And I remember him hanging on long after it was clear to any objective observer that he was guilty as sin. Impeachment is long and slow, and a large percentage of the population needs to be hit with a ton of gricks before they wake up.

People were in jail when that all started. We're going to have to first find a crime, then we can move on to things like obstruction. It's hard to get an obstruction charge when there is no related crime. Mind you, I suspect someone did something stupid, and may get convicted. It will be at that point that we can start the whole "What did Trump know and when did he know it" process.

Been in the news and discussed here for months now.

but just about any prosecutor will tell you that you can't get an obstruction of justice conviction without the crime that was being obstructed. Mind you, as I said, I suspect they will ultimately find one. But as a basis of comparison to Watergate, that situation started out with people in jail. We have yet to get anyone in jail. Not that we won't, we just aren't there yet.

But I remember thinking in the Fall of 1972 that Nixon must have been in on it. I think there 7 indictments, and just didn't think you could have 7 people decide to do a burglary without orders from the top. Just like I don't think Manafort, Page, Kushner, Flynn, Sessions etc. all just happened to talk to the Russians without Trump knowing about it.

Of course I am preaching to the choir here. But I am sure I was not the only one to catch on early back then.

I suspect Nixon's knowledge (and I think the tapes back this up) was all after the fact, in terms of the specific activities that night. He knew they were doing opposition research (as we call it today) and that the info wasn't exactly coming out of the public domain. But I'm not convinced Nixon knew about the break in at the Watergate until after it happened.

As for this current mess, never ascribe to cunning what can be explained by incompetence. In my mind the most likely scenario is that someone in opposition research (someone Trump wouldn't have even known) got approached by someone offering to help, and offering information. As the information got better, it started to drift up the leadership latter. Somewhere along the line it got to the Manafort/Flynn/Lewdowski level before what they realized was that they were mixed up with some Russian based hackers. It was probably about that time they thought they should disconnect from that, mostly because they thought that the Russians didn't need their help and that the info shouldn't appear to becoming from their campaign.

What they may not have realized until well after the campaign, was that it wasn't just "Russian hackers", but in fact Russian secret service. That would be a classic time to panic and start covering up. Instead of just admitting that they got taken by the Russian secret service and come clean, the started lying. In the end we'll probably find out that the most damaging thing they did was to pay for information that ultimately came from the Russian secret service. Embarassing but not exactly "collusion". The worst is that it was probably a violation of sanctions, even if it was payments to people they thought were just independent researchers.

Now Flynn on the other hand..... I'd bet ya the campaign didn't know HALF of what he was up to.

where in the '70s, Democrats controlled both chambers.