What It's All About

Impeachment seems all but certain now.  But for all the juiced headlines and heavy bylines, the question remains: does it matter?

Impeachment in and of itself as a constitutional process the equivalent of capital punishment was ruined by the partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton.  It was sound and fury that ended up signifying nothing but that there would be no limits to party politics.

But impeachment is a process, and if the case is made carefully and dramatically in public hearings, everything could change.

As of now, however, it is part of a larger picture, not a result in itself.  What it's still all about is the 2020 election.

There's the theory that he is self-impeaching, that he's bored with being president.  But while that may be true on some level, it's not the operational one: he desperately needs to remain president as long as possible, because once he leaves, he'll be making headlines only for the many crimes he'll be charged with.

Once again he is said to be out of control, which also may be true on some level, but not the operational one:  he is doing what has worked for him, which is to manufacture attention on himself every day, and create very clear confrontations that allows him to identify very clear enemies.

He is doing this with exactly one aim in mind: to be reelected.  It's all about the election of 2020.

He may or may not fear impeachment, but he is confident that he will not be convicted by the Senate and removed from office, so while he bullies GOPers to keep them in line (and is likely to succeed, despite the headlines made by a few dissenters), he pursues his main strategy of creating an absolute and extreme us vs. them dynamic.

His instincts are to be a blustering bully, and that serves him in these endeavors.  He will keep the pressure on Republican Senators to be totally loyal, and at least as long as he seems to influence elections, he will likely continue to intimidate them.  He will bully them, and everyone and everything else, including the Constitution.  He bullied his way into office by being outrageous, and he's betting it will work again.

Though he moans and complains, that's why he doesn't really much care that he's alienated the entire Washington establishment with his caving to Turkey's dictator, betrayal of the Kurds and help to Putin in Syria.  He needs Putin to repeat Russian help in 2020, and his voters don't much care about foreign affairs anymore, but they love to see him stick it to Washington.  It touches that aimless anger, and what frightens some people entertains others.  A wannabe dictator supported by nihilists is not that surprising. What we may also be seeing is an authoritarian supported by anarchists.

His stance is called nationalism, which has too many meanings and resonances to be all that useful as a description.  But what translates to his voters is anti-globalism.  They identify globalist economics as the cause of their economic problems, and they aren't entirely wrong.  The chattering classes still don't understand the damage done economically, culturally and psychologically when America stopped making things, especially the things that Americans buy. Maybe our crap was just as bad--overall I don't think it was--but at the modest price range, it's pretty much all crap now, produced by foreign slave labor.

 And people resent it, and are hurt by it.  It is in all those categories--making a living, culture, self-worth--feeding the feelings of helplessness.   Yes, there are racist and xenophobic aspects to it, but it is the visible source of "income inequality," that is the enriching of a few at the expense of the many.

He is pursuing the same strategy that got him just enough votes in the right places to win in 2016--by basically thumbing his nose at all established media including debates (he won't participate) and TV ads, and concentrating on the one-line zinger messaging of social media, helped not only by visible echo chambers like Fox News but the thousands of local phony sites that his Russian friends will put up--faster than they can be taken down.

The only difference is that he'll have a lot more money to do it.  See this New York Times story, as one example.  The polls say he will lose.  But the polls said the same thing in 2016.  The NYT gave him a 90% chance of losing, on election night.  There were many things that made the difference--but the Internet was likely the biggest factor.

Remember that the crimes of Nixon were all about getting him reelected in 1972, after a very close election in 1968.  It's the same today.  He's all about 2020.