<Donald Trump has made history again.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to impeach him a second time because of his role in inciting violence before the coup attempt last Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol. Trump is now the only president to have been impeached twice, and could easily have been impeached on other occasions for his many other crimes against democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law.

All 222 House Democrats, along with 10 Republicans, voted to impeach Trump. The Senate must now hold a trial, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he will not reconvene the chamber before next Tuesday, one day before Joe Biden's inauguration next Tuesday. So it appears likely that the incoming Democratic-controlled Senate will hold Trump's second impeachment trial. Some Republican senators appear likely to vote for conviction, but 17 would be required — along with all 50 Democrats and affiliated independents — to reach a verdict that might bar Trump from holding future federal office. No president has ever been tried after leaving office, and no president has ever been convicted by the Senate.

By largely refusing to join Democrats in voting to impeach Donald Trump, House Republicans sent several messages to their followers, the American people and the world more generally. These include:

Right-wing political violence is acceptable in the United States — as long as it advances the goals and objectives of the Republican Party and right-wing movement.

Coup attempts and other efforts to subvert elections or usurp democratic outcomes are now acceptable — if pursued by Republicans and members of the far right against their enemies.

The United States is no longer the world's leading democracy. If American fascism continues to thrive — Trump won at least 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 — the country's liberal democracy (however imperfect) is in danger of degenerating into what political scientists have described as "competitive authoritarianism," "inverted totalitarianism" or "managed democracy." In all, the Republican Party has shown once again that it is the most dangerous political organization in the United States and the world.

In a recent essay for New Left Review, social theorist Mike Davis describes America's current state of crisis and what it portends:

Tomorrow liberal pundits may reassure us that the Republicans have committed suicide, that the age of Trump is over, and that Democrats are on the verge of reclaiming hegemony. Similar declarations, of course, were made during vicious Republican primaries in 2015. They seemed very convincing at the time. But an open civil war amongst Republicans may only provide short-term advantages to Democrats, whose own divisions have been rubbed raw by Biden's refusal to share power with progressives. Freed from Trump's electronic fatwas, moreover, some of the younger Republican senators may prove to be much more formidable competitors for the white college-educated suburban vote than centrist Democrats realize. In any event, the only future that we can reliably foresee — a continuation of extreme socio-economic turbulence — renders political crystal balls useless.

History is being rewritten in real time during this tumultuous and in many ways unprecedented moment in American history. Within two weeks this nation will witness a coup attempt, an impeachment and a presidential inauguration — all during a plague and under a fascistic authoritarian regime.

Many leading voices among the mainstream American news media have spent the last few weeks and months (and for that matter years) downplaying the obvious threat of a coup and other political violence by Donald Trump and his followers.

When the Trump-inspired coup plot was put into action last Wednesday, those same voices in the mainstream news media suddenly shifted their language and tone, emulating those writers, thinkers and activists they had previously — and in some instances very recently — mocked, marginalized, denounced and sought to silence.

Watching this happen is like hearing a movie soundtrack being changed, without interruption, from the wistful chords of a romantic comedy to the thunderous crescendos of an action spectacle.....>

To be continued.....

<....During last week's siege of the U.S. Capitol, the "hope peddlers" and other professional centrists abruptly appropriated the language of "the Resistance," spontaneously finding last-minute courage to tell the truth about Trump's presidency and his movement. Now those same public voices are pretending they never denied the real dangers of Trumpism and American fascism, playing their new role as imposter defenders of democracy.

Such a shift in speech, tone and thought is patently insincere: it is the worst sort of cowardice and self-serving behavior, driven by the fear that history will remember one's errors. There are also great financial and reputational incentives in pretending to have been correct all along, when in fact those public voices were repeatedly and fabulously wrong.

As part of this sudden rewrite of history, those in the mainstream news media who denied the obvious reality of Trump's imminent coup (which could have been foretold before he took office in 2017) are also claiming that "we" were all victims of a "failure of imagination" and that "it was impossible to think such a thing could happen" in America.

With such claims, mainstream journalists are adopting a version of the royal first-person plural, speaking of how "we" have finally woken up to the dangers of Donald Trump, or saying that "we" have ignored" the dangers of right-wing extremism in the United States for too long.

In the world as it actually exists, Black and brown Americans have long understood that Donald Trump and his movement are an existential threat to the United States. Because of their personal or historical experience there are other individuals and groups, such as Muslims, Jewish people and recent immigrants and refugees, who also possess similar insights and instincts.

Many liberals, and progressives of all races, are also aware that Trumpism represents an extreme threat to democracy and American society. And of course, there are a select few public voices who, at considerable personal risk, have spent the last few years sounding the alarm about the rise of American fascism.

When prominent pundits, journalists and others in that sphere make the specious claim that Trump's coup attack and other examples of right-wing terrorism are "unthinkable," they are really pursuing a reclamation project for the reputation and authority of the mainstream media, in an era when that institution has consistently failed to defend democracy.

