“Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”
Viewers of Dr. Phil have probably heard him ask this to estranged family members. It’s also a question that applies to Democrats in Washington.
Dems are right about Donald Trump’s impeachable offenses, as reported by an anonymous whistleblower — and soon to be whistleblowers, I guess — to great consternation last month.
Following that bombshell, the White House released a transcript that catches the president red-handed, asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for “a favor” — to investigate Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son.
This follows Trump’s admission, during a June 13 interview with ABC, that he would accept political help from a foreign government, which the chairwoman of the Federal Elections Commission on the same day said would be illegal.
And if that wasn’t enough, Trump doubled down last week and said publicly that Ukraine and China should investigate the Bidens.
So the Democrats have the president dead to rights, and impeachment inquiries are proceeding apace.
But will impeachment make the party happy?
Likely no. The GOP-controlled Senate would have to vote to impeach the president, something members have no interest in doing, a few outliers to the contrary.
To be sure, the impeachment imbroglio is high drama (or low, depending on one’s perspective regarding the state of national politics), but it could also serve as the death knell for Democrats’ chances in 2020.
Our Founding Fathers were concerned about foreign influence in the running of our nation. Hence, their insistence that the president be a natural-born citizen, the Emoluments Clause and the “high crimes and misdemeanors” language in the Constitution.
These safety features are earmarked for exactly the kind of grifter who now occupies the White House, a man whose businesses profit from the presidency and who isn’t above asking foreign powers to dig up dirt on his rivals.
Yet while the Founding Fathers were quite prescient, even they didn’t foresee a time when such a scoundrel would continue to command loyalty from his “troops,” a modern-day Macbeth whose Thanes do not flee from his monstrous missteps but instead embrace him all the more in spite of or because of them.
So if Democrats bring charges, which they must in defense of the rule of law and to keep such misbehaviors from becoming normalized with successive presidents, they risk being characterized as do-nothings, squanderers of their time in office, and obsessives over what Trump supporters characterize as an attempt to overturn the 2016 election.
If they look the other way at these current allegations and focus instead on advancing their cause, they stand a better-than-average chance of winning the White House in 2020, which would make them — and their supporters — happy.
But looking the other way is something they can’t do in good conscience. More than a few people believe that Trump’s public invitation to China and Ukraine last week to investigate the Bidens occurred because he wants to be impeached, knowing it actually boosts his chances for re-election among voters who still see him as a much-needed outsider sticking it to the man.
It would all be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
The only hope is that conservative Americans will recognize Trump’s antics for what they are, will decide that the country’s long-term viability is more important than any short-term economic gains, and will let their elected officials know they want justice served. If Republicans see their chances of re-election dwindle because of ongoing joyrides on the Trump train, they will exit, and quickly.
But as long as public support is there, they will not, enshrining graft and duplicity in the nation’s highest office.
Dr. Phil’s guests usually pick happiness, by the way, because the causes they are fighting over aren’t worth lost time with family. Unfortunately, Democrats don’t have that luxury. They are in a battle for the very soul of the nation, so they must be right-fighters, regardless of how much it hurts them moving forward.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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