Street Smart

Last Thursday night I watched the Baltimore Ravens stomp the New York Jets. The Ravens are a powerhouse this year and the Jets, well…not so much. I knew before the game started that the Jets were going to lose, but I watched anyway. The Jets players knew they were going to lose too. You could see it on their faces as they stood on the sideline.

So why would I watch the game if I was so confident in the outcome? Simple… I love football and it’s entertainment. It’s the same reason I sometimes watch movies or read books that I’ve seen or read dozens of times. I know the book or movie won’t end differently, but they’re still fun to read or watch again.

I’m looking at the impeachment process against President Trump in much the same way I did that football game. It’s not really as entertaining, but the outcome is entirely predictable. As I said in this column a couple weeks ago, this impeachment process by the Democrats is an exercise in futility. Leaders in the Senate (where Republicans maintain the majority) have already said that impeachment is dead on arrival when it gets to them. The outcome has been decided!

Why then are the Democrats participating in a process they know will lose? I guess you could say it’s for the same reason the Jets showed up to play the Ravens… the game was already on the schedule. They (the Jets) couldn’t just decide to stay at home. They couldn’t phone it in. They had to show up and play. Same with the Democrats and impeachment. Impeachment has been the goal and was on the Democrats schedule since the day after the 2016 election when their world was so violently rocked by President Trump’s victory. It’s also their last option if they hope to win in 2020 and they know it. It’s like a failing football team going for it on fourth and eight on their own 30-yard line… what do they have to lose?

I think the Democrats should just give up on this impeachment effort and move on to governing the nation. Some are going to believe that my opinion on impeachment is simply a partisan belief…that I blindly support President Trump. While I absolutely do support our president, my opinion on the impeachment process is based solely on common sense, experience and lessons that should have been learned from past efforts, not partisan politics. America has been down this road before. Republicans did the same thing 21 years ago when they sought to impeach Bill Clinton. They (Republicans) knew then that they were going to lose in the Senate, but went through with the process anyway. I thought that type of mentality was wrong then and I believe it’s wrong now. That impeachment effort hurt the nation, not the president. Our nation is more divided than ever, and impeachment is contributing to that.

In one of the jobs I had during my career, I was tasked with conducting what we called “biopsies” of investigations. My job was to determine if an investigation had been conducted properly and all available information was gathered and documented. Were all of the pertinent questions asked and answered? The goal of the biopsy was to determine that we did discover, and accurately report, the truth of the matter under investigation. A couple of weeks ago I made a prediction on the Inspector General’s report. I predicted then that the report would reveal mistakes made by the FBI in the way they handled informants and information. The report is public now and my prediction was accurate. Significant lapses by the FBI investigators were noted. My prediction wasn’t based on any insider information and I’m certainly not any smarter than the involved investigators. I was able to accurately predict the outcome because of my experience with investigations. It’s simply a matter of taking the puzzle pieces (information) and putting them together to complete the picture. The same thing can be done when we look at this impeachment effort objectively and not through a partisan lens. When all the puzzle pieces are put together without bias, it’s clear that this impeachment is going to fail.

I mentioned above that the looks on the faces of the Jets players on the sidelines revealed they knew they were going to lose. I see a similar look on the faces of some of the more moderate Democrats, particularly those from the so called “swing states” and states where President Trump won in 2016. They know they’re on the losing team but have to show up anyway. This thing (impeachment) has taken on a life of its own and they believe they have to follow through with it now.

I wish our politicians from both parties could put the politics aside and learn to work together for the good of the nation. Drug prices, immigration reform, infrastructure and health care are some of the things that could be effectively addressed if they could just learn to work with one another rather that against one another. This impeachment process is going to fail and only adds to the divisiveness we see in Washington. Democrats don’t have to like President Trump, but they should learn to work with him.

Blaine Blackstone is a retired Los Angeles Police Sergeant who enjoys the simpler life in Thompson Falls. He can be reached by email at [email protected].