Claiming high crimes and misdemeanors were committed, the Democratic Party leadership in the House shepherded their caucus to adopt articles of impeachment in a completely partisan vote Dec. 18, seeking to oust sitting President Donald Trump less than a year before the 2020 presidential election. But since then, they’ve decided to sit on the indictment for over three weeks rather than — as the Constitution requires — submit it to the Senate for trial.
Whatever they say, they know the Senate would vote to clear him of any wrongdoing.
Since the day Donald Trump was elected, the liberals have teamed up with former FBI political police bosses, like James Comey and Robert Mueller, to set up “independent” investigations in an effort to get something on him. Each charge raised with fanfare — like collusion with Moscow — has come apart and been discarded, just to latch on a new one, just as fruitlessly.
They fear this moment, because almost all of the Democrats and their cheerleaders in the liberal press are convinced Trump would likely win in November if they can’t bring him down before then.
Some argue the House, which they control, should just keep their impeachment so-called inquiry open. “Never send over the articles,” Jennifer Rubin recommends in the Dec 16 Washington Post. Just let them sit in the House as a “permanent stain on Trump’s presidency,” she writes.
Others argue for keeping the inquiry open like a permanent grand jury-type inquisition, constantly digging around for new evidence or new charges. After all, they might finally hit on something they could use to prevent the president from running again this November.
All of this is a mockery of the Constitution as well as guarantees in the Bill of Rights crucial for working people — the presumption of innocence and the right to confront your accusers in a court of law, to name a few. Instead, the kinds of frame-up methods commonly used against workers in the capitalist “justice” system are being used by the Democrats against a rival capitalist politician, who was elected to the presidency.
Now Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is pressing the Senate to dismiss the allegations on Jan. 12, 25 days after they were adopted, “for failure to prosecute.” Others push for the Senate to just set up its own trial on the charges and reject them.
Target is the working class
Democrats are trying to find ways to prevent those that voted for Trump in 2016 or who didn’t vote for anyone at all — sick of the lack of anything positive for working people from the rulers’ two-party system — from ever being able to do something like that again.
Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times complains it is “impossible for Mr. Trump to disappoint” those who voted for him because “they never had hopes to dash.” The 2016 election he says was merely a “howl against perceived national decline,” by people “resigned to the unimprovability of things.”
What Ganesh disparagingly calls a “howl” was the vote of millions of working people and others who were looking for a way to halt the worsening conditions of life and work that they faced under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Trump won the votes of many of those who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, looking for a “change.”
Commentators on the left and right of capitalist politics argue that everything is going great for working people.
“This has been the best year ever,” proclaims Nicholas Kristof in the Dec. 28 New York Times. “For humanity all over, life just keeps getting better.” “The roaring ’20s have begun,” crowed the New York Post Dec. 31.
And the White House demands credit for creating “prosperity for all.” Its New Year’s Eve message says “wages are rising fastest for low-income workers.”
There has been an uptick in wages on the heels of an expansion in hiring in the U.S. But this hasn’t made any substantial dent in the economic and social crisis working people face today. Coal miners, rail workers, Uber and taxi drivers, retail workers from Walmart to Amazon, workers trying to live on tips and others have faced declining real wages and deteriorating conditions for years. This is the result of the bosses’ profit-driven efforts to make us pay for the deepening crisis of their capitalist system.
In fact for the last three years, life expectancy has fallen in the U.S. — the richest capitalist country in history. It is harder than ever for young workers to decide to marry or to start a family, with growing numbers living with their parents, unable to afford their own home.
Debt is soaring for workers of all ages — from college loans to credit cards, as well as mortgages and rents. Health care continues to deteriorate, with hospitals closing in rural areas across the country.
In stark contrast to the Democrats and Republicans of all persuasions, Socialist Workers Party candidates explain why workers — union and nonunion alike — need to fight back against this class exploitation, and out of these struggles build our own party, a labor party. We need to organize together to fight the bosses’ attacks on wages and the unsafe working conditions they impose on us. Through such experiences workers can transform ourselves, gaining the courage and self-confidence needed to build a movement that can put an end to capitalist rule.