While the House Impeachment Managers did a superb job at laying out the case against Trump, they did not do it as emphatically or as quickly as Mitch McConnell did when he and Senate Majority leader, Chuck Schumer, gave their post-acquittal speeches.
Schumer's words were poignant, prescient and sincere, evoking me to applause as I stood alone in my pandemic quarantined living room trying to swallow the indigestible reality of an acquittal that WE all were witnessing. McConnell's words were poignant as well, but poignant like a prick from a rose thorn or from the pungency of their seemingly sweet aroma that can start to taint if you over indulge and sniff too hard.
Schumer delivers his post impeachment remarks As for stomaching McConnell's very upsetting words? Once again, I too was struggling with listening to a Senator of the United States of America, stand before God and the world acknowledging point by point by point that Donald J. Trump was as guilty as the House Managers said he was, but he didn't vote to convict. With his beautifully ungroomed bouquet of flowers, McConnell baited US in with words he knew we wanted to hear...and then pricked US all on the nose for forgetting the danger of political bouquets and what the rap group Outkast taught us, that roses can also smell like boo-boo.
My skillset of many years of marriage and raising babies has heightened my ability to sit and endure prickly or smelly situations. So I took deep breaths, held my nose as needed and endured until the end of McConnell's speech. And, I have to admit, McConnell was slightly right on this one and here's why.
In honor of the person I am half-heartedly giving credit to in this moment, I am going to try to give the brevity and clarity to McConnell's explanation that he was able to give to the case on Trump. Although the House Managers put forth a quality case, a consensus view developed by the end of it all on the power of brevity and that less could have been more relative to the volume and substance of it all. If it achieved nothing else, McConnell's concise summary of the entirety of Trump's infractions displayed the power of brevity, but his remarks have started a conversation that could last for the next 6 years or more. In my view, his explanation warrants discussion all by itself, for what it hoped to achieve now, and for what it might achieve down the road. .
McConnell's explanation for his vote:
McConnell's view is, you can surely conduct a vote to block someone from office but only if you've already impeached them, which is to say, the impeachment process was specifically meant for the primary purpose of removing officials from office, not for the secondary reason it was being used in this case which was for the punishment it allows. Again, eliminating someone from running is allowed, but only AFTER you have successfully voted to remove them from office which requires no less than a two-thirds majority. No matter how you feel about removing someone from office and blocking them from future access to that post, these two processes are separate votes and there is no way to take on the secondary pursuit without the primary.
If right about now you are cursing at me the same way I was cursing at my television when McConnell, the same guy who refused to start the (insert curse word here) trial while Trump was still in office, but is now the guy saying it's the wrong avenue for justice in this case, I get it... but hear me out as I try to make sense of what I eventually heard him say after I stopped cursing and screaming at my television so I could hear what he was trying to say.
Because the expectation of acquittal was never clearly set into the minds of the public watching along, questions are now simmering over whether or not time should have been allowed for witnesses to bolster this case. As it turned out, the 7 Republicans that defected from their party and stood with their country are the most who ever had the courage to do it in any impeachment of a president. Could a litany of witnesses have been the key to gaining 10 more votes?
If the hope of the Democrats from the beginning was to achieve the first impeachment conviction of a president in U.S. history, then there was never enough time given to this. For the slightest hope of 67 votes, it would have always taken more time than Trump had left to serve to make it happen.
Why is that important? It's only important if you agree with McConnell and I that impeachment was intended to remove a high ranking official from office and not to reprimand them by blocking their access to political office in the future. According to McConnell's explanation, you can absolutely reprimand a high ranking official for criminal behavior they do in the waning days of their term, but the better place to do it is in the court of law not via impeachment. On that point I mostly agree, although I believe Trump did enough to deserve punishment in both arenas, not just one. If you think blocking Trump from running again would have been sufficient punishment, the impeachment was the right way to go. I believe both arenas are necessary for justice in this moment because, aside from the shame of it all, a post presidency impeachment can only achieve one outcome and that would be blocking someone from running for future office.
Punishing Trump or anyone else via impeachment isn't illegal. For McConnell or anyone else to suggest it absolutely CAN NOT be done would suggest the seven Republicans and 50 Democrats who voted to convict did something wrong, and they did not. In reality, McConnell is dead wrong in that, if this case was before them, they had the duty to vote on it, one way or the other. The fact that 43 Republicans chose not to convict was a vote of their conscience, just as it was for the 57, although the political conscience can be terribly self serving at times, so take all of their votes with a grain of salt.
