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Brief Reflection on Trump’s Impeachment
By Roberto Savio
https://www.other-news.info/2019/10/brief-reflection-on-trumps-impeachment/
Good analysis by an Italian-Argentinean who stands outside of US
politics but appears to know the inside well. He is the Director for
international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development.
To sum up his argument, he thinks it's very likely that the idea of
impeaching Donald Trump will boomerang; his support for that view seems
cogent.
He notes that Trump fans are listening to a furious campaign which
smacks of coup d’etat, calling the accusers traitors who deserve to go
to jail. Watch for example his speech in Minneapolis on Friday, typical
of his results and revealing in the call and response
https://tinyurl.com/yxvc4ncj. Think in listening about his mentor Roy
Cohn's stratagem: 1) never acknowledge wrongdoing, 2) always
counterattack, 3) even if called out successfully, declare victory, and
4) rely on constituents' short memories.
Savio observes that within 3 hours of Pelosi's declaration that an
impeachment process would be launched, Trump received $1 million
dollars, $5 million in 24 hours, and $8.5 million in two days, as well
as 50,000 new donors. He connects the success of Trump's team strategy
in part to the fact that, for historical reasons related to how the
Union was created, the less populated and less developed states have
proportionately more delegates than the large and wealthy states, and
that Trump ran his campaign in these less developed and less populous
states, ignoring big cities and more populous states,
He thinks that the Democrats have done Trump a great favour in the
impeachment effort - that even if impeachment passes in the House with
its Democratic majority, there's very little chance it passes in the
Senate where, again for historical reasons linked to the creation of the
union, each state has 2 senators, regardless of population, that Wyoming
with 578,000 inhabitants has 2 senators as does California, with 37.2
million people. He cites the obvious fact that less developed states,
those with smaller populations, enable the Republican majority in the
Senate, and that for the impeachment to be successful, a 2/3 senatorial
majority is needed, a highly unlikely occurrence.
He notes that much will depend on who the Democratic candidate will be,
that demonising Joe Biden will have impact, and that the "progressive"
Sanders and Warren seem too elitist to Trump supporters, who are from
very conservative regions, where Trump has the unconditional support of
Catholics and of the 40 million-strong Evangelical Church parishioners.
He factors in the possible game-changer of an economic crisis, since
Americans traditionally vote with their pockets; but that otherwise, 90%
of Republican voters – as well as his Congressional support – remain loyal.
He notes the fragility of democracy, when it is based on non-democratic
rules, and among other examples how the Supreme Court with a Republican
majority changes the American legal system considerably; that capitalist
democracy functions effectively if it has laws that guarantee the
balance of power and if there is a conscious and interested citizenry in
the common good, which is not divided as it now is in a partisan way,
where the other is considered the enemy and not as people with different
ideas.
As case in point, he notes that Viktor Orban, after being democratically
elected, developed a xenophobic policy against migrants, carried out
tight control of the press, the National Election Commission and the
judiciary, enriched his faithful with funds from the EU, changed the
entire electoral system, accommodating it to his party and then declared
himself follower of an illiberal democracy.
Similarly, he notes Hitler and Mussolini, who came to power in a
democratic way and then eliminated democracy by identifying an enemy of
the people, in whose name they said they spoke: Jewish power - as today
the main targets of the populist and xenophobic right for raising its
electoral quotas are immigrants - and how Brexit was largely due to the
announced arrival of millions of Turks, who were not even in the
European Union, analogous to how Trump made the Mexican and Central
American “invasion” the strong point of his defence of the American
people, along with the Chinese threat. If the voter swallows these
mythologies, he thinks democracy is certainly in danger, and he sees
Trump and Johnson as just the tip of the iceberg.
And of course, if and when impeachment fails and especially if the
Democrats again fail to produce a candidate with sufficient appeal, then
a reinforced Trump, relying on his Cohn tactics and regardless of the
power of the msm and political opposition, once again barges on.
--
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