Thanks, I got the first part but didn't get the second. As I understand it, impeachment need not be predicated by criminal offenses, and does not necessarily mean Trump will be booted out. I'm curious, what odds do you give towards Trump surviving this unimpeached vs impeaced vs found guilty of wrongdoing vs losing the presidency?
Someone somewhere referred to American democracy and American parliamentarianism as basically being Amish democracy. It's permanently frozen in the past and while it has long fashioned itself to be the foremost democracy in the world, it rarely acknowledges that it's far and away the least evolved. Here's the hokey-pokey: Keep in mind that if it goes all the way to (4), this will be the second time in history we've done this. Andrew Johnson faced an impeachment trial in the late 1800s and was acquitted and Bill Clinton faced and impeachment trial in the late '90s and was acquitted. Yeah. the same people who thought banging an intern and lying about it was treason see no problem with blackmailing the Ukrainians into harassing a political competitor but whatever. Either way, as with most things in American democracy we'll pretty much see what we get when we get there. Kinda like Boris Johnson abrogating Parliament and the high court saying "nuh uh" we're in a very open probability field right now.