Results of a political trial

Many people are angry over the trial held in the Senate. The problem is in the word “trial.” This was not a legal trial, no current laws of jurisprudence hold. There is no application of the simple reading of law upheld in every superior court in the land that if you remove the one accused from a crime scene and the crime never takes place, hey presto, the crime needed that person’s involvement. Guilty. But in this case there is no legal accusation of a crime, just a determination of the guilt of being impeached for solid reason.

Now, what everyone is forgetting is that a trial following a president being impeached, held in the body of the Senate, is an evaluation of the sitting senators’ political evaluation of whether the president should be found guilty and, as a consequence, lose their job — and the next step is to vote to see if they should ever be able to have a public job again.

Now, many people are accusing reluctant GOP senators of simply turning a blind eye to the acts and willful deeds of the-then president. Simply put, they are accused of being cowards and being afraid of the followers of Trump wanting retribution — at the ballot box or worse — should they decide yes, he is guilty and the impeachment was warranted. But that’s not what they are voting on. They are voting on a simple proposition:

If 40% of the whole GOP electorate is a died-in-the-wool Trump follower, and every single one of those fervent fans will vote in the next primary election cycle when almost none of the regular, more reasonable GOP electors will bother to vote, what are the chances each of these senators would have of being the chosen candidate? Remember, if you fail in the primary, you are out. Replaced by what? A more Trumpian follower. Bad for the country.

Now, on the other hand, it could be said that these senators are courageous because they will have to face a Democratic opponent in the next election who points out they supported Trump’s innocence in the Senate trial… this is likely to be bad for their candidacy.

So either way, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. In fact, they can be likened to the band on the Titanic valiantly playing on as the ship sinks — only in their case they are also hoping their fiddle playing will save the ship. That’s unlikely, either way. Watch the next few years as many of them will jump ship. They have little chance of escaping an electorate’s ire — on both sides — otherwise.

Writer Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now resides in New Mexico.