Impeaching Trump won't change anything

WASHINGTON, DC was able to ignore US President Donald Trump tweets late on Wednesday night when the unexpected happened, and the wish of every kid and adult in the city came true: For the first time in 95 years, Washington won the World Series after its baseball team, the Washington Nationals, clinched the title with a 6-2 victory in Houston over the Astros.

If you are an American (and show me an American who does not love baseball, the national pastime) this was Big News - so much so that even the policy wonks and political "insiders" who populate Washington shrugged off the latest report about Ukrainegate and its quid pro quos as a "who cares!" Indeed, almost every Washingtonian will probably recall the moment he or she heard that the "Nats" were the champs.

But then even at this once-in-a-century moment, it became impossible to ignore Mr Trump. And Washingtonians ended up reacting in their own special way as the current White House occupant became the first president who was not invited to throw the ceremonial "first pitch" at the start of the baseball season, as has been the tradition since President William Howard Taft well over 100 years ago.

The president decided to show up and see the Nationals playing the first 115th World Series game, which took place on the same day (Oct 27) when he revealed the killing of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, perhaps hoping to be cheered by an enthusiastic crowd.

Instead, Mr Trump, fresh from a victory over Muslim terrorists, was humiliated. The Lerner family who owns the team refused to invite him to sit with them and instead he found himself sitting in the less prestigious executive suite. And when the image of the president appeared on the big screen, the crowd in the stadium started to jeer, followed by chants of "Lock him up!"

Moreover, when the Nationals approached victory in Game 7 of the 2019 World Series on Wednesday night, Mr Trump was once again the subject of ridicule. When an ad for his 2020 presidential campaign flashed across the screen at Nationals Park, broadcasting the game taking place in Houston, fans began to boo. Some Washingtonians seemed ready to celebrate the boo against the president as fervently as the win over the Astros.

Indeed, if you were a member of the anti-Trump Resistance as most Washingtonians are (try to wear a Make America Great Again baseball cap in Washington and see what happens), Mr Trump's embarrassing reception at the World Series seemed to fit perfectly into your political narrative, culminating with the historic vote by the US House of Representatives on Thursday to endorse the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry. And all of that happened in the same week that White House officials corroborated accounts that the president pressured Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had won 90.9 per cent of the votes to Candidate Trump's 4.1 per cent, in Washington, DC, in 2016, highlighting the electoral reality of American politics these days. A large urban centre, with its multicultural demographics and young and highly-educated professionals, is leading the anti-Trump Resistance, booing a corrupt and boorish president in the ballpark one day, and moving to impeach and oust him from office the next day.

For the Trumpists, all that also makes sense but in a totally different way. Washington, DC represents in their eyes the detested "swamp" that the president pledged to drain and where the "elites" and the forces of the Deep State are intent on removing from office the nemesis who threatens their interests.

As the Trumpist narrative goes, these lawyers, lobbyists, (fake) journalists, and CIA and FBI operators showed how they felt about the president by humiliating him in the Nationals Park on Sunday and then launched an illegal political coup against him on Thursday.

In a way, last week's political week in Washington, DC has displayed the extent to which the city's (and the nation's) two political tribes are trapped in their respective bubbles that are only getting bigger by the day. That makes it close to impossible to find a common ground, if not to conduct a civilised political debate, especially when each side sees and describes the world in different ways.

One example of the growing "bubblism" is the way that each tribe, encompassed in its bubble, reacts differently to the same economic numbers. Hence, according to a recent SurveyMonkey poll, while 82 per cent of Republicans believe that Mr Trump has made the economy better, 65 per cent of Democrats believe that he made it worse. The economy is going to get worse, predict 85 per cent of Democrats; according to 71 per cent of Republicans, it will only get better. Seventy-five per cent of Republicans believe that with Mr Trump's trade policies, jobs will be coming home. Fifty-two per cent of Democrats are sure that they would lead to jobs being sent overseas.

Hence for liberals and Democrats, as well for Republican Never Trumpers, the witnesses appearing in the closed congressional sessions last week - high-ranking diplomats and military officers, including current White House officials - were the best and the brightest that the nation had to offer. They were willing to risk their careers and reputation by testifying that the president may have abused his power and violated the law.

Top on that list last week was Alexander Vidman, the Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, the son of Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union, who became an officer in the United States Army and earned a degree from Harvard University.

Appearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in a crew uniform with medals, including a Purple Heart pinned to his chest, Col Vidman insisted that he was an American patriot with no political agenda and described efforts by White House officials to make changes in the transcript of Mr Trump's phone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart.

The Democrats are confident that this star witness and others who are going to testify in nationally televised hearings in mid-November would help sway a divided public opinion in their direction, and eventually convince even Republican lawmakers to join them in their effort to impeach the president. Some Democrats are even confident that 20 Republican Senators would switch to their side and vote to convict Mr Trump.

But as the president and his advisers see it, Col Vidman was just another member of the Deep State, another Never Trumper, or "human scum" as the president described them, and with a clear political agenda: After they failed to employ charges of collusion with Russia to impeach the president, they now hope that the Ukrainegate revelations would do the job for them since they know that they could not beat him in the polls next November.

The Trumpists are confident that the impeachment process would eventually backfire politically against the Democrats, and that Mr Trump's electoral base would remain solidly behind him and that no Republicans are going to defect to the other side.

The 232-196 vote in the House of Representatives to approve the impeachment resolution suggested that there has been no change in the balance of power between the two sides and that the country remained politically polarised.

Not a single Republican last Thursday joined the Democrats in voting in favour of the resolution, and just two Democrats broke from their party to oppose the investigation.

And while a few Republican Senators (including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney from Utah) have criticised Mr Trump's conduct and rhetoric, there are no signs that he or other Republicans in the Senate will be ready to convict the president.

But one thing is certain when it comes to watching the same televised hearings of the impeachment proceedings. If you reside in the Resistance bubble, you would see the testimonies as vindicating your views that President Trump is a crook. And you would boo and jeer those inhabiting the Trumpist bubble who see the process as an attempt to depose a democratically elected president.