The Impeachment Trial

The Washington Post Print Facility

Newspapers. The presses are big. They're noisy. And when they roll, you can feel them through the floor. That's why they're usually somewhere off in the hinterlands instead of in the big, busy office buildings where reporters write 'em.

The Post  prides itself on its dependable home delivery time of 6 a.m. or earlier. Hah!

I bet it was in subscribers' driveways alright. And maybe by 6 a.m., but I bet it didn't have the full rundown of D.C.'s Main Event. The paper has to be at the distribution center by 2:15 a.m. to make the 6 o'clock delivery. The Impeachment Trial went until about 2 a.m. D.C. time (Midnight Colorado time.)
Ain't no way the Washington Post, or any other print newspaper, could even report the actual time Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts finally graveled the proceedings into recess. Guess folks are just going to have to join the 21st Century and get their news online.

I watched it live on TV. (Thank you PBS.) It certainly went past my bedtime and I bet past the bedtimes of many of the Senators. Lord, some of them are even older than me.

What I saw and heard:
    The Senate Chamber was full of Senators. (Pretty much Senators, only. It's not usually full unless they're taking a vote. You normally see one Senator or another at the lectern reading their speech to a virtually empty room.
     And it was quiet. The Senators weren't allowed to talk except during recesses. They are known to visit with each other, normally. You know, discuss, persuade, tell jokes, gossip -- even, or maybe especially, during a vote when at least a quorum is presumed to be there. (That's 51 of the 100 Senators.)
      It was all very formal and decorous. Representative Jerry Nadler was the only one who came right out and called Trump's lawyers liars. I don't know that that was what drew the reprimand from Chief Justice Roberts. He directed the reprimand at both parties. The Trump lawyers didn't call anybody out with the term lie. They just lied, but I'm not sure that's an infraction of courtesy in the Senate.
      Really different than what I've seen of the British Parliament. I don't know that I've ever heard any of them call each other liars, but they are certainly noisy and disruptive. But, now that I think about it, I think I've only seen video of the House of Commons. And mostly during Brexit at that. Maybe the House of Lords is different.
   
The Democrats entered umpteen amendments to the rules the Republicans have established for the proceedings. Each amendment was duly read out. Each side was allotted two hours to argue for or against the amendment. Then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, would move that the amendment be "tabled." (Meaning that whatever the requested change could be considered at some future time. Or not, as Representative Adam Schiff pointed out.) They would have a roll call vote, meaning that each Senator's name was called out and they responded verbally.
Most of the amendments were requests that subpoenas be issued for various and sundry documents and witnesses.
There were no surprises. With one exception, the votes to table were 53 yeas and 47 nays. Hmmm. How many Republicans are in the Senate? Oh, yeah. 53. There are 45 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the Dems.
Formalized deniability! Keeping in mind, one-third of these folks are up for reelection this year. Their jobs are on the line. They didn't vote against having witnesses or documents. They just voted to table the requirement to have witnesses or documents.
The one exception? Senator Susan Collins of Maine. She voted with the Democrats to increase the amount of time for responses to written motions from two hours to twenty-four hours. Written motions are due Wednesday morning. Gosh, I think the deadline for motions was 8 a.m. D.C. time, two and a half hours before my time right now.
Two hours to respond! Senate staffers have their work cut out for them. And on little or no sleep, at that.

Besides not being allowed to talk while the trial is in session, the Senators can't have any kind of electronic device -- no cell phones, iPads. Nada. They're only allowed to drink water or milk. (I don't know that the kind of milk is specified. Cow's milk? Goat's milk? Almond milk? Oat milk?)

They started at 1 p.m. Tuesday afternoon and went until almost 2 a.m. Wednesday morning. They were allowed a 30-minute dinner break and periodic 15-minute breaks. If they need a potty-break, they must use the cloak room. (I assume there are facilities in the cloak room.) The point is, they're not to be leaving the chamber and wandering in the halls or falling asleep in some out-of-the-way corner.

And those English Royals think they've got it bad!

Am I going to watch the rest in real time? Don't think so. Think I'll just read about it in the newspapers. Online.

Campaigns, Schmam-paigns

image from billtatro.com

Oh, my. Politics to the left of me. Politics to the right of me. And Peyton Manning/Brock Osweiler in the middle. I do live on the Front Range, you know. Guess I might have to tune into an infomercial.

