The Gears.
We’ve hit the phase where timing and procedure for the next three years becomes everything, and the Republicans know it.
They are working to kill the Dodd-Frank regulations and the ACA quickly–along with a host of other programs and initiatives that stand in the way of enriching their wealthy benefactors–because they’ve sensed that the rotting yacht upon which they’ve set sail is bound to come apart in the middle of the ocean. They are sneaking away in small groups now to raid the hold and pack provisions into the lifeboats.
If Democrats retake Congress during the 2018 midterms they will certainly make their first order of business the start of impeachment proceedings against Trump. However, if Pence has been suitably insulated from the most damning aspects of the investigation, impeachment will only mean trading one nefarious Republican president for another. Unless the Democratic resurgence were so profound as to produce veto-proof supermajorities–which is politically unlikely in the House and mathematically impossible in the Senate–another two years will go by with the policies of the prior Congress in place, as President Pence refuses to sign any bill created to undo the damage.
The troubling fact of the matter is that a Democratic victory during midterms only produces useful dividends if there is cause to remove both Trump and Pence from office at once, which would then elevate the new Democratic House Speaker to the presidency. If Trump were to leave office for any reason prior to those midterms, one would have to somehow prove the extremely improbable scenario that every single Republican in the line of succession was also legally unfit for office.
Otherwise, we are waiting until 2020 and gambling on both an electorate and electoral system that failed to prevent a predatory grifter and his band of opportunistic, sociopathic enablers from achieving such power in the first place.
So.
Yes, put your energy towards slowing down the GOP agenda as it occurs right now.
Yes, put your energy towards the 2018 elections and maintain that energy for the 2020 elections.
And continue to be curious about how much Mike Pence knew, when he knew it, and what mistakes he may have made afterward.
Creative Control 