Unfortunately, the mainstream media is not likely to learn from its errors, or to consider how it enabled, normalized and empowered Donald Trump and his neofascist movement. What should of course happen in the aftermath of Trump's presidency is an ambitious recommitment to advocacy journalism and to holding government accountable, as well as a commitment to diversify America's newsrooms in terms of race, class, geography, professional and educational backgrounds and other meaningful criteria. In that world, the mainstream media would also come to grips with the principle that neutrality is not the same as objectivity.

To wit: It is objectively true that Donald Trump is a public menace. But the hope peddlers, professional centrists and stenographers of current events will inevitably present such facts as opinions demanding "balance" from "both sides" in an equation built on false equivalence.

Such obsolete rules and norms will also inevitably be used as cudgels by the mainstream news media against Joe Biden's administration and the Democratic Party. This will only further embolden the Republican Party and its anti-human and anti-democratic agenda.

The 12th Amendment of the Constitution:

<“The president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted, the person having the greatest number of votes shall be president.">

Trump was trying to browbeat Pence into doing something unconstitutional, i.e. break his oath of office.

<I believe in truth, democracy, and the rule of law. I believe in a lot of other things as well, but after the past four years, these seem most important now.

I believe truth isn’t always easy to find or to face. I believe that, as human beings, we tend to believe what we want to believe because that’s easier, more soothing and convenient.

But I believe as the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said, everyone, is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.

I believe that if you don’t change your views as you learn new facts, then many of the facts you believe probably aren’t facts.

I believe Donald Trump is an enemy of truth. I believe he’s a con man, a pathological liar — now the most prodigiously documented liar in American history, if not the history of the world.

I believe he doesn’t care about, and may not even fully comprehend, the difference between truth and lies, between honesty and mendacity.

I believe he has always said what he wants to believe, what he wants others to believe, and what he thinks he can get away with, and always will.

I believe that, as president, Trump was a danger to democracy and the rule of law, precisely because he was a danger to truth.

But I believe his lies weren’t necessarily the most damaging ones to our country.

Equally harmful, if not more so, were the lies that allowed him to flourish — not just others’ repetition of his lies, but also lies that many told themselves and others to justify not contradicting him — that you can’t take him literally, that you need to look at what he does or that his policies justified it all.

I believe many people didn’t know any better than to believe Trump’s lies and still don’t.

But I believe that the ignorance, intellectual indolence, or hatred of those who don’t know better can’t excuse the failures of those who do, who could have said something, but didn’t because they felt it too inconvenient, unpleasant, or politically perilous to do so.

I believe it’s good, and I’m grateful, that some who were politically aligned with him are speaking out against him now.

But I believe the country could have been saved great anguish had they done so before.>

<....Trump is so on top of this, so proactive, so decisive, I just wish I could shake his hand and thank him personally for being the great president that he is....>

8/ Enjoy this moment. There’s much work ahead.>

The White House has been fumigated, the moron has been removed.

Whether or not this holds up, his legacy is a frightening one.

<....While people close to the president say he has been more subdued in the weeks leading up to his departure, he has continued not to take responsibility publicly or privately for the violence at the Capitol. Advisers have also cautioned the president against doing anything that would prompt more Republicans to support convicting him in his Senate impeachment trial and banning him from running for office again.

Instead, the president remained focused on settling scores with Republicans who voted to impeach him, according to people familiar with the matter. In farewell conversations with top aides, he has often returned to the subject of the election, insisting that he won, even as officials tried to steer the conversation to other matters, some of the people said....>

Gabriel Sterling, a long-time Republican campaign worker and political candidate who supervised election security for the Georgia Secretary of State, systematically refuted claims of electoral fraud or irregularities in the Georgia election.>

https://www.al.com/news/2021/01/the...

<Election results under
attack: Here are the facts>

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elec...

<'I've done more for black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. No one else has even been close.'>

<<....The second goes to the heart of Trump's campaign. As I've noted on so many fronts over recent months, Trump's brand is dominance. Trump acts; others comply. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter. That's the story he's sold his supporters. It's the essence of his political message. Trump dominates; his enemies are humiliated. Even 'friends' like Christie and Pence are relegated to a golden cage of perpetual dignity loss.>

This sounds not dissimilar to Lyndon Johnson's modus operandi, with even LBJ's friends--such as he truly had--and associates more than capable of getting a taste of the bastinado if they did not comply with the master's wishes.

It is clear that, from more than one account concerning legal matters I have read, that it is not necessarily enough for Trump to win: he must degrade the opponent. The slightest perceived personal attack brings about a desire for retribution out of all proportion to the offence.

He makes the case for Trump deserving prosecution for his crimes imo.

It's rather long but well worth the read.

Here's some of what he wrote:

<Clinton and Nixon were relieved of criminal liability, but at least they paid a price — and admitted some fault. Trump has done neither.

In exchange for the independent counsel’s agreement not to prosecute, Clinton admitted that he had given false testimony, agreed to pay $25,000 in legal costs, and accepted a five-year suspension of his license to practice law.

