I trust Pelosi but I'm ready for impeachment to start.

[marylandblue]

51. We all make assumptions. You assume this is like Watergate or Pearl Harbor.

This is far bigger and more insidious than Watergate. There is no precedent for this in American History so stop looking backwards and start looking forwards.

You are right that Trump could consolidate power by 2020. But you are wrong that we have enough Senators or voters who think he shouldn't. You are working under the illusion that the American people actually value democracy. Too many don't and it's obvious they don't.

You also are under the illusion that Republican Senators will, upon presentation of evidence, review it and turn their backs on Trump. They won't. They had many opportunities to turn against Trump, to reign him, and they refused each and every time. The few, like Jeff Flake, who made some mild protests saw their popularity plummet and left the Senate. Mark Sanford, another hardy soul, lost his election. Most of the others got the message.

So they aren't going to do like Howard Baker did and so "oh look there us evidence." They are going to the opposite. In unison they will call it a witch hunt and say WE are the enemies of democracy, and many will believe this lie because it will be repeated endlessly. Thus how authoritarian populism works. Read books like "What is Populism" and "How Democracies Die" to see how this works. Or look at the experience of Italy with their Trump, Silvio Berlusconi. Direct attacks did not work on him.

Only policy-oriented elections did. And run by political outsider at that.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-right-way-to-resist-trump.amp.html

We are not doing nothing, we are using our only powers left our votes and our organizing. To convince people we will in fact work in their interest. But to do that, we must actually work in their interest, not be stooges in the McConnell/Trump theater of illusion. Which, I'm sorry to say, you are doing.

At the end of the Roman Republic, some Senators thought that Caesar was their problem, so they killed him. Only afterward did they realize that killing Caesar did not solve their problem. They probably never figured it out their real problem, or maybe they did, and just didn't care because the solution would have cost them money. Their problem was uneven land distribution. Or in our terms, income inequality.

And my problem is that too many people still think our problem is Trump. But you don't have to worry about that one. You can keep being a stooge in the theater of impeachment.

Good talking to you. I wish I didn't think this way. But I read too much after Trump's election about authoritarian populism to go back to my innocent days when I thought the Constitution could protect from this. On the other hand, I am happy that at least two important people read seem to have read the same articles I read. One is Nancy Pelosi and the other is running for President. So I do think we can come out alright in the end.