The announcement of first one and then two nameless CIA agents with “evidence” that President Donald Trump should be removed from office was greeted with fervor by Democrats trying to ensure they don’t have to run against Trump in the 2020 election. This led to no less than six Democratic Party-controlled House committees launching impeachment “inquiries” demanding an endless stream of administration witnesses and documents.
Now, however, Adam Schiff, Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has dropped his demand that congressional investigators question the first CIA agent, who they admit is a Democratic Party supporter, insisting instead he or she must not be seen or heard from. And mention of the second secret source — another spy Democrats claimed had even more damning evidence of the president’s wrongdoing — has mysteriously vanished from the liberal press or prospective House committee witness lists.
Having used the anonymous claims from these members of the U.S. rulers’ political police to get their impeachment witch hunt rolling, Democrats now want to bury all mention of the so-called whistleblowers. They say agent #1 fears Congress wouldn’t be able to keep their identity from being revealed. Even more important, they fear being subpoenaed by any Republican-led Senate committee. So Democratic House leaders say they don’t need either spy to testify.
In the meantime, their “inquiry” — a hit job aimed at nullifying the votes of those who elected Trump president in 2016 — rolls on, as they press and probe for dirt on him and his associates.
Most of the house interrogations have been held behind closed doors, without any transcript released afterward. These proceedings are a “partisan Star Chamber,” Republican Rep. Scott Perry said Oct. 14. The Democrats just leak “selective things they want for their narrative.”
Democrats want to oust Trump, but don’t want to face him at the polls. Removing him through a witch hunt prior to the 2020 election ensures they don’t have to try to win votes from the millions of workers who voted for Trump in 2016.
These workers were looking for a change from successive Democratic and Republican administrations that had offloaded the crisis of the capitalist system onto their shoulders. They were drawn to Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” of politicians from both parties who for years had shown nothing but disdain for working people’s lives.
Liberals are more and more openly scornful towards those they call Trump’s “base.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough derided Trump supporters Oct. 18 as “ignorant” for backing a president he alleges is responsible for Kurds in Syria being “wiped out.” The “Morning Joe” host commanded Trump supporters to watch more news shows like his and to be less “dumb.”
Liberals and like-minded meritocrats in the upper-middle class believe their own “brightness” gives them “the right to make decisions, to administer and ‘regulate’ society for the bourgeoisie — on behalf of what they claim to be the interests of ‘the people,’” explains Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes in the book Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege, and Learning Under Capitalism. “Above all they are mortified to be identified with working people in the United States” and “lecture us on our manners and mores.”
In 2016 the Democratic presidential field had been narrowed to just two candidates — Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Today there are 19 contending hopefuls.
Crisis deepens inside Democratic Party
While they are all shouting for impeachment and glorifying the secret political police “whistleblowers,” they sharply disagree on how to win next November. Some say they have to try to reach out to the workers who voted for Trump while others want to turn their back on them forever as stupid and hopeless.
Tulsi Gabbard, a military veteran, was the last of the Democrats vying for the party’s presidential nomination to back impeaching the president. During the recent candidate’s debate she pointed out that Trump had in fact won the election in 2016, and that any attempt to impeach him should not be “hyperpartisan.”
Hillary Clinton — who calls workers who voted for Trump “deplorables” — struck back, calling Trump an “illegitimate president.” She said she really won the 2016 election and could do so again if she chose to run in 2020.
Then she went on to smear Gabbard, calling her a tool of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Clinton claimed Gabbard was being prepped to run as a third party candidate to siphon votes from the Democrats and hand the 2020 election to Trump.
Gabbard retaliated by denouncing Clinton as a “warmonger” and “the embodiment of the corruption, the personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”
Despite these divisions, all wings of the Democratic Party, like Trump and all the Republicans, defend the interests of the country’s capitalist rulers at home and stand ready to wield Washington’s military might to advance their interests abroad.
Deep strains also wrack the Republicans, reflected in their current divisions over war policy in Syria and elsewhere. Trump says he wants out of Washington’s “endless wars” in the Middle East, while the Republican leadership in the Senate joins the Democratic war party in saying the U.S. pullback there is a disaster of epic proportions.
The 2016 elections dealt an unprecedented blow to the stability of the bosses’ long-standing method of rule — getting workers to hold their nose and vote for the “lesser evil” — voting for the Democrats one time, Republicans the next, and on and on. The former stability of the two-party shell game will not be restored.