The election of Donald Trump in November 2016 was a disgrace to the Republican Party, a disgrace to the United States and a disgrace to mankind.
However, — unless someone find’s a dead body in Trump’s cupboard — the impeachment will not be successful because the Republicans have a majority in the Senate and only a two-thirds majority can remove the president from office. Politicians are not judges. Therefore, the impeachment trial is a political manoeuvre.
The case against Donald Trump was and remains strong. Voters should decide the matter in the upcoming presidential election at the ballot box. Unfortunately for Democrats, the US economy is still strong, despite Donald Trump’s trade war with China and other nations. A recession is overdue, but it may not arrive before the November 2020 presidential election.
Donald Trump is a protectionist and a threat to world trade. He (rightly) lowered corporate taxes, especially for smaller businesses, but did not close the tax loopholes (especially for multinational companies). You cannot lower taxes, increase spending and think you can get away with it. The US budget deficit is out of control. The US public debt is further increasing. Where are the Tea Party people and the fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party who (rightly) asked for a balanced budget?
One day, there will be another recession, another banking crisis, another financial disaster. The price to pay then will be gigantic. There are fewer big banks left than before the last financial crisis. They are still strongly interconnected. One major bank can still bring down the entire financial system. It may be judged too-big-to-fail. Taxpayers would have to step in again. Bankers have not become more responsible. In and after the last financial crisis, banks, bankers and bank stock holders have not paid the price they should have paid for their irresponsible and often criminal behaviour. Therefore, it is only a matter of time we will have to face another financial crisis.
The Democratic Party, it is split between the left, mainly embodied by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on one hand and moderates such as Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg on the other. Warren and Sanders could sink the economy. They want higher taxes AND higher spending, which could sink the economy.
Joe Biden is a non-entity. His stint as vice-president does not really qualify him for the top job. Furthermore, he is tainted by his son’s Ukrainian affair. Hunter Biden got his extremly lucrative job with a shady Ukrainian gas company only because he was the son of the vice-president of the United States. Joe Biden is most likely not corrupt, but his son got into a shady business thanks to his father’s political position. And the father stands by his son.
Pete Buttigieg has only executive experience as the mayor of a small town. That does not qualify him to become the next US president. That leaves us with one serious Democratic contender: Michael Bloomberg. Unlike Donald Trump, he is a really successful businessman. He never had to be saved like The Donald because letting him go bankrupt would have cost his creditors more than saving him. Unlike Trump, Bloomberg has not left many people who invested money in his companies empty handed. And as New York City’s former major, Michael Bloomberg has a good record.
Michael Bloomberg may not be the best imaginable candidate — he has expressed some strange, naive ideas regarding China —, but on the whole, he is by far the best candidate in the field. The Democrats should unite behind Bloomberg. Biden and Buttigieg should realize that Bloomberg is the stronger candidate. If the moderate vote should be divided between those three candidates, Sanders or Warren could win the Democratic nomination — which could lead to another Democratic defeat in the 2020 presidential election because many moderates and independents will not want to vote for a “Socialist”.
Donald Trump is a protectionist, isolationist with no knowledge of world affairs, a notorious liar, a misogynist, a divider, etc. He is unfit to lead the United States and the so-called Free World. But Trump’s impeachment is a political manoeuvre and will not be successful. As long as the US economy is doing fine, he has a good chance to be re-elected. If the Democrats do not come up with a strong candidate such as Michael Bloomberg, they may face another defeat in 2020.
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Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, Friday, October 6, 2017. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead).
Article added on January 22, 2020 at 00:20 German time.
