Andrew Johnson was acquitted 35-19, just one vote shy of conviction. There were 11 charges, but the senate only tried 3, and dropped the remaining 8.
Bill Clinton was acquitted 45-55 for the perjury charge, and 50-50 for obstruction of justice. Even some Republicans voted to acquit, so it was largely a show trial because House Republicans really hated Clinton.
Donald Trump was acquitted 48-52 for abuse of power, and 47-53 for obstruction of congress. This was the first time a member of the president’s own party voted to convict (Mitt Romney said he was guilty of the first charge).
Donald Trump was acquitted again today, 57-43 for inciting insurrection. We all knew acquittal was inevitable, but this is significant because a record 7 members of his party broke rank to convict. 7! I was thinking 5 max (and I correctly guessed all 5; Romney, Collins, Murkowski, Sasse, and Toomey), but they were joined by Burr of North Carolina and Cassidy of Louisiana.
Johnson received a higher percentage of conviction votes (35/54, 64.8%), but Trump has gotten the highest number of actual conviction votes of any president, the only majority vote in over 150 years, and the most bipartisan vote ever. History will remember him as the one that got away; he was guiltier than Nixon, and only got acquitted because the jury is made up of his brown-nosed underlings. Any other court in the country would dismiss these jurors for not being impartial, but impeachment is a bitch and the constitution is protectionist. It’s a piece of paper signed by long dead slavers, not some God given example to the rest of the world on how to run a government.
A majority of Americans hate Donald Trump. That was true in 2016 by 3 million votes, and 2020 by 8 million. His base makes up maybe a third of the country, two-fifths max, but unless the Democrats push through substantive electoral reforms, the minority party will continue to hold sway on the national level. They need to nuke the filibuster so they can expand the House, ban partisan gerrymandering, pack the courts, and get rid of the electoral college. That last one would almost certainly require an amendment, which would need supermajority votes in both houses of congress and then majority votes in 38 state legislatures, which will never happen again; the Democrats would need to get creative to use regular legislation to neuter the electoral college because they can’t get rid of it outright.
But this will never happen because Democrats are cowards. They care about “the system,” they don’t want to push for any major changes because they’re scared of the Republicans using that against them and doing the same thing later, but what they fail to understand is that Republicans are already fucking them over and have been for years! Republicans always change the rules when they’re in power with no regard for Democrats’ opinions, so why the fuck should Democrats bend over backwards to appease them? Schumer and Pelosi need to play hardball and get their entire party in line, no stragglers, no moderates, nobody is allowed to break rank. We need leaders who give a shit, and not only do we not have them now, I don’t see any future ones in the pipeline. There are some rising stars in the Democratic Party, but they’re not gonna be the ones who inherit the reigns from the current leaders. The Democratic establishment will keep giving power to old white moderates who think bipartisanship is the most important thing ever, even though Republicans regularly spit in their faces.
Politics is an abusive relationship, and Democrats are insistent that Republicans are really good people when you get to know them. They’re not that bad, honest. They don’t mean to hurt the country, they’ve changed this time, they promised. Things will be different now. They love us, really they do...
