Answers to your impeachment process questions.

1.) How do we respond to Republicans’ accusations that Democrats want to “undo results of the 2016 election”?

Answer: As far as we know, there is no process to undo the results of the 2016 election. We don’t know for certain what the actual result was but that’s for another Q&A session. So, we don’t have to take this bait.

However, if the president is suspected of abusing his office by means of high crimes, misdemeanors and bribery, the Constitution allows for impeachment. If a president is convicted in the Senate, he can be removed from office. Happily, this country has never gotten this far before. All previous presidents resigned before a conviction or were not convicted. They did this to preserve their dignity, to not prolong the national ordeal, and to protect their party. After all, if it’s OBVIOUS after the inquiry and trial that the president has committed an impeachable offense, the failure of his party to hold him accountable will look like a cynical political move and demonstrate that the party in question is ok with its leader committing impeachable offenses and/or crimes in order to manipulate elections.

That looks baaaaaad in an election year.

2.) Isn’t the Democrats’ proposed process unfair to Republicans, Trump, and his lawyers?

Answer: In what way? Just because the Republicans say so? Their side’s ranking members will have the same amount of time to question witnesses. They will be able to call witnesses with the House Intel Committee chairman’s agreement. Presumably, this is to prevent Trump’s lawyers from calling a witness who will be a deliberate distraction by using the Chewbacca Defense.

Those of us who were old enough to remember the Watergate Hearings will also recall that there was a lot more seriousness and solemnity about the process than we can expect these days. Someone has to draw the line to prevent it from devolving into a absurdist carnival. If you don’t want your witness rejected, don’t propose one that’s going to derail the hearing in a way that “does not make sense”.

Trump’s lawyers will be treated equally and fairly as long as they cooperate with subpoenas for testimony and documents. Stonewalling is not going to be tolerated. If stonewalling is all Trump’s lawyers have in his defense, that should be duly noted. Stonewalling is used to run out the clock and raise obstacles. It serves no other purpose. No one wants this process to go on indefinitely. Congress has other things to do.

So, no pointless time wasting obstruction will be tolerated. Otherwise, Trump’s lawyers will be treated like any other defendent’s lawyers.

Historians have noted that Pelosi’s process is much more generous to the Trump side than previous impeachment processes have been. She really has no reason to make this unreasonably biased. Viewers will be paying attention. Besides, as many prosecutors will tell you, they never ask a question they don’t know the answer to. I suspect that in drafting this process Pelosi and the House Democrats they already have the evidence they need. There’s no need to be unreasonably biased because the truth is going to come out anyway. Trump’s side might as well put their best foot forward at this point because the confidence level coming from Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi is pretty telling.

3.) Won’t this impeachment inquiry tear this country apart?

Answer: It’s already torn apart. It didn’t have to be but it looks like Republicans are determined to overlook absolutely anything Trump does. They claim he can’t be indicted. They claim he can’t even be investigated or stopped, not even if he were shooting people on 5th Avenue.

There’s a theory that Republicans are acting this way because they have their minoritarian populist base convinced that it represents the only true Americans. So anything that is in defense of Trump is justified because he represents true America.

Really? Is that the hill you want to die on? Because Trump looks nothing like the true American role models I grew up with.

Anyway, this minority of Americans for Trump are vastly outnumbered by the people who voted for his opponent in 2016 as well as the Americans who did NOT vote in 2016 because they could not imagine Trump winning in the first place.

The idea that there is a more virtuous, blessed set of citizens who have a strong man on their side to suppress the unbelievers is a characteristic that is almost universal among cults and groups that practice undue influence on their targets.

“You’re better than they are. You’re more {{fill in the blank}}.” It’s an influence technique, like “love bombing”. Obama used it to great success when he captured his voters by calling them the “creative class”. They were younger, more intelligent, more gifted, beautiful and cool. Hillary’s voters were older, lower class women, post menopausal, barely literate high school graduates. Oh, yeah, we’ve seen this play before.

Anyway, that’s the way we’ve been divided. The globalist, careless, immigrant, elitist, non-Americans vs the virtuous, flag waving, 2nd amendment defenders of truth, justice and the American Way.

Except that Trump people seem to think that laws apply to everyone but their guy in the White House. And the Constitution says this isn’t true.

Whatever.

Real Americans don’t let politicians get away with manipulating upcoming elections with the aid of hostile foreign governments. True American politicians don’t need the aid of a foreign government to win an election.

Go ahead, try to argue against that.

I’ll wait.