I hear a lot of talk, these days, about impeachment.  From the left, the conversation is “What are they waiting for?”  On the right, the conversations is, “Move along.  Nothing to see, here”.  (Okay, actually on the right the conversation is, “What about Hillary?”  Tell you what, we’ll investigate her Presidential crimes just as soon as she’s the President committing crimes…)  In truth, the Democrats may not be “waiting” at all.  These things take time.  One of a lawyer’s prime jobs is to delay.  One never knows how a thing may play out over time so the more time one can stuff into the process, the better.  But the natural process of legal proceedings could well work to the advantage of the Democrats (and, of course, the country as a whole…) for two reasons.  One, the order of succession and two, the rules regarding terms of office.

Do you know the order of succession?  If the President can’t serve, in comes the Vice-President.  If both the President and Vice-President are unable to serve, here comes the Speaker of the House.  Trump, Pence, Ryan – in short, there’s no escape…at least for now.  Besides, with conservative control of Congress, there’s not going to be an impeachment, anyway.  Period.  Sure, it’s a flagrant disregard of the Rule of Law but Trump said, flatly, he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t affect his base.  He’s right, too.

One possible assessment (presumption? guess? hope? dream?) is that the Democrats intend to take advantage of the glacial movement of legal proceedings, hoping to benefit from the 2018 “elections.”  IF they can recapture Congress – or even one chamber – the madness stops – or, at least, slows.  IF they can recapture Congress, impeachment might proceed.  And, just for fun, IF the Democrats can recapture the House, impeachment proceedings might be possible against both Trump and Pence…and the new Speaker would be a Democrat!  That last possibility, there, is mostly wishful thinking.  It’s true, Mueller and I aren’t talking but I haven’t seen anything against Pence so far.  (That doesn’t mean much, either.  I’d never even heard of Popadopoulos until his plea deal was announced…)

Here’s the other piece: if the President is ousted for any reason, the amount of time remaining on his current term defines whether the incoming replacement can run for one more term or two.  If the replacement serves more than half of the ousted President’s term, the replacement is considered to have served one term.  If the replacement serves less than half, they can run twice.  That means one President could serve as many as 10 years…

So, to recap: the order of operations for Democrats is; win back the House, seat a new Speaker, THEN impeach the national embarrassment.  It’s that first one, though, “win back the House”, that’s going to be the hardest.  You see, whether Gerrymandering, voter suppression, or outright manipulation – conservatives cheat.  They cheat bigly.  If an “election” is close, conservatives “win” (search “Goo Goo Syndrome”) because conservatives have a finger on the scale.  These days, it’s more like they’re actually standing on the scale…

They have to, really.  You see, those who dwell inside the conservative bubble think they “win” because their positions are the most popular but as it happens there are far more thinking people than conservatives.  The thing is, lefties don’t enjoy the group-think and obedience of the right.  “Herding cats” is the phrase people commonly use.  Lefties commonly don’t turn out, particularly for mid-terms.  But the fact is, when liberals DO turn out, we win.  We CAN overwhelm the right with sheer numbers but we HAVE to overwhelm the right with sheer numbers.

I’ll tell you this: we’d better.  This whole thing is going to come down to 2018.  Conservatives just think it’s about “their team.”  Everyone else – by now – knows it’s about saving what’s left of this once-great nation…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Apparently, I haven’t settle on “a day” when I’ll be posting, yet.  It would be BEST if you’d just come over to http://www.MyBaconPress.com and follow the blog.  (There’s a little button in the bottom right corner.  You’ll be asked for an email address, then the next awesome – or awful, depending – piece will be delivered right to your inbox.  How convenient is that?)