Thread by @eatcookwrite

I think they've gamed it out and except for 3, maybe 5 seats in a tidal wave election, nothing they do can put their seats at risk. They could absolve Trump of ritual infanticide and they'd survive at the polls.

https://twitter.com/willwilkinson/status/1220810911247667203

Firstly, there HAS been an avalanche of smoking guns and it's barely moved the polls which stubbornly put support for impeachment and removal at 51%. The national number has to get near 70% to put safe Senate seats anywhere near in play.

That's going to be hard to move the needle that much in the current environment. The kinds of voters who remain up in the air over Trump generally never hear about smoking guns ...

... and psychologically, they twist themselves into pretzels to remain 'fair' and maintain the posture of either the snooty 'sensible center' or the populist 'pox on both their houses'.

So it's going to be next to impossible to get to 55% support for removal in Red States.

And even then, those states don't have strong Democratic infrastructure or a pipeline of solid candidates that could be stood up as competitive threats.

As to the three Senators on the chopping block, they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. A vote to impeach dooms them in a primary, as the GOP base won't accept it. A vote to absolve and endorse dooms them in November.

But if they want post-Senate careers at the trough of white shoe law and lobbying firms, speaking fees, etc –– they need to stay Republicans in good standing. Getting primaried into retirement for heresy sets their parachute on fire.

The other consideration is history. Surely all but the Koolaid Klub understands that they are going down in the history books as villains, or the enablers of possibly the most villainous president in US history.

But if they all stick together, history won't be able to single them out as particular villains worth naming, and they still get to keep their jobs and their parachutes.

McConnell has long ago made his peace with his place in the Great Hall of American Villains and Lindsey Graham has just lost his cotton-pickin' mind.

You'd think one could fall back on getting their real estate license or just live on their federal pension if they could do something of real consequence to defend Constitutional Republicanism as a form of government.

Apparently not.

From the beginning of the Trump presidency, there has always been this feeling that, though the pathway and mechanisms seem impossible, that the whole thing would just collapse under its own weight.

That feeling has never been as palpable as it does at this moment. Alas, the pathway and mechanisms remain impossible.

Our democracy is just that broken.