Nixon, of course, resigned in the face of imminent impeachment and removal. And he at least expressed some contrition, admitting in his resignation speech that some of what he did was “wrong.”

Contrast Trump, who absurdly <<<claimed “total EXONERATION”>>> from an investigation he sought to obstruct, who falsely described his extortionary call with the president of Ukraine as “PERFECT,” and who endlessly claimed victimhood from investigative “witch hunts” and “hoaxes.”

Beyond this, without diminishing the seriousness of Clinton’s and Nixon’s offenses — especially Nixon’s, which led to his resignation — they don’t compare with the array of charges that Trump’s conduct may warrant.

But if there could be any doubt about whether Trump can be given a pass without the rule of law paying too high a price, that ended in the ugly final weeks of Trump’s presidency.

His attempts to reverse a free and fair election — by any means he saw necessary, including by fomenting violence — have not only undermined the rule of law but also threatened to destroy it altogether.

No other president has ever done that, or attempted to do that, or probably even thought of doing that.

Not even Nixon, who as vice president in January 1961 presided with aplomb over a joint session of Congress as it counted the electoral votes that sealed his defeat at the hands of President-elect John F. Kennedy, and did so even though the election had been extremely close, with the national popular vote margin being just two-tenths of 1 percent. For all his faults, Nixon respected the law in precisely the situation that Trump abjured it.>

<One of the few lasting impacts of the odd, digital national conventions that took place last summer was the Republican abandonment of a party platform, as the GOP cited the pandemic as an opportunity to ditch concrete policy goals in order to “enthusiastically support” Trump and his “America-first agenda.” And though their candidate admitted defeat two months after the election, the platform of fealty remains true — even after the former president helped stir up an insurrection causing federal troops to deploy in the nation’s capital until the early Spring.

Despite initial reports that GOP leaders would consider exiling Trump from high office with an impeachment conviction in the Senate, lawmakers are mostly rallying behind a traditional party approach — doing nothing. As New York’s Jonathan Chait notes, “Senate Republicans are coalescing around a technical claim that Trump cannot be impeached because he has already left office, an argument at odds with the conclusion of most scholars, but which allows them to avoid casting firm judgment on Trump’s incitement. McCarthy, who last week said Trump ‘bears responsibility’ for the mob attack, now says, ‘I don’t believe he provoked it if you listen to what he said at the rally.’”

The movement to support Trump after his supporters sieged the Capitol is taking place at all levels of the party. At the top, the Washington Post reports that one RNC committeewoman has pressed party head Ronna McDaniel to push a resolution condemning the impeachment. And across the country, the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the president on one article of incitement of insurrection have dealt with swift pushback for holding the president accountable. As the New York Times notes, almost all of those who voted to impeach Trump “have either already been formally censured by local branches of the G.O.P., face upcoming censure votes or have been publicly scolded by local party leaders.”

Liz Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, is navigating the most serious challenge in the wake of an impeachment vote: At least 107 GOP representatives, representing just over a majority of the House Republican vote, reportedly support removing Cheney from her leadership position on a secret ballot. Like her counterparts in South Carolina and Michigan, she is now facing a newly-inspired 2022 primary challenge for her rebuke of the president. According to the Washington Post, Trump is also prepared to help challengers running against representatives who broke the party vote on impeachment, with over $70 million in campaign cash squirreled away to do so.

But it’s not just the 10 representatives who made Trump’s second impeachment the most bipartisan one in history who are being ostracized within the ranks of the GOP. The Arizona Republican Party this weekend voted to censure Governor Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake, and Cindy McCain for opposing Trump’s baseless attempt to contest the election. (Ducey was also censured for implementing COVID lockdown restrictions in the state considered by the party as “dictatorial powers,” while Flake and McCain were condemned for endorsing President Biden.) The party also voted to reinstate Kelli Ward as its chair after Trump endorsed her, despite losing a Senate race in 2018 and encouraging anti-lockdown protestors to dress up as medical workers during their demonstrations in April.

Republicans who initially condemned the president’s role in the Capitol riot may be doing so at their own electoral expense. In one poll taken the week after the insurrection, 81 percent of GOP voters approved of Trump, compared to just 32 percent approval for Mitch McConnell. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-supporting, Sandy Hook-questioning freshman congresswoman summarized the crowd wisdom in a recent tweet: “The vast majority of Republican voters, volunteers, and donors are no longer loyal to the GOP, Republican Party, and candidates just because they have an R by their name. Their loyalty now lies with Donald J Trump.”

Despite early threats of defecting to start a Patriot Party under his leadership, Trump’s loyalty reportedly lies with the GOP for now. According to the New York Times, Trump has been “talked out of” the idea of founding a third party as leverage to ensure his acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial.>

The Lincoln project have set their sights on a new target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRb...

I wish Teddy Boy was up for re-election. While I'd rather keep the Lincoln project folks at an arm's length, they really do know how to do attack ads.