Boardman writes: "Anyone who's been paying attention should get the picture by now. Overall, in subtle and sledgehammer ways, the mass media of the United States - owned and sponsored by corporate giants - are in the midst of a siege against the two progressive Democratic candidates who have a real chance to be elected president in 2020."
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-CA, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Democrats' Impeachment Plan - Roadmap to Nowhere?
03 December 19
hanksgiving is gone and no thanks were given for the House Democrats� unfolding plan for a quick, tidy, Christmas-wrapped impeachment package. Why are they doing it like this? What are they thinking? Why not take the fight to the president on all the available grounds? What is the rationale for a rushed process based on a fraction of presidential infractions? Why deliberately give up control of the narrative when you have mountains of evidence on your side?
That�s where the Democrats appear to be taking us. At this point, no one knows how it will turn out, and I long to be wrong in my apprehensions. But there�s not much to work with here. Democratic leaders don�t even explain their thinking publicly. The state of play as this is written seems unchanged from what CNN reported November 21:
Privately, Democrats are anticipating a busy December that will be filed with proceedings before the House Judiciary Committee, including public hearings and a markup, and a likely vote to impeach Trump on the House floor by Christmas Day, according to multiple Democratic sources, which would make him just the third President in history to be impeached.
The American political system needs a good flushing. The Democrats� plan seems almost designed to avoid any such cleansing. As December begins, there are no articulated impeachable offenses on offer. There is strong testimony and other evidence of the president trying to coerce Ukraine into helping his 2020 campaign. But there is massive avoidance of all the president�s other violations of the Constitution, the law, his oath of office, and the common good. This is not shaping up as a systematic defense of constitutional government so much as a drive-by shouting that can get widely ignored amidst holiday distractions. Worse, this non-plan plan appears to represent a broad consensus of Democratic conventional wisdom.
The multi-talented and insightful New Yorker editor David Remnick provides a curious but hardly unusual example of how hard it can be to maintain the conventional wisdom in the midst of wildly unconventional circumstances. In the online version of his piece titled �The Sober Clarity of the Impeachment Witness� from the November 25 New Yorker, Remnick concludes:
Impeachment is a grave business, and the risks are manifest. But no democracy can overlook evidence of abuse of power, bribery, and obstruction in the hope that an election will set things right.
These hearings and a potential Senate trial will never get to the full range of Donald Trump�s corruptions, be they on Fifth Avenue or Pennsylvania Avenue, in Istanbul, Moscow, or Riyadh. But the focus of Congress is on this particular and outrageous abuse of the public trust, and for now that must suffice.
In these two paragraphs, Remnick first gets it exactly right, then gets it exactly wrong. He is right that no constitutional government like ours can overlook the vast variety of Trumpian abuses and still hope to be a constitutional government with any integrity left. Remnick is also right that House hearings and a Senate trial, as currently contemplated, cannot do justice to the offenses of the past three years. And then he gets it completely wrong with the solemn sophistry of assurance that �for now that must suffice.� He has already argued correctly that it cannot suffice. Claiming that it �must suffice� is tantamount to giving up without a fight.
There is no �must� inherent in the current Congressional rush to evade responsibility for confronting the overwhelming catalog of presidential offenses. We all know there is serious work to be done in a meaningful impeachment process, work that needs serious people to do it. We also know that, so far at least, those people have not emerged. (Remnick must know that, too � the print version title of his piece was �Impeachment Whirlwind.�) This holiday whirlwind of an impeachment is unworthy of a competent society. We�re long past the time when America needed lengthy, serious self-examination if the people are ever going to free themselves from the arbitrary and ruthless control of war-makers, torturers, assassins, oligarchs, and their submissive political lackeys.
David Remnick is one of the more impressive people on the planet, with a long and exemplary body of work. For someone of his capabilities to get this historical moment so wrong is a measure of just how deep the American crisis has become. Concerning the sufficiency of the current rush to impeachment, he is just wrong. With the fate of the nation at stake, he is mindlessly, needlessly wrong. There is, in fact, no hurry whatsoever about bringing articles of impeachment to a vote any time soon � or ever. The constitutional process is there to be used as suits the purpose of national integrity. Sending half-baked, Ukraine-based, partisan-infected impeachment articles to a Senate likely to reject them is a pretty good recipe for maintaining the corrupt American norms of recent decades.
Exercising conventional wisdom is a good way to get conventional results. Limiting the charges against this president is a form of tunnel vision that serves to protect past and future presidents who have or will commit the Trumplike offenses that go unexamined in this process. The current Congressional plan is an elaborate and fundamentally deceitful exercise in thinking inside the box. Whose box is it, where it�s OK to turn impeachment into a farcical failure? It�s not the box of national honor.
