – not the President. There are just enough Republicans who did not vote to stop the steal to join with the GOP as a two-thirds majority – although it would be close.
Judge Chutkan could have tossed out the DOJ memo stopping presidential prosecution. DOJ could have acted quickly to prosecute Trump. They did not, even as McConnell said they should. Democrats could have explained why the tax cuts hurt so much and how far into Putin’s pocket Trump was during both impeachments – that the Perfect Phone call and hanging Pence were covers for what was really going on – which was violating the Budget Impoundment and Control Act in Russia’s favor and then sending armed men and women to where members were hiding on January 6th to convince “weak” Republicans and do God knows what to Democrats.
The only possible tactic is to find five GOP Representatives to make Jefferies the Speaker and 20 Senators to convict Trump of bribery by linking the Javelins to a quid pro quo to fund the Fruman and Parnas’ Protect the House PAC and by making a narrative that goes from “Team Crazy” being Russian spies (Gen. Flynn, Butina’s lover Byrne, Rudy and Trump) that Trump was in the plot to breach the barriers to reach members when he said to go to the Capitol and then dropped the plot when Babbitt was killed and her squad arrested. The counter argument that explains why Trump could not be convicted was that he stopped action when Babbitt was killed because he did not want anyone to die – which was enough reasonable doubt to avoid prosecution, but not enough doubt to stop removal by the Senate.
It is sad that a border war over Ukraine and keeping it in the Russian empire was the defining issue of the 21st Century so far. And it still is the dominant issue in our politics, as well as abortion. Going back to impeachment is the path of least resistance – needing the least number of votes. All it would take is for Koch to activate the Tea Party (as opposed to those who are solely MAGA) to demand Trump’s conviction by 20 Senators. The American Legislative Exchange Council has 30 or so state majorities. All they need is 20 of them.
Funny how much influence Chutkan, McConnell, Koch and Schumer had and have as far as stopping Trump, yet none had the courage or incentive to do so.
Salva Ukraini!
https://youtu.be/gs3Gk0oUdnI
posted by Michael Bindner at 11:51 PM
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