To reduce the impeachment fight to simply an intra class fight of competing elites is mistaken and could be dangerous if too many people swallowed this swill. But public opinion polls suggest that growing numbers of people are framing the matter differently, as they should. Leave it to some on the left to think that their role is to up the ante at every turn in class and democratic struggles.
From Springsteen’s Badlands: As someone who hoped and hopes for a socialist future, this remains good advice, for me anyway.
You wake up in the night
With a fear so real
Spend your life waiting
For a moment that just don’t come
Well don’t waste your time waiting
Badlands, you gotta live it every day
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you’ve gotta pay
We’ll keep pushin’ till it’s understood
And these badlands start treating us good
PS. Went on a whirlwind road trip, first to Michigan — 12 hours — then the next morning directly north to Sault Ste.Marie, Ontario then the next morning a 17 hour arc taking me through Algonquin National Park to the edge of Ottawa, then through the Thousand Islands region, and finally — and long last — back to Kingston. In the course this many hours trip, I listened to a lot of the Boss on my cd player in my new old car. The guy is a songwriter extraordinaire. And if you like Rock and Roll, he cooks!
First there was the leak. Then came the flood. That scenario could well happen in the next few weeks as government employees in important positions in the federal government come forward to testify to congressional committees about the nefarious practices of the Trump administration.
People wonder if Trump would step down if impeached or defeated next year at the ballot box. I can’t say definitively that he would ignore the democratic will and institutional constraints, but I will say that it is far easier said than done. And in any calculus of such a brazen action Trump would have to consider the consequences of failure. Needless to say, they would be exceedingly high.
What bothers me these days isn’t so much pundits who tell us, usually with a sense of gravitas and supposed superior knowledge, that removing Trump via impeachment or the ballot box isn’t enough to turn the country around. I expect as much from them.
But what I find irritating is this. In their attempt to save us from our parochial vision, they miss the fact that removing Trump from office in itself is a BFD!!! The very act would set into motion a new political dynamic.
The ring leader of the unprecedented assault on democratic governance, institutions, and rights would no longer occupy the White House. The sweeping powers and the bully pulpit that come with the office would be in someone else’s hands. His underlings would be retreat and disarray as well, pointing fingers at one another. Finally, Trump’s base, angry, even dangerous as they might be, would have to digest the bitter (and depressing) reality that their Great Leader has been taken down.
Meanwhile, political initiative and moral authority would, through the force of events, shift to the Democratic Party as well as the broad democratic movement and the millions who resisted Trump and Trumpism. The confidence that comes from winning would become a material force. And resistance would now mingle with new expectations and horizons of democratic and progressive change.
Will it be smooth sailing? Of course not. Trump would likely be reluctant to leave the stage of politics. And defeated reactionaries and racists, history tells us, attempt, if allowed, to regroup and regain the initiative.
Not least, the new landscape of politics would bring to the surface tensions within the broad democratic coalition and the Democratic Party that were simmering while Trump was in the White House.
Still bringing Trump down is a BFD !!! And don’t let anybody tell you different.
