Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
When a party, an ideological movement, and an entire political agenda are based on hatred, people and policies become warped. The left-wing loathing of Trump has now tainted almost every Democrat’s agenda and unhinged most of the party’s major players.
Impeachment has turned into a cruel caricature of a rare constitutional remedy for presidential criminality. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report proved a compendium of FBI lying, fraud, and vendetta. There is not a single prominent figure in Horowitz’s lengthy report who has not left a written or video trail of anti-Trump bias (James Comey, Peter Strozk, the Ohrs, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith) or has had some sort of questionable financial relationship with the Clintons or their affiliates (Alexander Downer, Andrew McCabe).
Meanwhile, the progressive presidential field is in a sort of collective meltdown, as candidates begin recalibrating and trading accusations as they fear their own early anti-Trump agendas have little public support.
The prior subtext to impeachment—if not smeared or stopped, Trump will win in 2020—was spoken only by hardcore leftists like U.S. Representatives Alexander Green (D-Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). Now it is shamelessly voiced by leaders in the party such as Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), with the twist of fears that Trump will “rig the election” (after Special Counsel Robert Mueller, of course, found that he had not done so in 2016, and Horowitz found that Trump’s campaign aides were largely targeted by the FBI and CIA hierarchy) unless he is impeached.