The Murphy, Blumenthal Show

“I don’t know what other option we have” – Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy

The Blumenthal quip most often repeated during the U.S. Senator’s long 46 year reign in Connecticut’s Democrat Party politics was and is: “There is no more dangerous spot in Connecticut politics as that between Blumenthal and a television camera.” His appearances are, shall we say, frequent, and he has in the past joked that he could be counted upon to appear at garage door openings, provided television cameras were present.

Blumenthal began his political career in the State House of Representatives, where he toiled for two years before moving on to the State Senate for four years. He served as Connecticut’s  Attorney General for twenty years and then moved on to the U.S. Senate, where he has served, so far, for ten, a long career unmarred by any useful service in Connecticut’s now ailing private marketplace. Connecticut’s junior Senator, Chris Murphy, is attempting to close the gap, appearance wise, between himself and Blumenthal, with varying degrees of success.

The two senators, both Democrats, appeared recently at Hartford Hospital to inveigh against soon to be departed President Donald Trump, and to call for his impeachment, yet again.

Impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors occurs in two steps: first, an arraignment before the U.S. House of Representatives, and then a trial of House charges in the U.S. Senate. The only punishment for impeachment is removal from office. It would seem in present circumstances -- Trump is due to leave office in little more than a week -- that impeachment would be redundant. It would, however, provide the sort of media spectacle that has been for 46 years Blumenthal’s delight and mainstay.

Trump is due to leave office on January 20, and the nonsense concerning his supposed refusal to leave on that date was dealt a death blow when he announced that he would not be attending President-elect Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony. One cannot attend or refuse to attend the inauguration ceremony of a president-elect if one has it in mind to resist – by what means, neither Blumenthal nor Murphy has specified – leaving office. On January 20, President Trump will no longer be president, and the turnover in the presidential office will have been accomplished without irreparable damage to the republic. The chatter about “insurrection” should be regarded as Twitter click bait. Trump recently has been booted off Twitter, but Blumenthal, an honored guest of the company still is permitted his frequently tendentious tweets.

Both Blumenthal and Murphy knew all this before they stepped before the television cameras at Hartford Hospital on January 8.

And yet the two senators, according to a front page, top of the fold story in the Hartford Courant, “Dems Ramp Up Impeachment,” were breathlessly “Urging a peaceful transition of power, according to a story written by reporter Eliza Fawcett.

Murphy, Blumenthal’s Tonto, is quoted in the piece. “The President,” Murphy asserts without evidence, “is absolutely engaged in an attempt to try to stop this peaceful transition from happening… It is important to remember how specific the President’s intent was on Wednesday. He called people to the Capitol on a specific day — the day that the Electoral College was being certified — and then told them all to march on the Capitol,” but not, be it noted, to march into the Capitol.

A small portion of the massive crowd summoned to the Capitol certainly did interrupt the business of legislators, then in the process of certifying an electoral count, and it has been suggested that the call to march on the Capitol was, in some sense, an insurrectional call by Republicans to disturb the business of the legislature, which a bunch of idiots in the crowd proceeded to do, with disastrous consequences to Trump, who later denounced their actions.

Most reporters are, or should be, familiar with the post hoc, proper hoc fallacy, which holds that sequence is not causality. In any sequence – b follows a – we cannot assume that a has caused b. Courts are especially mindful of the fallacy, but politicians make full use of it in heaping mounds of rhetorical dirt upon their opponents.

It has been suggested by Trump’s opponents, who are legion, that he should be forced from office through impeachment or an artful use of the 25th amendment. That amendment provides for the removal of a president who has been physically impaired from executing his or her presidential responsibilities, and it requires the participation of the Vice President and other cabinet officers to begin a procedure, sometimes temporary, that may be revoked when a medical danger has passed. Democrats should hold the useful amendment in abeyance should President-elect Biden be inconvenienced by a third brain aneurism, at which point president-elect in waiting Kamala Harris will be able to assume, one hopes temporarily, the awesome temporary powers of the presidency.

Murphy wondered at Hartford Hospital what Democrats could do under such circumstance other than forcing the president from office immediately?

Here’s an idea: Murphy and Blumenthal could both grow up, stop campaigning for a few minutes and WAIT for the president to leave office IN TEN DAYS during a peaceful transition of power. In this way, president-elect Biden can redeem his pledge to unify the country, the anti-Trump media can take a breather, and grownups in the country can go back to the business of shoveling tax money into a black hole – the national debt is now cresting at about $27 trillion -- part of which finances politicians-for-life such as Blumenthal, infected with political infantilism, who make too frequent appearances at garage door openings.