In December 2019, Boris Johnson and his campaign team managed to consolidate the Tories' message in the UK general election into three simple words: Get Brexit done. And he scored a very solid victory.
On the face of it, the Democrats in the United States have matched the British Conservatives' simplicity. They have made "Remove Donald Trump" their rallying call for 2020.
The Democrats' firing squad is a circle
Trouble is that, so far, the Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination have mostly been keen on attacking each other.
In effect, the Democrats have thus stepped on their own message. Given that the impeachment proceedings also don't seem to be following the Democratic script, they are leaving a very muddled impression with the electorate.
It is, of course, true that it's still early in the campaign season and that primaries follow their own inherent logic. But while voters aren't yet focused on November 3, 2020, the old adage, according to which the Democrats' firing squad is a circle, very much applies.
Trump's socialism charge vs. the Preamble of the Constitution
Donald Trump, meanwhile, tries to argue that electing a Democrat will bring "socialism" to the United States.
In reality, of course, the United States is still struggling mightily with introducing even a very mild form of a social-minded democracy.
And that, as it happens, is still a very much unfulfilled part of the nation's DNA since its very founding days.
Admittedly, reading the following words right after the famous "We, the people" in the Preamble of the Constitution would come as a complete shock to Donald Trump:
… in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Donald Trump has turned virtually any of those precious items and noble goals into pure mincemeat. He also mocks anyone who still dares striving for these aspirations, even though they are still unfulfilled – this is now the 21st century and no longer the late 18th century.
Republicans' North Korea-like leader worship
Truth be told, something along those lines was to be expected from Trump. What is really shocking is that the entire Republican Party, as witnessed by 98% of its Congressional faction in both houses, has decided to stoop to previously unimaginable lows.
December 18, 2019, the day when the Republican members of the House of Representatives performed the sad, entirely un-American spectacle of delivering mind-numbingly stupid loyalty oaths to their Great Leader on national television could have led one to believe that one was watching North Korean TV.
Which makes one wonder how the Democrats could refocus themselves and regain the initiative. Perhaps they should introduce the following resolution on the House floor:
"A Proclamation to Deliver Impeachment" (by voting Trump out of office)
At a time …
when Republicans in the Congress are making a joke of their constitutional duty to seriously investigate the case for impeachment against Trump in any serious fashion;
when Republicans in the Congress falsely assert that the only point of impeachment is an illegitimate maneuver, namely to nullify the election of Trump in November 2016;
when Republicans all across the United States threaten the equivalent of a civil war, if not armed insurrection in case Trump is removed from the White House;
when Republicans are happily laying the foundations to remove ever more constitutional boundaries in their effort to make their minority rule permanent;
when the current occupant of the White House openly serves Russian interests and acts as a mouthpiece for Putin;
when the current occupant of the White House mistakes for "socialism" the noble words enshrined in the Preamble of the United States Constitution ("form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity");
when many U.S. voters' minds are no longer open to constitutional matters, because they, too, only see the world as a matter of sheer and unquestioning loyalty (which is a profoundly un-Western concept);
Be it resolved that
… at such a time, all decent people in the United States must do the obvious – and vote Donald J. Trump out of office.
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