For those that missed it or need a refresher: Second impeachment of Donald Trump (from Wikipedia). Basically, the vote to convict fell short of the two-thirds margin, 57-43.
The good news is, that means seven Republicans put decency before party loyalty. One of them, perhaps not surprisingly, is Mitt Romney (who would have made a decent president, especially compared to what we had during that four years). I’m not sure who the others were, but on one hand I’m relieved it was not a party-line vote all the way.
I am, however, greatly disappointed that not only did we fail to find a total of 17 (ten more than we did), but from what I read, a lot of Republican Senators didn’t take the trial seriously. Either they didn’t show up for some of the evidence, or they were present but absent in mind: doodling instead of taking notes, reading the newspaper, or doing any number of things that would have gotten a contempt of court charge had they done so as jurors in a court of law. Which is basically what an impeachment hearing is: a trial by jury, with the Senate as that jury.
I hesitate to mention this, but I feel it must be brought up again. Many of the parallels to Adolf Hitler’s reign and Nazi Germany, so far, have been frighteningly accurate; the next one that people are now talking about is that Hitler came to power after the Germans failed to recognize how dangerous he was in the previous decade or so. For this reason, I’m hoping the criminal prosecution of Donald J. Trump, at some level, is successful in yielding a conviction and prison sentence. That now looks like the only way we will keep him from running for re-election and, Zeus forbid, actually getting re-elected.
It’s not really what a lot of people who lived through America run as a TV reality show the last four years, including myself, wanted. But I’m willing to be content with it if that’s the best we’re going to get.
I’m just glad to have relatively decent leadership again, even if Joe Biden was far from my first choice for president.