I did not watch the silly congressional hearings with former Special Couinsel Robert Mueller III; I engaged in my three-week vicarious vacation in the French countryside by watching the Tour de France. Marvelous scenery, tremendous aerial and ground shots, and, oh yeah, there’s a bike race going on! I’ve been favoring Julian Alaphilippe from the beginning, ever since he won the King of the Mountain title in last year’s Tour.

Monsieur Alaphilippe is the surprise race leader this year, entering today’s Stage 18 in the Alps with a 1:35 overall lead against last year’s race winner, Geraint Thomas.

But, it seems that a lot of people did watch the hearings, and the Democrats were left disappointed. From The Washington Post:

Democrats are now left with one option to end Trump’s presidency: The 2020 election

By Dan Balz | July 24, 2019 | 9:11 PM

Many Democrats long have considered Robert S. Mueller III a potential savior, as the agent of President Trump’s eventual undoing. Wednesday’s hearings on Capitol Hill probably shattered those illusions once and for all. If Democrats hope to end the Trump presidency, they will have to do so by defeating him at the ballot box in November 2020.

In reality, that has been the case for months. Still, scheduled testimony by the former special counsel before two House committees offered the possibility that he would say something that would suddenly change public perceptions and dramatically jump-start long-stalled prospects for an impeachment inquiry. That was certainly the Democrats’ goal. If anything, things could move in the opposite direction.

Regardless of the evidence of obstruction contained in Mueller’s report, impeachment is a fraught strategy for the Democrats, given public opinion and the dynamics in the Senate. After Wednesday, the prospects for impeachment appear more remote, which means it will be left to the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, with the help of the party, to develop a comprehensive case against the president, one that can win 270 electoral votes. To date, that hasn’t happened.

Further down, the writer tells us that Mr Mueller’s testimony has pretty much closed the door on any hope of impeachment:

Mueller gave the Democrats some things they wanted. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, he rebutted Trump’s claim that he was totally exonerated by the report. Not true, Mueller said. Nor, he told the House Intelligence Committee, was his investigation a hoax or a witch hunt, as the president has claimed. And he seemed to suggest that Trump was not charged with obstruction because Justice Department regulations say that a sitting president cannot be indicted and that a president can be charged after leaving office.

But there was some ambiguity surrounding statements about whether Trump would have been indicted absent those regulations. Before the intelligence committee, Mueller corrected his previous comment, noting that the report did not definitively answer the question of whether Trump had committed a crime.

Meanwhile, the rest of Mueller’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee proved a disappointment to any Democrat who thought that he would take up the role of witness for the prosecution. Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard law professor and impeachment advocate, tweeted Wednesday afternoon: “Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster. Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it.”

The math was always against the Democrats. Yes, the House of Representatives can impeach on its own, by a simple majority vote, and the Democrats hold the majority. But removal from office requires a ²/₃ super-majority in the Senate, or 67 votes . . . and there are only 47 Democrats in the Senate. They would require twenty, twenty! Republicans to go along to remove the President from office.

It isn’t going to happen, and anyone who ever thought it would needs to be tested for the use of recreational pharmaceuticals.

Even The Washington Post realizes it.

But, the editors — the editors are usually responsible for writing article headlines — got it wrong: the Democrats have a second option for ending Mr Trump’s presidency: time. Come January 20, 2025, President Trump will have to step down, regardless of what his public support might be, as he will be term limited out.

The Democratic presidential candidates are laughable. Senator Kamala Harris Emhoff (D-CA) wants to bring back forced busing? Even though she later mealy-mouthed it, if she’s the nominee President Trump will hang that around her neck! Former Vice President Joe Biden is a persistent goofball who might ‘win’ any debate with President Trump on facts, but be destroyed on style, and charisma is what has decided every presidential election since 1932. 50-year-old Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) thinks it shows how much testosterone he has to want to beat up a 72-year-old man; when you have to tell us how much testosterone you have, the truth is that you don’t have much, and his invention of a (probably) fake girlfriend, to convince us that Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South Bend, IN) is the only homosexual candidate in the race is laughable. Methinks that Mr Booker ought to be paying attention to Frank Thomas’ testosterone booster commercials.

Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) is at 0.4% in the latest RCP polling averages, and with a 3.5% margin of error, he could have negative 3.1% support. 🙂

When you have other candidates mulling about joining the race, even now, it tells you just how pathetic the current crop of candidates is.
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