Webster's Wrequired

Anyone care for an over-under on how many people talk about President Trump's impeachment without understanding that impeaching him won't remove him from office? My guess is a substantial plurality, but still under 50 percent.

The fun thing will be watching them once they have bucked the Democratic party leadership to ram articles of impeachment through the House only to see the Senate not vote to convict on them and the President remain in office as though nothing had happened. I would think that real live members of Congress would be among those who understand the actual results of the process, although some of them are dumb enough to need frequent reminders.

To be honest, I would prefer a White House without President Trump, but the time to have taken care of that was during the Republican party primaries. Unless Robert Mueller's investigation has something astounding and his staff has achieved a level of anti-leak discipline unprecedented since the idea of bureaucracy was invented, then there will be no two-thirds vote to remove the President and exchange him for a President Pence. If it looked like things were headed that way, the canny Trump would no doubt resign so that Pence could pardon him anyway.

Of course there would be folks who would insist that Pence, coming into office through the same tainted election that brought in Trump, should also be removed from office. But the will to go through the entire impeachment and conviction process a second time? Not strong, especially when the congressional term reproductive instinct would kick in, demanding representatives present themselves to donors and other buyers for fertilization for new terms in office.

The only thing that would make that funnier would be if someone else beat the loudest impeachment voices in the subsequent elections, dinging them for being do-nothing representatives who didn't accomplish anything.