I'm writing this column before the final vote in the U.S. Senate on whether or not President Trump should be removed from office because I'm very confident that the Republican-controlled body will find him not guilty.
I don't think it will be a 'Dewey Beats Truman' episode. Trump will be acquitted and we move on toward the 2020 elections.
I got a news release before the vote that Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones was going to vote in favor of removing President Trump from office on both articles of impeachment passed by the House.
Jones' campaign to win election to that seat for a full six-year term was a long shot at best, but you can put a fork in the Jones campaign, he's done.
Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be the next U.S. Senator from the state of Alabama. I'll give Jones credit. The politically-correct thing for him was to vote against the articles of impeachment. The politically-correct thing for him was to vote to affirm Brent Cavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. He did neither, saying he took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and wasn't going to let party affiliation dictate his vote. But the vote against President Trump and the vote against Cavanaugh sealed his fate as a one-and-done Democratic U.S. Senator in the state of Alabama.
So, I have to give him credit. The easy thing to do was to go against the Democratic establishment and have a slight possibility of winning in 2020, to voting the way he really felt that will cost him the election in November (unless, like I've said before, the Republicans are stupid enough to elect Roy Moore as their nominee).
It's been a bad week for Democrats, but the Democrats have been their worst enemies.
It started with the royally screwed up Democrat caucus in Iowa Monday. As I'm writing this I have no idea who won, what place they finished or how many people actually attended the caucuses. I've read from several sources the blame is being put on a 'faulty app'.
I did read that more than 10,000 showed up to vote for Trump in the Iowa caucuses when only about 100 were needed to give him the state's delegates.
Then it got worse Tuesday night when Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ripped up a copy of President Trumps' state of the union speech in front of a national audience.
I have to admit I didn't see it live. I was watching Alabama lay another basketball egg and flipping back and forth to watch Auburn rally to win. I went to bed before Pelosi shredded the speech.
When I saw the replay, my first thought was that Pelosi had lost her mind. I actually wondered if someone from the Trump camp infiltrated and told her that's what she should do.
As Gomer Pyle would say, “That's a dumb thing, that's a dumb thing to do.”
Oh, it gets worse. Mr. Democrat James Carville has labeled the Democratic Party as an “ideological cult”.
Now here's a man I put in the category of voting for Hitler over Jesus if Hitler was running as a Democrat. He stood close by and defended Bill Clinton's extracurricular activities with Monica Lewensky. Look up the word Democrat in the Webster Dictionary and there should be a photo of Carville.
Although he blasted the positions of Bernie Sanders, the comment that jumped out to me was when he said the Democrats' enthusiasm was low.
“Democrats seem to be in big trouble,” Carville said.
I never thought I'd hear those words come out of his mouth, but then again I never thought the Speaker of the House would be so stupid as to tear up the president's speech in front of a national audience.
The concern Carville stated about Democrats not being enthused is where the rubber meets the road. You can bet the carnival in Iowa and Pelosi's actions Tuesday night help raise the enthusiasm within the Republican ranks.
I've yet to hear that the Republicans had anything to do with the app malfunction in Iowa, but it's coming. Maybe the Russians hacked the Iowa vote.
I know a lot of Republicans who are not very pleased with some of the things President Trump has done or said, but the Democrats keep adding fuel to the fire to get them enthused enough to vote for him.
In November it becomes a numbers game. President Trump and whoever the Democratic nominee is will go into election day with enough supporters to win the election. But when half of the voters stay home, it's those enthusiastic voters who will elect the next president of the United States.
Instead of shaking her hand, Trump should have kissed Pelosi on the cheek and said “Thank you.”
