Something is going very wrong for the Democrats in their impeachment drama. It was supposed to play out like the Nixon Watergate hearings. Each day would build drama, increase suspense, with new revelations culminating in such a nationwide impact that the President would not even have to be impeached after all. When Nixon read the tea leaves, he resigned.
The Republicans tried to replicate that effort with their impeachment of Bill Clinton, but that campaign never quite impacted the same way. Everyone knew by then about Paula Corbin Jones and the zipper, Kathleen Willey and the pawing, Monica Lewinsky and the cigar … and the dress … and the stain. Yet the Clinton affair was marked by the unexpected drama that came when an honest politician in Washington arose on the Senate floor, Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and spoke truth to power, giving voice to the shame of a nation. That was it, but it was something.
The Senate never was going to convict Clinton. Those in the House who instigated the impeachment all paid a steep price, and the Republicans lost their momentum. Yes, Clinton had lied under oath, and he even had to be disbarred in Arkansas — but, at the end of the day, the revelation that a married man had denied having an extramarital affair just did not measure up to, say, a standard that had been set previously when a sitting President appeared to have covered up a felony and paranoiacally had wiretapped his own White House to record his own private conversations with most everyone. Nixon had microphones installed in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, the Lincoln Sitting Room, his Executive Office Building office, and even in the Aspen Lodge at Camp David.
[Interesting Read]
See Also:
(1) Reuters Poll: 36% of Independents Tuning Out Impeachment Hearings
(2) Impeachment by Focus Group
(3) Trump says he will ‘strongly consider’ testifying at impeachment hearings
(4) Nearly 80,000 DACA Recipients Have Prior Arrest Records, according to Government Data
(5) No one is above the law — unless you’re a Democrat
