Impeachment is the elitist Democrat Holy Grail. Through the forcible removal from political office of the one who never should have become president in the first place, cosmic order will be restored and all will be right with the world. Once the traumatic shock of the election night was over, the therapy for the post traumatic shock disorder among elitist Democrats was the belief in the power of the Constitution to heal America.
In the previous post on my winter solstice reflection on the coming light for the new year, I reviewed some extraordinarily wrong and misguided posts about the election results by Feinman, not me, Peter Feinman, but Ronald Feinman. He successfully predicted the wrong result in almost every single state “in play” for the 2016 presidential election and the less said about his Senate predictions the better. In this regard, he provides a glimpse into the disconnect with reality that prevented elitist Democrats from grasping the tactical brilliance of the immature child candidate in exploiting the fears and insecurities of many Americans to become the winner. Democrats simply were not capable of understanding why they weren’t up by 50% and that all those voters weren’t deplorable.
In this post, I examine how the other Feinman dealt with the new alternate reality where truth and lie have been reversed.
Why We Need a Crash Course in the 25th Amendment (January 22, 2017)
Even before the inauguration had occurred, Feinman already was calculating how the new president could be removed from office. He begins his post with:
Keith Olbermann has said it. Michael Moore has said it. Many intelligent, perceptive people across the political horizon have said it.
Olbermann and Moore! These are the figures of authority he chooses to cite as he launches his argument on how the 25th Amendment can save America? Hard to imagine two more inappropriate people to herald to rally the American people to the cause. And what is it that they and many other “intelligent, perceptive people” know?
…that he is a dire threat to America and its future. Clearly, Donald Trump is displaying evidence that he is mentally unbalanced and unhinged. Many psychologists have said he fits the textbook definition of a psychopath.
He is not even in office and hasn’t demonstrated any presidential behavior yet. He hasn’t even sent a hissy fit tweet about the crowd size yet! Besides, how much confidence should one have in psychologists who can’t even recognize a 7th grade smart-aleck/dumb-aleck in the body of an adult male when they see one?
Nonetheless, even before the inauguration has taken place, Feinman is outlining how the constitutionally authorized removal from office could occur.
He seems, clearly, to be living in a parallel universe, out of touch with reality, and obsessed with his own vanity. Fortunately, there is a constitutional remedy: The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, Section 4.
Feinman then details how Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan can lead this implementation. To be fair to that Feinman, no one anticipated that former Christian Mike Pence would sell his soul to the Donald as the savior of the universe and express his gratitude for being blessed to share the same space-time continuum with him.
Hope springs eternal. Not even one month into the new administration and the person who was completely wrong about the election results, offers another prophecy: the briefest term in office ever. The catalyst for the removal from office will be …are you ready for this?… Mike Pence.
The fact that Vice President Mike Pence played a major role in pushing Flynn out is a sign that Pence is already asserting himself with Trump, and it seems clear that Pence will not stand by and allow our foreign policy to be damaged, or our national security to be endangered. The American people, ultimately, would not expect anything less.
After going on and on about how Mike Pence will save the day, Feinman does what every sane Christian apocalyptic knows not to do – be specific about when the End of Days will occur. Nothing good can be gained in such prophetic exactitude. None the less, Feinman persists.
In any case, it seems likely that Donald Trump will be leaving the Presidency at some point, likely between the 31 days of William Henry Harrison in 1841 (dying of pneumonia) and the 199 days of James A. Garfield in 1881 (dying of an assassin’s bullet after 79 days of terrible suffering and medical malpractice). At the most, it certainly seems likely, even if dragged out, that Trump will not last 16 months and 5 days, as occurred with Zachary Taylor in 1850 (dying of a digestive ailment). The Pence Presidency seems inevitable.
I confess that after this prophecy, I checked the calendar to see when the 199th day of reckoning would occur. Another way to check was with MSNBC The Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams. Night after night he intones the number of days into the presidency. He is not providing a countdown to its ending, he is marking a count up of our imprisonment as was done during the Iranian hostage under Jimmy Carter leading to his election loss in 1980. Our days of capture are now over 300 and the prophecy of early removal has been exposed as a pipe dream by the desperate. Besides, why exactly would elitist Democrats want Mike Pence as president? In effect, Pence functions as insurance to mitigate the chances of Democrats voting to impeach the president.
Feinman has no illusions about the Pence’s shortcomings from a Democratic perspective but what other option does he have? The Republican Party?