And how does this fit in with my blog's purpose -- writing about writing? It's all life imitating fiction. Some thriller. Some Fantasy. Some mystery. Some horror...

I am a registered Democrat. In national and state-wide elections, I have almost always voted Democrat. I acknowledge that there have often been rowdy, even venomous Democrat campaigns, especially on the state level. (I'm from Oklahoma and I can think of quite a few Governor, U.S. Senate, State Attorney General, even Lieutenant Governor and Corporation Commissioner races that qualified as less than genteel, though never so vulgar as today's Republican race for presidential nominee.)

Will Rogers, another Oklahoman, once said, "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

I still appreciate his succinct description of my party. It seems that this year's Democrat contestants uphold the tradition of differences of opinion or perception or point of view. Bernie, the idealist. Hillary, the pragmatist.

However, I'm going to have to cede to this cycle's Republicans the mantle of Most Disorganized Political Party. Indeed, they are currently authoring a state-of-being that has accelerated from disorganized to chaotic. Not to mention noisy.

We humans have short memories and think that our own time is either/and/or "the best of times ... the worst of times." Sometimes our collective memory is shorter even than a lifetime.

But division is nothing new.

Not for the Republicans. Abraham Lincoln, the first elected Republican president, was reelected on the National Union Party ticket his second time around. The Civil War was still raging and the Republican Party split in two. The other took the name Radical Democracy Party and nominated John C. Fremont of California, a supporter of general emancipation.

The Democrat Party nominated former General-in-Chief of the Union Army, George McClellan.

The outcome of the Civil War was still in doubt and McClellan supported the concept of union with slavery -- anathema to the abolitionists and the new territories who did not want slavery to spread.

Keeping in mind, all three of these candidates represented only the Union side. The Confederacy was still months away from recognizing theirs was a lost cause.

Talk about a mess!

And then there was the 1912 campaign for the Republican presidential nominee. Teddy Roosevelt had lost faith in William Howard Taft whom he had anointed his successor in the 1908 election. TedRo came back full bore. But, failing to get the Republican nomination, he headed a third party, the Progressive Party, also called the Bull Moose Party.

They lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Third parties (other than Lincoln's, I suppose) have no history of winning presidential contests in the U.S.

Did I mention that the Democrat Party is not an organized party?

Probably the most exciting multi-party presidential campaign in my lifetime, but before I can remember, was the 1948 election which saw the Democrat Party divided three ways -- the segregationist States Rights' nominee Strom Thurmond; the liberal left Progressive Party's Henry Wallace; and the centrist Democrat incumbent Harry Truman.

A less contentious Republican Party nominated Thomas E. Dewey and with the historical precedents that divided parties lose elections the Chicago Daily Tribune went to press with this:

 

A victorious Harry Truman! The paper got it wrong.

Twenty years later the Democrat Party splintered again and another Wallace (this time a segregationist) headed the American Independent Party.

1968 was such a chaotic time -- Vietnam, Civil Rights, demonstrations, riots, and assassinations -- the Republican Richard Nixon, promising to restore law and order, won. (And we all know how he worked out in the world of law and order.)

In 1980, incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter's lagging popularity as President -- oil embargo, the Olympics Boycott, the Iran Hostage Crisis -- had him facing three other Democrats for the nomination.

Smelling blood in water, eight Republicans vied for the nomination. Ronald Reagan got the nod, but fellow Republican John Anderson pulled out and ran as an Independent. His defection hardly affected Reagan's win at all.

In 1992, Ross Perot's run as an Independent with the Reform Party is given credit (or blame, depending on your politics) for incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush's loss to Democrat Bill Clinton. Perot, a billionaire who ran against Washington insiders. Sound familiar?

Thus endeth the history lesson for today.

So here we are in 2016. For some of us, this election cycle is a thriller with impending doom. Who'll save the day? For some a Fantasy with Utopian ambitions. For others, a mystery -- how is this happening? And for far too many, a horror too scary to even imagine.

Did I leave out comedy? Yes, I did. The humorous aspects have worn thin. I think I'll turn the TV and radio off and avoid Facebook comments.