Fighting Battles You Can Not Win

Five decades ago, I was enrolled at George Brown College in the Child Care Worker (now call Child and Youth Worker) program. One of the things that I learnt there was that when working with children, one should never start battles that you can not win. Equally as important - never start a battle in which the cost of winning is higher than the benefits of winning. It seems to me as if the US Democrats could have learnt a valuable lesson if they had attended those classes with me.

While it is tempting to believe that Trump's numerous misdeeds, missteps, outright lies and generally un-presidential behaviours are so obvious that anyone and everyone would vote to impeach him, that clearly is not the case. Moreover, to make that assumption that the US Senate, with its Republican majority would vote against Trump or even ensure that there could be a fair and unbiased hearing -clearly suggests that US Democrats live on a different planet than the rest of us.

It is not clear to me why the US Democrats bothered with the impeachment process. They must have known that the hell would have to freeze over before the Senate would vote to impeach their president. To an outside observer, the fact that the Republican-dominated Senate was allowed to decide on whether or to not allow any testimony is clearly absurd. To ignore the overwhelming amount of evidence that something happened (to decide whether or not it was right or wrong is why we have trials) is, at the very least, irresponsible. However, for the Democrats to pretend that there could have been a fair and impartial hearing of all of the facts was, from the very beginning, pure fantasy. At best, all the Democrats have done is to prove that they are as partisan and as tunnel-visioned as their Republican counterparts.

As an outside, occasional observer - it is good theatre. I suspect for many citizens of the US it is boring,  predictable and in fact not very entertaining. While many of the commentators, or at least those who pretend to be neutral,  liked to suggest that there was something to talk about, that some glorious truths would be revealed - everyone knew that that would not happen. The game was rigged before the judge sat down. By engaging in this farce - in fact, being, at the very least, co-creators of it, the Democrats have demonstrated that their capacity to run the country is as limited as the Republicans. They could have taken the high road and at least tried to make the country work, they could have tried to show that there were alternatives. Instead, they just showed that they were politicians and not very good ones.

I predict that Trump, next November will be elected for his second term. There is no one who, at present is running for the position who has any hope of generating a significant movement away from Trump. And that is a very sad prediction.