The Beginning of the End, at Least They Hope

For John, BLUF:  If you think Progressives tend to be atheists, you missed the absolute faith they have in the eventual impeachment or resignation of President Trump.  Some even believe that Mrs Hillary Clinton will return as President.  This is wilder than the Apocalypse of Saint John.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Please Stop Predicting the End of Trump’s Presidency

Here is the sub-headline:

Unless you can explain exactly how he gets impeached or why he resigns.

From Slate, by Mr Jim Newell, 16 April 2018.

Here is the lede plus one:

Democrats and some concerned Republicans have been warning for months that firing special counsel Robert Mueller would be a point of no return for President Donald Trump.  That speculative frontier advanced even further over the weekend, after the New Yorker’s Adam Davidson declared that the Trump presidency has now entered its “end stages,” following a raid on the office and hotel room of Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.  What these predictions rather conspicuously lack is any attempt to explain precisely the series of events that would be Trump’s formal undoing.

In the case of Mueller’s firing, Democrats, in typical Democratic Party fashion, have coalesced behind a talking point first used by a Republican in which they find some powerful, unifying value.  South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has been saying all along that such a move would mark “the beginning of the end” of Trump’s presidency.  When I asked Democratic senators last week whether firing Mueller would be an impeachable offense, they declined to answer, echoing Graham’s warning about the “beginning of the end” of Trump’s presidency.

Democrats say this because they don’t believe that raising the specter of impeachment is politically wise, especially when they’re in no position to make good on such a threat.  Democrats don’t control either chamber of Congress, and they’re not at all sure that firing Mueller would plummet Trump’s support among Republican voters and convince GOP congressmen to help impeach him.  In other words, they have no idea whether firing Mueller would mark “the beginning of the end” of Trump’s presidency.  It could just kick his approval rating into the lower 30s until a few news cycles pass, after which the Trump presidency returns to being generally unpopular but potentially survivable.

Democrats have no idea whether firing Mueller would mark “the beginning of the end” of Trump’s presidency.  But forget about Mueller.  The new rage is the investigation into Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, whose office and hotel room agents from the Southern District of New York raided last week.  With the investigation—both investigations?  All investigations?—now turning toward Trump’s business and personal dealings, the public will see a fuller presentation of the Trump Organization’s crookedness and shabby infrastructure.

Mr Newell references a The New Yorker article by Mr Adam Davidson, on 14 April, "Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency".  Mr Davidson is apparently not a deep believer.  His article doesn't mention the Second Coming of Hillary Clinton, but it is full of hope.  Here is the Conclusion:

Of course Trump is raging and furious and terrified.  Prosecutors are now looking at his core. Cohen was the key intermediary between the Trump family and its partners around the world; he was chief consigliere and dealmaker throughout its period of expansion into global partnerships with sketchy oligarchs.  He wasn’t a slick politico who showed up for a few months.  He knows everything, he recorded much of it, and now prosecutors will know it, too.  It seems inevitable that much will be made public.  We don’t know when.  We don’t know the precise path the next few months will take.  There will be resistance and denial and counterattacks.  But it seems likely that, when we look back on this week, we will see it as a turning point.  We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.

As Alexander Pope said:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff