And then turn that into anger. And then vote!
Nancy Pelosi announces the President is impeached. The Speaker of the House made a point of singling out freshman Democratic Representatives for praise, since many of them come from districts previously held by Republicans, and previously won by Trump. But they were almost unwavering in their support.
Pity the tormented President because the punishment of impeachment is really just Nancy Pelosi picking on him because she’s jealous. And she’s doing far, far worse than what he did in the first place poor thing. And so you can forget about what he did in the first place. You really don’t even need to believe his behavior was “perfect” as he claims. You just need to believe our poor, beleaguered President is being unfairly attacked by a mob of hysterical, “unhinged”, “nervous fit” throwing (because they’re led by a woman), wannabes. Who are so envious because he’s so cool and fresh that they’re doing it out of pure hate.
The fact that Democrats didn’t hear from people closest to Trump about his well-documented misdeeds, which is the main complaint by Trump’s allies these days, almost doesn’t matter anymore. So the fact that they weren’t heard from because Trump gagged them is almost irrelevant.
Because the impeachment process, if the President has his way, is going to move further and further from facts and almost entirely into the realm of emotion.
More facts will inevitably come, either when courts start ruling that Trump’s folks in fact must heed Congressional subpoenas, or when those same Trump folks start coming out with books. And safe bet they’ll almost certainly show Trump behaving unethically, maybe criminally, and expose lie after lie after lie. The trick is holding that flood back until he’s been re-elected, which is the Republicans’ whole game right now.
That’s why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pulling out all the stops to make Trump’s trial in the Senate as inconsequential an event as possible. Facts can’t be allowed to start getting in the way of the President’s sad cover story.
Now that we’ve had a day to reflect on the President’s letter to Nancy Pelosi, we think that’s what that was all about. Emotion. That letter was packed with it. Little else. Certainly nothing new we haven’t heard from the President before: just a more aggrieved tone.
It’s all about emotion right now. And that’s interesting coming from a President who ridicules and abuses almost anyone crossing his path showing any kind of emotion, the most obvious example being a teenage environmental activist. (Except of course, for the many hulking men who come up to him at rallies shedding tears and calling him “Sir” and thanking him for saving the country. But for some reason that always happens in some weird dimension where there are no cameras or recording equipment.)
At its most basic, Trump wants you to feel sorry for him simply because Democrats don’t want him to be President. Of course they don’t! Even if he wasn’t crazy, they’re Democrats. And this is a 2-party system. That fact alone, to the President, is a source of derangement. Since obviously, his is the only way forward and he’s the best and there can be no question of that and certainly no self-reflection ever, except to admire how good he’s doing, and how good he looks doing it. (The only proof you need of all of that BTW, is the record stock market.)
But even if you don’t believe that last part, he might get you to still potentially believe that the fact Democrats seem to be going out of their way to make Trump’s defeat happen through impeachment, instead of waiting til the next election, means they’re unfair. Because they’re doing it for no reason. Except the very simple reason that they don’t want him to be President; never did. (Of course they don’t: they’re Democrats!) Never mind (again) what Trump’s done in the meantime to demean and undermine his Presidency. And his unprecedented extremes to undermine legitimate oversight by Congress, which is expressly their job. Because really he’s accomplished more than any other President ever except maybe Abraham Lincoln. And Lincoln only gets that distinction sometimes. Meanwhile, Trump is perfect.
But again, people don’t actually have to believe any of that to feel sorry for the guy. They just have to suspend reality and see Trump as a victim. And Trump is very good at playing victim. And if that sorrow can be turned into indignation and anger, and then into a vote, that can be powerful. And Trump’s shown he knows how to flip that switch.
As much as we hate polls and rarely refer to them, we found the most recent one from Gallup to be interesting: it finds that Trump’s approval rating is now actually higher than it’s almost ever been (though still below 50%), while at the same time, support for Congress is also up. How’s that possible? Because Independents, according to Gallup, have been breaking for Trump as the impeachment process has worn on, while it’s pretty much exclusively Democrats who are liking Congress a lot better. Meaning sentiment is coming down on the side of Trump, since Democrats whether they like Congress or not won’t vote for him anyway, while Independents can presumably be swayed either way.
So could this impeachment end up meaning essentially nothing? Or even end up being to Trump’s benefit? Even though the President’s Tweeting that’s precisely what’s gonna happen, he’s not acting like he feels that way. We keep hearing President Clinton’s impeachment actually enhanced his and his party’s popularity because people got so annoyed about it, which is true. But it still killed Clinton’s legislative agenda, and a Republican ended up winning the next Presidential election. Also, Clinton was not accused of messing around with U.S. national security (except if you stretched real far and believed a far-fetched argument that Clinton might’ve had a phone call or something about sensitive issues while he was simultaneously having sexual relations with his intern and she might’ve overheard.)
So the blot of impeachment could swing public sentiment back against Trump. How powerful can a President be with an asterisk next to his name? Trump seems to be very sensitive to this prospect. Because we’ve seen that question already driving Trump crazy as evidenced by the letter he sent to Speaker Pelosi on the eve of the House vote.
And how crazy is this? The biggest bully in the country wants you to vote for him because he says he’s being picked on by Nancy Pelosi.
And crazier still: if you believe the poll, that contention (which is completely separate from the facts of the impeachment case) is working at least a little, at least for now.
And in order for that to be happening, people must be feeling some compassion for the man. That’s the part we really don’t get: how is that possible? How does that happen for someone who shows no compassion, who attacks everybody all the time in the most ugly, untruthful ways possible?