The Democrats’ attempt to drag out their impeachment of President Donald Trump came apart Jan. 10, with House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi announcing she will name the Democrats’ “prosecutors” and send the two articles of impeachment to the Senate this week, where the president will almost certainly be acquitted. Pelosi had delayed doing so for weeks, in violation of the Constitution, demanding that the opponents of Trump’s presidency set the rules.
The liberals press their permanent witch hunt against a president they despise — and his working-class “base” that they fear, a reflection of their concern they have little chance of defeating him in November.
And they’re searching for any way they can think of to prevent working people from ever putting their stamp on an election again.
Pelosi claimed the president is “impeached for life,” a meaningless statement designed to cover the fact Democrats know there is zero chance the Senate will vote to convict. A growing number of Democratic senators urged her to quit stalling and send on the articles of impeachment.
The liberals and their impeachment media allies like the New York Times have fought to oust or indict Trump since the day he was elected. They drew in two former FBI bosses — James Comey and Robert Mueller — to set up a partisan “Special Prosecutors” office that tried for over two years to cook up a case that Trump colluded with Moscow to steal the 2016 vote.
When that came apart, with not a shred of evidence, they grabbed charges the president interfered in Ukraine for partisan ends — despite the insistence of the Ukraine’s president it just wasn’t true. Now they’re flailing around for a new load of mud to toss at Trump as the election keeps looming nearer.
Trump is stepping up his campaign for reelection, running on a platform that his administration has brought “peace and prosperity.” He touts the growth of the capitalist economy under his administration, buoyed by a cyclical decline in unemployment.
And he says his course in Iraq — like the military operation that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani — was an example of the use of U.S. military might to deter rivals from attack.
“Trump and his team do not believe in appeasement as did Team Obama; they believe in peace through strength,” writes Hugh Hewitt in the Washington Post.
At a campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio, the president argued the protectionist trade pact he negotiated with the governments of Mexico and Canada was “historic for Ohio farmers, workers and manufacturers.”
Capitalist politicians of all stripes try to rally workers and farmers behind their military and trade policies as they vie with competitors for resources and markets, obscuring the fact that working people and the bosses have completely opposing interests, as the capitalist rulers try to pit workers in the U.S. against workers in other countries.
Attempts by liberals to portray Trump as a war monger for ordering Soleimani’s killing fell flat, as the bourgeois clerical regime in Tehran backed off from further retaliation for the U.S. airstrikes. Trump called for a new relationship with Tehran, appealing to the Iranian rulers to end meddling in the region and agree to a more stringent nuclear deal with Washington.
What road forward for working people?
As the Democrats fret and flail and Trump looks like a repeat winner — barring a collapse in the economic uptick — none of this presents a road forward for the working class and others battered by the ongoing crisis of capitalism.
The “peace” he presides over is one of imperialist plunder and his “prosperity” is one where the bosses feel bolder while tens of millions of workers and farmers live on the brink, paycheck to paycheck.
In contrast to the Democrats and Republicans, the Socialist Workers Party candidates point a way forward for working people. They start from workers organizing themselves independently and fighting in their own interests. They urge workers to break from the trap of casting a ballot for this year’s “lesser-evil” ruling-class party candidates. Workers need their own party, a labor party to fight to take political power and organize a workers and farmers government.
SWP candidates point to what workers can do together today to organize solidarity with copper workers on strike at Asarco in Arizona and Texas. To join protest actions demanding Washington get its troops and weaponry out of the Mideast and mobilizing solidarity with those hit by recent murderous Jew-hating attacks.
Join the Socialist Workers Party campaign!