General Discussion

Today’s impeachment trials are, as much as anything, public spectacles. One competes for hearts and minds, emphasis on the former. The rules of procedure don’t apply outside the “courtroom”, and the spectacle in the chambers was anything but a courtroom. Instead it was a media space with two sides battling for the sympathies of the viewers-and there weren’t that many of them. In a sense it was a fight for the news bites, the news cycle on various outlets. The story to be told in two years, in four years.

On the one side, the inevitable conclusion of Republicans letting him off was a win for Trump. One way to make the proceedings a loss for Trump was to drag them out. To highlight his every violence against the constitution, and to highlight his incredible, mean incompetence. A longer trial with witnesses possibly emerging from the woodwork would have done that

And let’s not forget that Democrats had control of the process. They could have ended it whenever they chose. If proceedings threatened to retard Biden’s agenda, they could have bailed. Until then they’d have laid bare Trumps malfeasance.

Chance abrogated. Sigh.

Still, there is the lesson of Benghazi. Let’s keep those Trump hearings coming.