Can We Count on the GOP to End the Trump Presidency? (August 6, 2017)
And for many of the list of critics above, the accession of Vice President Mike Pence would be seen as a plus, although not by progressives and Democrats. But the instability and uncertainty associated with Donald Trump is seen as likely to end under a Pence Presidency, even though it would be the most conservative Presidency since Calvin Coolidge, in many ways, to the right of Coolidge or Ronald Reagan, the other conservative favorite. So for many Republicans and conservatives, they will have won the power to promote their agenda, but be much more able to predict their direction and goals than under the unpredictable Donald Trump. Expect the eventual abandonment of Trump by Republicans as the months go by into 2018. A Pence Presidency is likely coming sooner rather than later, with the best situation for Republicans being to resolve the matter before the midterm Congressional elections next year.
Notice how Feinman has learned the lesson of being too precise. No more exact number of days until End of Days; now it’s “sooner rather than later.” He still can’t grasp the possibility of “never.” If it turns out that removal from office is due to the two-term limit of the 22nd Amendment rather than the forcible removal through the 25th, I think Feinman and others who experienced PSTD on election night 2016 will become the Walking Dead, unable to function in the alternate universe of continual fake news that incredibly has become the real world. How long will MSBC persist in counting the days until our freedom anyway?
Feinman still has not given up hope.
Just 43 Republicans Joining with Democrats Could End Donald Trump’s Presidency (August 20, 2017)
The crisis that Donald Trump represents cries out for movement toward impeachment and trial to remove him from the Presidency, unless he agrees to resign, or Vice President Mike Pence, in league with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and a majority of the Presidential Cabinet agree to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment Section 4, as mentally incompetent to stay in office. Neither of these seems likely at this stage, as we enter the eighth month of the Trump Presidency later in August.
As the goddess closes one door, she opens another. If the 25th Amendment is not going to work, what about outright impeachment? In the House of Representatives, only a majority is needed to impeach. Here Feinman wonders if the necessary number of Republicans will join the Democrats to make it so. He implicitly presumes that 100% of the Democrats will favor impeachment so the only issue is convincing a couple of dozen Republicans to defy party loyalty.
The centrists and moderate conservatives who are uncomfortable with Donald Trump are known as the Republican Main Street Partnership, estimated at 67 members of the House (about one out of every four Republicans) and a minimum of 4 in the Senate.
Feinman then names names. He names names in both the House of Representatives and the Senate as possible candidates to effect first impeachment and then conviction. With the Alabama Senate election, one less Republican vote is needed. I confess in my opinion, Feinman is grasping at straws. Plan A with Democrats winning the election failed. Plan B with Mike Pence taking the lead under the 25th Amendment is a non-starter and Plan C with Republicans in the House voting to impeach is an extreme example of wishful thinking. The only realistic way for impeachment to occur is if Democrats win the House in 2018 and even then Democrats may refrain from doing so. Wake up and smell the coffee.
I suspect Feinman has grudgingly learned to live in the real world. While he is not ready to accept the 22nd Amendment as the solution, he is ready to abandon the activation of the 25th Amendment as a likely event. As for impeachment, he now has to wait for the midterm elections. So much for the short presidency. He may even think that if Mueller produces a damning report or is fired before he can do so, then impeachment will occur. Hope still springs eternal for those trapped in the horror of the real world. We are witnessing the Democratic struggled to cope with reality one proposed solution at a time in the face of the success of the greatest con artist in American history who has a hold on a segment of the American public Democrats still ignore.
Then again, Feinman’s faith in Pence and the Republicans to do the right thing may not be misplaced after all. According to an article by McKay Coppins on “God’s Plan for Mike Pence” in the current issue of The Atlantic (I get the printed copy), there almost was a coup after the Access Hollywood tape went viral. Pence would have become the Republican presidential candidate then. He declined. Perhaps he recognized that the candidate had no shame and could not be bought off if it meant going on record for all eternity as being a loser. As events proved out, Pence was right.
Still the palace intrigue continues. Coppins reports:
But for all his aw-shucks modesty, Pence is a man who believes heaven and Earth have conspired to place him a heartbeat—or an impeachment vote—away from the presidency. At some crucial juncture in the not-too-distant future, that could make him a threat to Trump.
He suggests:
It’s not a matter of when Republicans are ready to turn on Trump,” the aide said. “It’s about when they decide they’re ready for President Pence.”
Suppose the Mueller report is damning. Suppose Mueller is fired. Suppose people are pardoned. Suppose Republicans are looking at a wave year that will make them a minority party in both chambers. Then suppose that they decide now is the time to remove the RINO President who is bringing the party down. The entire Democratic strategy for 2018 is running against the most unpopular President in American history. Suppose he is gone by the fall election season and the new President Pence is too new to have established a record yet. What happens then? Maybe Feinman got it right after all.
A Pence Presidency is likely coming sooner rather than later, with the best situation for Republicans being to resolve the matter before the midterm Congressional elections next year.
Survival cancels programming. That is the equation. Suppose the Republican Party decides its survival is at stake, what would it do then?
Happy New Year. It should be an interesting one.