The Long Term Impact of McConnell's Explanation
At this moment, it's hard to say if many other Republicans agreed with McConnell's final analysis on Trump or if they appreciated him basically eviscerating their support for Trump while creating a carved out explanation for himself, for his vote and for his political future relative to that vote, however, consider this point as a prediction for the future of Republicanism. Based on the McConnell explanation alone, every Republican who wants the same off-ramp can now denounce Trump and support the idea that he needs to be prosecuted in court for his crime as an explanation for their vote to acquit too. In fact, whether they wanted this question on their backs or not, it's coming thanks to McConnell drawing a line in his party. Before long, it might even soon be called taking the McConnell clause, or something like that.
Now, my agreement with McConnell's view is technically only a partial agreement in that I do believe Trump can and should be prosecuted in the regular courts just as McConnell suggests, but I also believe a conviction in both arenas was not outside of the current laws even if it is a potential slippery slope as McConnell explained, a slippery slope McConnell himself added water to by refusing to conduct this 5 day trial before Trump left office, but I digress.
To dig deeper into the McConnell explanation, it is his belief that allowing the Democrats in Congress to openly use impeachment simply for their intended purpose of disqualifying Trump from future elections could have set precedence and allowed Congress to pursue a similar route against a regular citizen with inflammatory rhetoric or behavior who wants to be president someday.
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| Could Congress block any person they consider treasonous from future office, not just Trump? |
If you think on it for just a while, you realize McConnell was totally reaching at the idea of any random person being willing or able to run for president just as he is forgetting that impeachment is only for high ranking officials while in office, not for wanna-be high ranking officials with toxic rhetoric that scare people. But, that's what McConnell is forgetting.
. What WE are forgetting is, at the time of this trial Trump fit both of those descriptions, at least for the purpose of trying to hold him accountable for the insurrection he incited. The fact that McConnell and Pelosi made no demands for Trump to be tried while still in office is not insignificant in the least. Leaving office took the punishment he deserved- which just so happened to be the only punishment the Constitution allows for- out of the picture and left behind the subordinate or additional punishment of blocking him from future office as the only punishment remaining. Therefore, the process of convicting him as if still in office became the only way to achieve the actual goal intended, which was to block him from future office.
Once again, it is not illegal to try someone after they leave office nor is it unheard of historically, which leaves us where WE are now, determining the justness of this particular pursuit of justice. While the Constitution made pursuing an impeachment conviction possible, it made achieving an impeachment conviction much less possible with the necessity of 67 Senators required to achieve a conviction. Said another way, pursuing justice against Trump was possible via impeachment or the regular courts, but the distinct possibility of achieving a conviction and hoping for a fair punishment always existed via one route, and that was and still is the traditional court route.
When listening to McConnell, it felt for a moment like he was being totally unpatriotic for trying to politically have his cake and eat it too by condemning Trump before the world so he could later show us all where he stood on the all the bad stuff Trump did, but I changed my mind just a bit by the time he was done.
It was only a bit, because McConnell absolutely was trying to be politically expedient voting to acquit and immediately sneaking down the alleyway to avoid holding himself accountable, suggesting a traditional court to hold Trump accountable for all the negatives McConnell admitted to, but he was also making an important and necessary move to save his party from the legacy of Trump. Love him or hate McConnell for behaving like a politician if you want, the politics on what he did are sound.
Mitch McConnell's declaration that this was a vote of conscience came down to a vote and an explanation of that vote which, for better or worse, shall remain bonded as one (the vote and the explanation of it) and married to his legacy and the legacy of this impeachment until time ends.
Why?!
Because it forced 42 other people to join him or take the full backlash of acquitting Trump by themselves. To be more clear, either Trump will be 42 Senators closer to state indictments for his actions or 42 Republican Senators will refuse to agree with McConnell when they are asked by the media if they do agree with the McConnell Clause or not. The most entertaining scenario- that the GOP will slowly fracture into two camps on the subject of convicting Trump or not- is also the most likely to happen.
If like me you are upset with McConnell and what he allowed his party to do to US for years, not one word of the previous paragraph made you sad.
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