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I'm sick of people pretending that if impeachment proceedings are begun, the info that ends up before the Senate for trial post-impeachment is the info we have now. No—not only do you write up and formalize the mountain of evidence we have now, the inquiry gathers *new* evidence.
1/ I'm also sick of the implication that a long series of highly watchable public hearings itemizing everything this president has done will end up being for *good* for Trump. If you believe that, you haven't followed anything about this presidency, let alone the Mueller Report.
2/ There are questions Congress could ask Trump Jr. now in a public hearing that he *couldn't and wouldn't* answer honestly, putting Trump's son in the position of perjuring himself on national TV before an audience of *tens of millions*. So how is that *good* for Trump, exactly?
3/ The narrow understanding one has to have of the national security and legal problems with this presidency—if you fear putting every way in which Trump has violated the law before the American people—is astounding. It's *scary* if anyone in the Congress is still that blinkered.
4/ For those who say, "Well, it doesn't matter how much evidence there is, Senate Republicans will never impeach," I think you're missing the point—if Americans see all the evidence and the *GOP* does nothing, in what way does that redound to the detriment of *Democrats* in 2020?
5/ My point: no matter how you slice it, politically or ethically or legally or strategically or morally or historically, if you oppose impeachment, it's fundamentally because you don't think the evidence is damning. Which means you don't know it, because it's incredibly damning.
PS/ And I don't want to hear the "Americans' minds are made up" argument, either. Let's not pretend more than a fraction of Americans have an understanding of the totality of the evidence against Trump. At worst, they like him and don't care—but don't pretend they *already know*.
PS2/ I'm watching a panel on MSNBC right now, and yes, it's official, the "Impeachment plays right into Trump's hands!" argument is officially the stupidest piece of analysis I've heard this year, and possibly makes me angrier than any analysis I've heard on any political topic.
