The Non-retirement of a Defeated Man - The Inconsequential Nature of Impeachment

 This article was originally written days after Donald Trump was acquitted by the US Senate for the second time. Due to numerous assessments bogging down life in general, it has only been published today. 

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When Joni Mitchell said that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, I’m sure she was being sincere. Except with Donald Trump, we found out two weeks prior to his departure from office that American Democracy had gotten into a rather perilous place, with the incitement of insurrection and all that. I thought not hearing about Donald Trump’s daily thoughts would be rather tranquil. Perhaps too tranquil...

Yet it isn’t, because he is still there. Mar-a-Lago has become a strange Floridian purgatory. As Trump mulls an uncertain future, he continues to direct the actions of his party, intervening to skewer or laud his former allies, depending on the extent to which they believe in their newly defeated President.

Defeated candidates rarely go on to dictate the future of their party. When Gerald Ford lost, the GOP moved on to the dynamic, media friendly Ronald Reagan. When Bush Sr. lost, they regrouped under Newt Gingrich and the Contract for America. When McCain lost, they were re-energised by the burgeoning Tea Party movement. Yet Trump meanders on from his bunker, having cultivated a following that follows his every whim, a base that has yet to fracture, despite a conspicuous Twitter absence. This is unlikely to change after his acquittal last week.

Only Senator Murkowski of Alaska, buoyed by the open primary and ranked choice voting in her State, felt confident enough to convict Trump of his latest misdemeanours and face the electorate next November. She was joined by a rag tag of retirees, newly re-elected cynics and another Presidential runner-up, Mitt Romney.

In such a polarised nation, Impeachment was somewhat futile. Even making jurors witnesses to the last of Trump’s high crimes was not enough to convict the ‘inciter-in-chief’. It’s not surprising, considering that the method for electing Senators has long entrenched a minority rule. Party fanaticism is almost omnipresent within the Senate, the supposed saucer to the hot tea cup of day-to-day US Politics.

Moving on from impeachment, Republicans have an in-built electoral advantage in federal elections, due to the greater weighting of representation assigned to smaller states whilst large Democratic States of California and New York have lots of ‘wasted’ votes. It is therefore remarkable that the GOP is so far sticking by their defeated one-term President, who was capable of losing both the White House and Congress in just 4 years. Except it isn’t really a Grand Old Party anymore. Where there were once civil disagreements within the Big Tent, Trump’s dramatic rise and unexpected 2016 victory, civil disagreement was rolled over by cultish loyalty and vitriol – the same vitriol now being imitated by ‘(F)lying Ted’ Cruz among others, as he eyes a second run for the Oval Office.

Republicans in many ways brought Trump on themselves, for decades arguing for the merits of largely unchecked capitalism that left Americans exploited and disengaged from the political process. Then in 2016, after galvanising on this disenchantment under the guise of a populist demagogue, the largely ‘winner-takes-all’ primary system made Trump’s path to the nomination straightforward, winning the GOP’s golden ticket with just 45 percent of the vote.

Part of me would like Trump to run again in 2024 simply because I don’t think he’ll win. I just can’t see which voters would have voted for Biden, seen the storming of the Capitol and decided that Trump should be rewarded with a return to power. I doubt the family patriarch will, but I wouldn’t bet against a younger, smoother Trump throwing their MAGA hat into the ring. Either way, the Republicans need to move away from their latest Presidential loser, not just for their electoral prospects, but for democracy’s sake. A sincere message of hope and longing, set out of a scene of desperation, Joni Mitchell would approve…   

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This article was also eventually published on the Student Newspaper website as a Comment piece and can be viewed here. It has also been added to my Student Links article containing all of my pieces written for the 'paper.

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