Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

John Galt, Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

We do have a third party that counts: the Independents. The sooner the Democratic Party figures out what’s going on here and borrows or robs this “Party of One’s” fire, the greater chance Democrats one would surmise will have to re-establish itself favorably if, as seems likely, it regains real power in Congress.

A broader picture here involves this question as to what should Democrats do after the midterm election? If they win both the House and the Senate and clearly have two thirds of those present at the time of the vote in the Senate to convict in an impeachment trial, first order of business is to impeach. A first year law student could make a case that President Donald .J. Trump has under Article II, section 4 of the Constitution committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. “Sufficient to quote Trump himself in order to impeach and convict.

This is the dream plan and as in all dream plans reality comes knocking.

Recent history sort of indicates that Senate Republicans will remain loyal to Trump like a Captain going down with a sinking ship. Why? They don’t like him as he has shown no particular loyalty to Senate Republicans or the Republican Party. What they fear is the wrath of Trump’s MAGA Myrmidons, his cult. Their attachment to him cannot be pursued in any rational way except to say reason and the presentation of facts and evidence that is reason’s path is not employed by this group. In fact, the presentation of such and its presenters are targets of attack by those cued by Trump, who himself uses his Justice Department to make the lives of those who cross him miserable. Trump can, from a throne in Mar a Lago, order terrible things to happen to his enemies. “Hang Mike Pence!”

What happens to Trump, assuming he lives on after the midterms and after the 2028 presidential election, and what happens to his devoted followers is rich material for future fiction. What happens when the Democrats return to Congressional power, at least ownership of the Speakership of the House is, as much mentioned now, rests on a three legged stool.

First, bringing forward all crimes committed and holding accountable those who committed them , as well as damage and destruction repair of what a criminal regime has perpetrated. Much here will involve a reversal or removal of executive orders and legislation passed by the Trump regime, including tearing down all monuments and proposed projects Trump has built in his own honor. We shall wait for a posthumous case made as to Trump’s greatness in the view of others and not himself.

Secondly, passing legislation that ensures greater level of affordability for wage earners, that is those not living on their investments. And, as I will explore, reaching out to the Independent voter who has emerged in great numbers in response to our two party system in which both parties are either in a knife fight in a phone booth, or, cleverly masking that they are a duopoly united in serving the interests of a Wealth Class. Whether the Independent voter is escaping ties to both parties because they are too antagonistically polarized or bound together in a project to do nothing legislatively effective does not reveal what the Democratic Party needs to know in order to reach them.

Thirdly, as added by Senator Slotkin, where and how Trump has steadily established an autocratic regime without any effective deterrence from a Democratic Constitutional order must be an order of business that the Democratic Party must pursue. Trump found and walked through the holes in this order not created by him but found and exploited. Sealing the holes will not be done by the Republican Party but rather that Party will remain hagiographic in all........

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