Trump's Imploding - But Is It The Best Idea To Impeach?

President Trump isn't doing so well, with record-low approval ratings (34%), scrutiny from the media daily, and some of the biggest political flops like his stance on Charlottesville, there's not much to like about the President. His business council, the people he should connect with the most, fled in droves quickly after his Charlottesville comments, leading to him disbanding it so it didn't look like he got dumped.

As this goes on and the Mueller investigation slowly creeps up, the impeachment talks get heavier and heavier. But is it the best idea to impeach Donald Trump?

This article will not go in depth of whether or not he is guilty of having knowledge of Russia meddling in the 2016 election or any other impeachable offenses. If it comes out that he is guilty of any impeachable offense, then he should be impeached and removed from office.

If Donald Trump were to be impeached, Vice-President Michael Pence would become president. A man hand-picked by Donald Trump to be his second-in-command should startle everyone calling for impeachment. Mike Pence is a hard-line Conservative and theocratic to the core. He is staunchly against the LGBT community, saying gay couples would lead to 'societal collapse', and attracted nationwide attention when the then-governor signed a bill that would allow the LGBT community to be discriminated against more in the state of Indiana. In 2005, right after Hurricane Katrina devastated the City of New Orleans, the then-Congressman made a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives about being concerned about debt, despite his vote for the War in Iraq only a few years back. Should he become president, it would be very likely he gets most of the things Trump wanted just without so much media attention and more loyalty from Congress.

But let's say Mike Pence would be considered an accomplice to Trump's crimes and is impeached as well, which is highly likely should Trump be accused guilty, with his extraordinary powers of not being able to keep his mouth closed, he must've told at least one person about all of this- outside his family of course- and that would definitely be Mike Pence.

If that were to happen, the next in line for succession of the presidency would be Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives. This is a man who bashed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) since the very moment it became law, and continued bashing it for 7 years without even coming up with a plan to counter it. When his party came back into power, with both Houses of Congress and the White House, he began a mad scramble to make a plan. His plan was the American Health Care Act, that would throw 23 million people off coverage and induce death spirals, skyrocketing prices for healthcare. Even with this knowledge, he still was the cheerleader for the bill, seemingly happy with that CBO score.

We're now crossing into the realm of extremely unlikely- if Paul Ryan were to be impeached, Senator Orrin Hatch, President Pro Tempore of the Senate, would become president. A man who called the Democrats 'idiots' for boycotting Jeff Sessions' vote for Attorney General, and if Jeff Sessions isn't a bigot, there are no more bigots on this planet. Just look for what he's said about African-Americans.

After him, we go to the Secretaries, such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who would actually be disqualified from being president for violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. The list after him would include people like Steve Mnuchin (5th in line, former Chief Information Officer for Goldman Sachs), Ben Carson (13th in line), Rick Perry (14th in line), and Betsy DeVos (15th in line (!)).

So no, it doesn't look good for us, even if we do impeach Donald Trump. It would be a whole lot of political capital wasted for people who aren't all that better than him. So what can we do?

Rally around candidates for 2018, when 33 of the 100 Senate seats will be contested along with all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. These candidates are eager, progressive, and want to fight for us. It'll frustrate the Executive branch to no end if we took control of one of the Houses of Congress, and it would scare the Democrats if we elected real progressives. But we need to start NOW. We can't wait for the Republicans, and we can't wait for the corporate Democrats.

If we want new leadership, the time is 2018.