I do think there is a tiny chance that impeachment in 2019 could result in a conviction

Hear me out

This is based on something a Republican co-worker told me way back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California. At the time, Republicans were so excited about The Terminator being governor, that there was preliminary talk about changing the Constitution to no longer require a president be born in the United States.

When I first mentioned this to my Republican co-worker, I thought would cheer this movement. However, he said that it would never pass through the senate because (paraphrasing) 90% of the people in the Senate want to be president one day and if they allowed Arnold to run for president, it’s just one more person in the way of them becoming president.

He actually made sense, and the movement died when Arnold’s popularity faded and then tanked a few years later. (Knowing the former co-worker, he was probably happy because he thought George W. Bush’s problem was that Bush was too liberal.)

Once public hearings start that are broadcast live on TV, we will see a lot of people in the White House exposed to the public and corrupt and/or incompetent. If things really start to look bad, expect at least some of them to try to stab either Trump, or other senior officials, in the back or to throw them under the bus. We’ll see the already dizzying turnover rate in the Executive Branch to accelerate.

This will cause Donny’s popularity to start leaking, especially if the stock market and the economy keep sputtering along or takes a turn for the worse.

So, if an impeachment trial in the House commences and we get at least some Republicans to go along with the House indictment/impeachment, it will then move to the Senate (didn’t 5 Republicans vote with Democrats to re-open the government? What if 20, 30 or 40 House Republicans vote to impeach?)

Now, we are in the Senate for the trial to convict in late 2019. The economy is sputtering, the tariff war is still raging, the stock market has been up and down, but is slightly down for the year.

Do Republican senators in potentially close races in 2020 want to kill their re-election chances in 2020 and 2022 (Gardner, Ernst, Collins, Perdue, etc) and vote not guilty?

Do Republican senators that hope to be president some day want to finally break from Trump? Heck, they could run in 2020 as a savior if they vote to convict (Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, etc)

Now, I still think this is a long shot, but I also don’t think it is hopeless.

What say you DUers?