He's Here To Stay
As I learned one freezing morning after making the mistake of stepping out of Letts Hall in a t-shirt, Autumn has finally returned to D.C., carrying in its cornucopia all the beloved traditions of the season. The sweet smell of pumpkin spice assaults my nose every time someone opens the door into a Starbucks, students across campus are hanging plastic skeletons over their doors, and many are carving jack-o’-lanterns to see who can create the most horrifying decoration in time for Halloween. Unfortunately, it seems that 2016’s winner has forgotten to take their orange abomination out of the Oval Office, and it’s horrifying visage continually appears in my morning news.
For those who have not caught on to my analogy, I speak, of course, of Donald Trump. Ever since his victory, the Left has been united in its intent to evict him from the once respected hallways of the White House, and the Midterms are looked upon as long awaited opportunity to achieve that euphoric goal that keeps us Democrats up at night, wistfully thinking of the future—impeachment.
It brings me no pleasure to say that the Left’s—and mine, I will be honest—hopes are most likely misplaced, and the numbers back up this depressing prediction. To enact impeachment, at least 290 congresspersons must vote in favor, and seeing as how Republicans are unlikely to suddenly regrow their spines, such a vote will most likely only occur if a Democrat occupies every single one of those 290 seats.
Long story short, that’s just not going to happen.
Long story long, the online polling organization FiveThirtyEight—founded by U. of Chicago statistics graduate Nate Silver—predicts that the chance of Democrats gaining control of 2/3 of the House at the time this article is being written lays below 1%, with Democrats projected to win around 38 seats—technically good, but in the same way that a C is technically a passing grade. To those who may doubt FiveThirtyEight’s credentials, it accurately predicted 49 out of 50 state results during the 2008 Presidential Election, bumping that number up to a full fifty, along with the District of Columbia, in 2012; they tend to be accurate, to say the least.
Even if the Messiah emerges as a child of John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and conquers the House for the Democrats, our plans will still be foiled, for impeachment is but a step towards the ultimate objective—a guilty verdict—and for that Democrats require the Senate.
Many have probably guessed where I’m going with this, but just to pour salt into the wound, Republicans stand to retain their hold over the Senate, with Democrats maybe, just maybe, being able to split the branch evenly. To emphasize my point, recent polls currently indicate that in the race for the Senate, Ted Cruz boasts an almost 10% lead over Beto O’Rourke, meaning that the Lone Star State has a lower opinion of a rational human being than it does of...well, Ted Cruz. Texans often complain that we Californians insult them too much, but quite frankly, they make it too easy.
Now, admittedly, some would call my position cynical and defeatist, and this would not be the first time I received such responses. For all we know, the American Left will erupt with righteous fury and stampede towards their polling stations, with us millennials and Gen-Z’s upsetting every prediction and achieving 100% voter turnout.
Even then, Trump will never be removed from power, although the Democrats will surely put on a convincing show of trying to, for one specific reason—Donald Trump is far too useful to the Democratic Party to ever be removed. There has never been a man with a bigger target on his balding head than our current President, and the luxury of having such an easily lampoonable opponent grants Democrats an excuse to never actually form a cohesive platform beyond “Our candidates don’t need a comb-over.”
The issue is only worsened when one notes the existential crisis currently burdening the Democrats, with the party divided between a sclerotic leadership that either does not comprehend the sentiments of its constituents or is too timid to implement them, and a newly ascended faction of reformers, galvanized by popular discontent and the need to, pardon my vulgarity, fix this mess, like, NOW. The only thing that unites these two disparate factions, other than the vague idea that maybe polluting is not cool, y’all, is the collective urge to punch a wall whenever they read another Presidential tweet—take that away, and we collapse into a squabbling mess.
And that’s before one considers that, if His Yugeness is ever served with an overdue eviction notice, his successor will be Mike Pence, who's believed by several groups to support gay conversion therapy, and unlike Trump actually has the political aptitude to implement and enforce his policy. Out of the frying pan and into the fire…
Things could definitely be worse, though. After all, no matter how the Midterms go, and no matter how frigid the Fall gale gets, we can always warm ourselves with the idea that, endowed with the power of the vote, our incredible nation will come together and finally restore order as soon as 2020 rolls around, right?
Right?