Maybe impeachment won�t play out as the Democrats are presently promising. Maybe the weight of reality will change the dynamic. Maybe a courageous House member or several will insist on a comprehensive, principled, open-ended examination of presidential corruption of all sorts, foreign and domestic. Maybe that will keep House committees busy for months, even past the November election. Maybe a Democratic presidential primary race with impeachable offenses for a context will produce a more substantive contest than we�re used to. Maybe such a race would produce a serious candidate actually committed to positive change. Maybe it�s worth the risk of actually following procedures that address the gravity of our shared reality. Maybe we can do better than a hurried, politically-motivated, substance-avoiding crapshoot that offers no serious likelihood of meaningful change. Maybe the American people would respond well to a party that decided to stand for principle and demonstrated the willingness to put the national wellbeing ahead of narrow partisan advantage. Seems worth the risk, but what do I know?
William Boardman has been writing for Reader Supported News since 2012. A collection of his essays � EXCEPTIONAL: American Exceptionalism Takes Its Toll � was published in September 2019 and is available from Yorkland Publishing of Toronto. He is a former Vermont assistant judge.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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By the way, wikipedia says, "Boiga is a large genus of mildly venomous, rear-fanged, colubrid snakes typically known as the cat-eyed snakes or just cat snakes. They are primarily found throughout southeast Asia, India and Australia, but due to their extremely hardy nature and adaptability have spread to many other suitable habitats around the world."
I didn't immediately get the reference, even though used Wimpy in my analogy.
I agree with most of what you said.
I do not agree that it takes all the money to get elected. Statistics heavily correlate with money and winning, but that would not be the case without vertical integration (consolidation) of the media -- thanks to Clinton's Tele-communicat ions Act of 1996 -- and other election-relate d issues; you mentioned Diebold; and another is Dem Party's hierarchical politics and corporate affiliation, which besides dispensing money to their preferred candidates -- regardless of non-progressive ideology -- includes (poor) strategy and consultant advise.
The answer, of course, is Primary Elections... getting rid of incumbents.
If Obama has a shred of decency, he'll bow out before the Democratic Primaries, which should help non-incumbent Congressional Democrats and turnout for the General Election.
The light shining is on the question... the question of fairness and equality -- in regard to prosecution rules of law and adoption of fair laws that represent the peoples' interest, accountability for greed-driven economic crimes and environmental devastation, and honest, clear -- no excuses -- political representation. .. ... ... in essence, sanity.
And the question for the light is WHEN.
... and how much? ... for the balance and peace of mind of justice.
The OccupyWallStree t movement has the potential of shaking the whole system up and making it perfectly clear that it isn't just change that is needed, but the application of the laws and justice that keep things equitable for all.
more later.
While businesses and businessmen and women do have basic civic and societal responsibilitie s related to their doing business, as long as they follow the law, how they serve society with their profits is their business.
People aren't interested in being punitive, for the sake of punishment pleasure or to introduce pure socialism, it is to bring justice to those who took a chance on criminal greed.
In regard to short-selling, if you are talking about curbing insider-trading or taking away advantages that large-scale traders have over regular traders, that is fine; insider trading is all ready illegal and there are no good reasons to disadvantage smaller traders.
Since only the Progressive-Dem ocrats and Democratic-Soci alist Bernie Sanders (& maybe Ron Paul) are not corrupted by Wall Street, they are the only elected federal officials not being protested against.
And because he was so effective, they just go la-la-la when he talks. We just have to hope that the mainstream corporate Clintonian Democrats, in office, out of office, and just plain folk will understand what is going on.
They didnot advise him or oppose his signature on NAFTA which benefited GOP and the Clinton Family also.
There is very little left of Democratic Party, and a shadow of Republican Party.
The only thing I see are the Puppet Masters, these tyrants were given free reign in the early 70's, now they are the Monsters we were all warned about.
Problem is our parents didnot recognize them any better than people today.
We are Marching, Protesting, signing Petitions and I believe this is just a beginning. If Democrats want to prove something, perhaps they better realign Homeland Paranoia. When they put the demons back in their place, perhaps the Corporations will see that we will either win or bury them.
When I say bury, I mean we will put our money in other Countries that do not depend on them. So Europe, perhaps this is a time to look at the Future of America,new generation of Investing.
Wall Street is hollow like an Chocolate Easter Bunny,they have nothing. They have debt, property no one pays for or can afford. Housing is down, Corporations are selling out to Asia, Middle East so Europe where does that leave you? Time we remind GOP the True Meaning of Tea Party "Let's sink their Ship'. Buy Organic. Buy American.
Critics say they are not focused, how can a movement like this be focused on one specific thing when the problems to fix are so numerous. Wall Street is a perfect place to start.
Tonight they can sleep tight. There are some very brave and incredibly bright protestors here and running things very Democratically.
Interesting to see how they've had to form a mini government within. See, we do need a government, it just has represent the people.
At this point the movement is progressive and inclusive.