Impeachment: “After the Ball is Over”
Back in the 1890s, in the era of the “Gibson Girl” and straw boaters for men- back when my grandparents were small children- there was a very popular song from Tin Pan Alley called, “After the Ball is Over” whose refrain was:
“After the ball is over, after the break of morn,
After the dancers’ leaving, after the stars are gone,
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all—
Many the hopes that have vanished after the ball…”
-Charles K. Harris, 1891
I remember my parents singing this, usually at the end of a substantially imbibed evening along with their friends, but I digress…
Anyway, the song comes to mind when I think of the aftermath of the impeachment drama taking place in the United States Senate- after the verdict is in, and after the election which follows.
That Trump will ultimately be acquitted of the charges brought by Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives is but a foregone conclusion. Whether or not the drip-drip of alleged witnesses continues to surface, whether or not witnesses are ultimately called to testify, and whether or not the Senate trial ends at the end of this week, the end of next week, or the end of next month, the President will remain in office.
Mathematically speaking, there simply aren’t enough back-stabbers, like Mitt Romney (R-UT), in the Republican caucus to reach anywhere near the threshold of two-thirds (67 Senators) to convict the President of bribery, treason, high crimes or misdemeanors, assuming that all 47 Democrats in the Senate go along with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to vote for removal.
The Republicans know this, the Democrats know this and yes, even the most biased left-leaning media all know that Donald Trump will not be convicted and removed from office…as they say in the south, “ain’t gonna happen.”
There may not even be enough votes to call for witnesses, at this point, but with a threshold requirement of only 51 Senators, the call for witnesses might happen, nevertheless. It’s of no matter…the President will not be removed, end of story…
…or is it?
You see, the real effort behind this sham of an impeachment is to overturn the results of the 2016 election, interfere with the 2020 election (by removing Trump from the ballot) and, since neither of those can happen, tarnish his re-election efforts so as to elect a Democrat, instead.
Despite what all of the polls are saying (as if any of these are trustworthy), Donald Trump is going to win re-election, and by an even larger electoral margin than he did in 2016…I will repeat this…Donald Trump will win re-election by an even larger electoral margin than he did in 2016…
Why?
Simply because all of the voters who took a chance on the unknown quantity of Trump in 2016, desperately hoping that he would do all of what he promised to do on a host of issues- the economy, trade, ObamaCare’s individual mandate, defense, unemployment, etc., have now seen a President who has delivered. Now that he has delivered on these (more often than not), all of his 2016 voters, as well as those who didn’t vote for him but now see the results of his efforts, are going to keep Mr. and Mrs. Trump at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the next four years. This will happen regardless of who he runs against in the fall, because the American people are not going to risk all of these successes on a member of the opposite party- regardless of which Democrat wins their nomination- Biden, Buttigieg, Warren, Sanders and, yes, Hillary Clinton. They will all lose…bank on it.
That said, Donald Trump still won’t be out of the woods on impeachment…that is unless the House of Representatives “flips” to Republicans. If Democrats were to retain their majority in the House, rest assured that they will continue to impeach the President, for however many times it takes, just to stymie his second term and stand in the way of his legislative initiatives. Some, like Maxine Waters (D-CA), have already promised that they will do just that- impeach, impeach, impeach- country be damned.
So, if the voting citizens across the 435 House districts decide that they want four more years of this “bullschiff,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, committee Chairmen Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and all of the other ass-clowns who have subjected this country to three (or four) years of trying to overthrow the will of the people, will remain in place.
If however, the voters have had enough of this, Republicans will retake the majority in the House, retain their majority in the Senate, and the Democrat holdovers from bygone eras- like Pelosi and Schiff and Nadler, et al, will slip away and join the likes of Harry Reid (D-NV) into their taxpayer-funded retirements. They will choose to hang it up because they won’t abide not having the power they have had these last few years…and maybe, just maybe, the country will get back on the right track and Trump can complete his plan and promise to “drain the swamp” that is our nation’s capital.
So, “after the ball is over” and “after the break of morn,” on the 4th of November, 2020, we’ll all know whether or not the Democrats’ “hearts are breaking“ yet again, whether or not these ill-attempts at removing the duly-elected President will continue, and we will know whether or not, as Benjamin Franklin once said, we can “keep” our Republic…
God willing.
-Drew Nickell, 27 January 2020
© 2020 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
Signed and personalized editions available at my website:
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2
Follow my postings on the RSS feed: http://www.drewnickell.com/?feed=rss2