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The Ghost of Grover Cleveland
During Trump’s impeachment last year — can you believe that was less than a year ago? — I never seriously thought he’d be convicted. The GOP’s venality and cowardice are far too strong. But it did occur to me that if he were, he might become the first US president ever removed who went on to run again…..in that case, just months later. (Trump was already the first POTUS to be impeached in his first term. Barring an impeached president from holding future office is a separate Congressional vote.)
That didn’t happen, of course. Susan Collins, Lamar Alexander, and other Senate Republicans assured us that Donald had learned his lesson and would be an upstanding citizen ever after.
(Pause for laughter.)
Instead, Trump was evicted from office in an even more resounding way, by the will of the people at the polls, which was what a parade of those Republican senators speciously informed us would be the better form of judgment, while abdicating their own responsibility as a co-equal branch to hold a criminal president accountable. Now of course those same senators are tacitly — and in some cases, actively — trying to help Donald Trump overturn the will of the people, but never mind. Joe Biden is a communist, everybody!
So the spectacle of an ousted POTUS standing for office again just nine months later didn’t come to pass…
