My Crystal Ball

So, after two weeks of public testimony in the House and the House close to voting on Articles of Impeachment against the President, I thought I would write down what I have seen in my crystal ball. Understand, this is my crystal ball and there really is nothing special about it. Nevertheless, here it is.

• The house will vote along partisan lines to submit Articles of Impeachment to the U.S. Senate;
• the U.S. Senate will take up the Articles of Impeachment as required under the U.S. Constitution;
• The U.S. Senate will hear all the evidence against the President put together by the House but the fact will remain that the republicans in the Senate all already made up their mind – the President is innocent. 
• After two weeks of hearing overwhelming evidence that the President improperly used his office for personal gain, the Senate will vote not to remove the President along party lines. 

Now, what will the vote look like will be hard to tell. There are currently 51 republicans, 47 democrats, and 2 independents in the Senate. The Senate will vote 52 in favor of impeachment and 48 against but it takes 2/3 of the Senate, or 66 votes, to impeach and remove the President from office. Therefore, impeachment will fail, and the President will remain in officeIt should be noted that Clinton failed to be impeached and removed from office by a major vote…in other words in article one of the Articles of Impeachment, Clinton was found innocence with 47 guilty vs. 53 not guilty; and in article two the vote was 50 guilty and 50 not guilty. In President Jackson’s impeachment the majority voted guilty BUT was one vote short necessary to remove the President and, therefore, the President remained in office. If Trump remains in office based on 52 guilty and 48 not guilty, Trump will become the second President to be found guilty of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors” by majority vote but failed to be removed from office because the vote fell short of the 66 required to remove from office. 

• But it won’t stop there. The republicans will run the 2020 campaign against the democrats accusing them of attempting to remove a president based on a “witch hunt” (in spite of the majority finding him guilty) while the democrats will run on the platform that the republican’s failed to faithful execute their duties under the constitution and placed party ahead of the constitution.
•  The campaign will be ugly, but the results will not be surprising. Democrats will retain a majority in the house and will take over the senate by a 54 to 46 majority. 
• Here is where my crystal ball gets muddy. If Trump gets re-elected, then nothing will get done during the next 4 years. The democrats will reject a supreme court nominee (because of Ginsburg’s retirement or death); they will attempt to increase the number of supreme court justices but that will fail because the president will veto it and there won’t be enough to override the veto; there will be a number of shutdowns in the government because the president will veto any measure coming out of the senate and the house and neither will have the necessary votes to override the veto; and the U.S. will become increasingly isolated from the rest of the world and WW III will break out (just as the U.S. period of isolationism between WW I and WW II). 

Or

• Trump will lose the election and there will be a clean sweep for the democrats in the house, senate and presidency. The democrats will increase the number of supreme court justices; the corporate income taxes will be rolled back; the stock market will go down because corporations will be paying more in income taxes; growth will slow; the economy will stagnate; and health care insurance will undergo fundamental, but positive, changes. 

So, there you have it…we are screwed either way. The question then becomes do we want some lube before getting screwed or not…