Dear President Trump,

What to say today? I don’t know. I don’t have anything that feels wise or clever or even comforting to you or to myself to say right now. Despite the fact that the House will impeach you later today and the fact that it’s necessary and right for them to do this, there’s no realistic path forward from this that sees you leaving office early or that even introduces questions about you in the minds of the vast majority of Republican voters. (There’s no point in lamenting the minds of Republican politicians, they’ve snuggled into the bed they made with you and Vladimir and nothing but an enormous shift in their base’s appraisal of you is going to get them to put their bare feet out of the covers, let alone onto the cold floor they’d need to stand on to leave you.)

In fact, it’s difficult to imagine a realistic path forward that has you not only not being removed by the Senate, but not winning in 2020 and this whole thing not careening off a cliff into Autocracy-land. So yes, we need to go through the motions of impeaching you – as noted, this is the just and righteous thing to do in the face of your copious high crimes and misdemeanors. But really, as far as I can tell, this day will only get us that much closer to having to witness Mitch McConnell completely debase the Senate and provide more soundbite-lies for your all’s peeps to lap up.

I took off work early yesterday (and yes, I took official leave to do it) to go to the ‘No One Is Above The Law’ impeachment protest here in Seattle. At first Laura and I decided to join the people on the freeway overpass near our house rather than do the hour+ car/bus/train trip downtown to the federal building, but when we got to the overpass there was no one there (it was jam-packed with people holding signs and waving at the traffic below when I drove home). We thought maybe it had moved to the overpass just a bit further South so we tried down there and again, no protestors.

After determining that we weren’t going to get to engage in convenient protesting we finally decided to brave the trip downtown, driving since there was no way to do the bus/train deal and get there in time. We honestly didn’t know exactly where we were going and we assumed we wouldn’t be able to find parking anywhere close by, but we figured we’d feel even more defeated if we didn’t at least try.

It was a minor parking-fairy miracle that exactly when Laura told me I should start looking for a parking spot, there was one right there next to us. I felt silly but I said “like that one?” and yes, just like that one. It was crazy easy – the street was empty behind us and I got into the spot with no sweat and we walked about five blocks to the protest.

I have no idea how many people there were, maybe a couple of thousand. It was a decent turnout for a cold weekday night, but as the WP notes about most of the protests across the country, the numbers were under-whelming. Maybe you all have succeeded in so demoralizing those of us who don’t support you that it’s just the relatively small proportion of us who actively oppose you that is going to venture out into the cold to take a stand against you while the rest of us figure we have little or no influence on any of it so why not stay warm and watch The Voice or help the kids with their homework?

Before I close I just want to say that I love that Nancy Pelosi did a Madeline Albright and wore a brooch today that telegraphs a message of unity, endurance, and a staunch belief in our Republic. May her confidence in US have merit.

May our democracy pull through this safely.
May we be willing to stand together in the cold for what is right.
May we all see that you are peddling poison.
May we be about peace even as we resist tyranny.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson