Into the Trumpocalypse

As a general matter, this blog focuses on policy-related issues and key domestic and international events, not specific politicians or personas. However, for the first column of 2020, an exception to that governing ethos shall be made, and this blog post will address the two biggest (and, in fact, interrelated) stories involving President Donald J. Trump, who is now in his fifth year as the leviathan dominating the American political discussion.

First, and most pressing, is impeachment.  In December of last year, the Democratic-controlled House impeached Donald Trump for his withholding of Congressionally-funded aid to the Ukraine, an action purportedly undertaken in order to obtain a pronouncement from the Ukrainian government that it was investigating Hunter Biden’s highly-compensated role on the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.  Just this week, after sitting on the articles of impeachment for nearly a month in an unsuccessful effort to obtain concessions about witnesses and documents from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi transmitted the articles from the lower house to the upper chamber, and the 100 sitting Senators were sworn in as jurists in Donald Trump’s impeachment.

The recent impeachment of President Trump is, of course, not the first effort of the Democratic House to remove Trump from office.  It came on the heels of the much-ballyhooed Mueller Report, a multi-year investigation into Russia’s 2016 election meddling that kicked some dirt on the President but ultimately came up short of tying him to Constitutionally nefarious conduct worthy of impeachment.  On the heels of his “victory” over the Russia investigation, Trump’s ham-fisted handling of communications with the Ukraine regarding $400M in Congressionally-funded aid reopened the impeachment door for a House caucus exceedingly eager to throw red meat to its Trump-hating leftist base, and they pounced.

In pouncing, however, the Democrats allowed political considerations, notably the 2020 election, to dictate their impeachment timeline.  Rather than vet Trump’s alleged wrongdoing in the same thorough manner as the Mueller and Starr (from the Clinton era) investigations, Democrats raced through impeachment hearings over a couple of short months, limiting their access to the witnesses and documents necessary to conclusively establish their case (and hoping the Senate trial would perform some clean up on their incomplete work).

However, under Mitch McConnell and a Republican Senate majority, expect the Senate to limit the inclusion of testimony and documents not previously considered by the House.  The Senate Majority Leader understands that a long trial with a substantial number of new witnesses and documents is unlikely to benefit a President to whom the opposition has already hardened and for whom the current 50/50 split on removal (the Real Clear Politics polling average has the public opposed to Trump’s conviction by a whopping .4%) is unlikely to improve in Trump’s direction.  Accordingly, bet on a 54-46 acquittal of Trump by the Senate in the first half of February, likely along partisan lines with only Democratic Senator Joe Manchin bucking his party.*

With impeachment (thankfully) behind America, our great nation will move to the eagerly-anticipated 2020 Presidential election, an event that is likely to expand the geographic reach of the incessant partisan bickering now centered in Washington.  In fact, the voting will have already begun – in Iowa and perhaps New Hampshire – prior to impeachment’s conclusion.  As the Democratic primary election in those states nears and the field of Trump’s challengers is culled, this blogger maintains his longstanding belief that there are only two serious challengers for the Democratic nomination – former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders.  Biden, now considered the “centrist” candidate but who better reflects a Democrat from 1990 central casting, represents the party’s establishment (which includes its African American base), while Sanders, a man who didn’t self-classify as a Democrat until the past few years, reflects a Trump-like insurgent from the left.  While the first few primary results are very uncertain (and Sanders has a realistic shot of sweeping Iowa and New Hampshire or packaging a win in one with another victory in Nevada), the reader should ultimately expect a Biden victory on the back of a dominant South Carolina showing in late February, followed by a strong run of performances on Super Tuesday and throughout the rest of March 2020, when a crushing number of both southern and large, diverse states (such as Texas, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio) cast their primary ballots in Biden’s favor.

Moving onto the November 2020 general election, any tussle with Trump has the potential to be a political war unlikely to be witnessed again in our lifetimes.  And Joe Biden, now in his late 70s, has oft resembled a man who would be thoroughly defeated in the proverbial Trumpian cage match.  But decline to fight the daily war Biden will, and it will bring him a long-eluded victory in a Presidential race.

* From this blogger’s perspective, Trump’s conduct with the Ukraine was bad but not impeachable, but instead deserving of a censure that would have appropriately sanctioned the President’s questionable motives in not transferring the aid funds despite his Presidential obligations under a bill signed by Trump himself.

** The prediction here is Biden by 3-4% nationally and with a narrow Electoral College win cemented in Pennsylvania and Arizona.