Among the stranger tendencies of progressives are the urge to instill a purity test on their political leaders, and a failure to identify final goals.
For the former, witness the internecine bloodletting that occurred between Hilary supporters and Bernie supporters in the last election. Plenty of progressives vowed never to vote for Clinton because she was, you know, the same as Trump.
I’m pretty sure nobody thinks that anymore.
In contrast, conservatives had no problem biting their tongues and voting for a loathsome maniac who insulted their principles, their preferred candidates, and sometimes, even them personally. They were focused on winning.
Now I’m not saying that Democrats should go to the extreme boot-licking, semi-treasonous lengths that Republicans have. But I am saying that holding a grudge because the presidential candidate isn’t as liberal as you would like is selfish and short-sighted.
Which brings us to the second progressive flaw: the failure to identify final goals.
Again, many conservatives voted for Trump because they knew he would have at least one Supreme Court pick, and probably more. The GOP had its eyes on the prize. And now we have a misogynistic corporate toady and probable attempted rapist headed for a lifetime appointment.
Yet, liberals are insisting that they can stop the Kavanaugh nomination. They can’t, of course, and even if they can, what happens next?
Does anyone seriously think that Trump will say, “Oh my, that choice offended them. I better pick a nice moderate who respects Roe v. Wade”? No, the guy is going to double down and pick someone just as loathsome and possibly even more reactionary (all part of an effort to stick it to the libs) and continue hammering away until that ninth justice is seated.
Progressives just can’t see the finish line.
Instead, we have focused on stopping Kavanaugh as a final result that, if successful, will result in champagne all around and free puppies for the masses.
The same mindset infects people who think impeaching Trump is the end of the story. Make no mistake — the president should have been impeached long ago and hopefully will be soon. But it’s distressing to note how many liberals think that impeachment means that we will be rid of Trump.
Way too many people are unaware that impeachment is only the first step of the process. Once the House presents the articles of impeachment, the Senate has to find the president guilty and vote to remove him from office.
That tiny technicality requires two-thirds of the senators to convict him. This means 67 senatorshave to vote “yes.”
To reach this threshold, Democrats would have to win 18 Senate seats in the mid-terms (they are currently projected to win, maybe, one seat).
Or another way to reach that milestone is if over one-third of Republican Senators agree that removing Trump is in the best interest of the country. Keep in mind that this is the same party that has supported Trump all the way and has been hesitant to even criticize him when he praised Nazis. The Mueller report would have to be one hell of a document to convince almost 20 Senators to yank the president from the White House — an act that, by the way, has never occurred in American history.
So why the hell are many progressives obsessing over impeachment like it’s going to rid of us of this menace? More likely, if Trump is impeached, he will come out of it even angrier and crazier.
Again, where is the end game in that?
Oh, in the highly unlikely event that Trump doesn’t finish his term, we all get President Pence.
So there’s that.
At some point, progressives are going to have to accept the fact that Trump is most likely going to be around until 2020, and the best we can do unit then is to limit his insanity and shame the GOP enough so that it never — and I mean, never — wins another presidency.
That would at least be a realistic goal.
