I live in a deep blue bubble where people have been jumping on the impeachment bandwagon for a long time. I mainline Pod Save America, and constantly read in “What a Day,” Crooked Media’s online newsletter, pro-impeachment arguments and lamentations about Nancy Pelosi’s caution. I love Michelle Goldberg, Charles Blow, and Jamelle Bouie, all New York Times columnists who favor impeachment and are passionate about removing Trump from office.

I share that passion. But until recently I have not been persuaded that impeachment is the right strategy. I distrust the preaching-to-the-choir fervor among many proponents, and I want to tear my hair out when I hear, “I don’t care if we lose seats, it’s the moral thing to do!”

As someone who spent a lot of time canvassing in a swing district in the run-up to the mid-terms, I can attest that people outside of deep blue bubbles care about healthcare, jobs, and traffic far more than impeachment, and that they tend to give the President the benefit of the doubt even if they don’t like his blowhard style. Nancy Pelosi has been right to worry about the vulnerability of Freshman Democrats from such districts who constitute the bulk of last year’s flipped seats. Like Pelosi, I have believed that the President wants to goad Democrats into a trap, that thorough investigations in the House should proceed, and that Trump and his entire party of enablers are best impeached at the polls. Plus, the prospect of a President Pence has scared me even more than the current arsonist-in-chief, who at least keeps people alarmed enough to actively work to defeat him.

My internal needle on impeachment has been changing, though. Trump’s continuing defiance of laws and norms, completely supported by the Dereliction-of-Duty Republicans, have stymied other options to hold him accountable, and we can’t continue with this erratic sociopath until November 2020 in what Pod Save‘s Dan Pfeiffer calls “Impeachment Purgatory.”

The silver lining of Trump’s presidency is that you don’t have to wait that long for his next self-destructive eruption. Now, thanks to the bravery of an intelligence whistleblower, clear lawbreaking by the Administration’s obstruction of the complaint’s delivery to Congress, and Trump’s public confession of soliciting foreign interference from the Ukrainian president for his own political gain in the 2020 election, there’s a fresh and clear-cut display of impeachable offenses. The latest revelations provide the hook to act now.

It’s time. “What took you so long?” some might say. Perhaps. But I prefer to think of it as “Now more than ever.”

ITMFA: Impeach the Motherfucker Already. I snapped that photo at the end of May in Oakland. I wasn’t there yet.  But I’m there now. Even if the Senate acquits, get every Republican on record. Then impeach at the polls. Every last one of them.

I’ve been sheltering in a secure, low-news bunker since Robert Mueller handed over his report to Attorney General William Barr last week. That’s so I can avoid getting caught up in the powerful cyclone of spin put out by Trump’s propaganda machine and amplified by mainstream pundits.

For the record, Mueller explicitly stated that the evidence does not exonerate the President regarding obstruction of justice. His investigation, besides concluding that Russia definitely meddled in the election, yielded 34 indictments, with several close Trump associates pleading or being found guilty and facing time. It’s also been a money-maker for the United States, netting more in fines and forfeitures than the investigation cost.

But what are facts in the age of spin?

I had fortified myself in advance thanks to Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer, who offered a pre-report rant before he himself disappeared into his hidey-hole.  Pfeiffer predicted that unless the Mueller report resulted immediately in Nancy Pelosi donning her sunglasses and sauntering from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office in her new role as President following the Constitution’s prescription for succession, the media would declare a huge victory for Trump and a huge loss for the Democrats. As the Pod Save hosts have been reminding listeners since just about forever, defeating Donald Trump and his Republican enablers will require the hard work of organizing to win the 2020 election—in House, Senate, and state races as well as the White House. It was never going to be through a Deus Ex Muellercha.

In any case, with my news consumption down as I wait for the Total Exoneration Bullshit Storm to pass, I’ve freed up a lot of time for other things. If you, too, want to limit your exposure to the Mueller Report Obsession, here are some suggestions:

1. Do your taxes. Ready or not, April 15^th is just around the corner. Why not just get it over with? Be sure to think about how Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishment has been to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut benefiting mostly the super rich and big corporations while blowing up the deficit Republicans pretended to care about under President Obama.
2. Schedule a doctor’s appointment. You might want to do this really soon, since once again the Republicans are going after your healthcare with a vengeance, not just via death by a thousand cuts, but with wholesale elimination.
3. Calculate how long it will be before you’re eligible for Medicare. Oh, silly me! Republicans do care about deficits again, which is why they are now threatening Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and other vital social programs.
4. BTW, just as you shouldn’t have been holding your breath for the Mueller Report to save us, don’t hold your breath for Medicare-for-All anytime soon. Be sure to instead work toward it via any of the avenues being proposed by Democrats, but for heaven’s sake don’t insist on any purity tests!
5. Have sex! Following the news is not only a time-suck, it’s a libido-killer. Put that device down and snuggle up! But if your time until Medicare eligibility is substantial, first make sure to . . .
6. Stock up on birth control. Already the Trump Administration, under the guise of “religious liberty,” has made it easier for employers to refuse to provide free contraceptives as required by the ACA. The aforementioned threat to the ACA will only make things worse in the family planning department.
7. Speaking of which, make a donation to Planned Parenthood to counteract the Republicans’ war on the organization. Bonus activity points for donating in Mike Pence’s name.
8. Be careful, though! If you don’t want to have a baby but followed #5 while failing to follow #6, you may find yourself needing an abortion. This has become more and more difficult and is about to become even more so as states like Georgia pass so-called “heart-beat bills.” Besides banning most abortions, often before a woman realizes she’s pregnant, the goal of these clearly unconstitutional laws is to trigger a Supreme Court hearing with the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade.
9. Ah, yes! Remember the Supreme Court? One of whose seats was stolen by Mitch McConnell? The branch of government that motivates Republicans to vote more than Democrats? When I made calls to Nevada for the 2016 election to see if people supported Clinton or Trump, one man told me, “I think they’re both idiots, but I’m a conservative, and I want conservative justices on the Supreme Court so I’m voting for Trump!” Impeccable logic. People who are alarmed by the rightward lurch of the Supreme Court might try it. Planking in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s 86^th birthday is nice, but insufficient.
10. Hug your children. Give thanks that they have not been wrested away from you and put in cages. Spare a thought for those who have.
11. Take a hike. It’s good to get out in nature. Do it while it lasts–it won’t be too much longer if Trump and his fellow climate deniers remain in charge.

Refreshed by your alternative activities to reading about Trump’s “exoneration” by Robert Mueller as interpreted by Attorney General Barr? Here are a couple of other suggestions once you’re ready to emerge from your bunker:

1. Call for the release of the Mueller report.. But please, relinquish any vestigial hopes for a savior. Instead,
2. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

This Vox article describes how people did just that for the 2018 mid-terms. They knocked on doors, made phone calls, registered voters, and talked to people about their concerns. Contrary to what you may have heard about Democrats in disarray because they’ve been taken over by wild-eyed lefty purists, they did so with a high degree of pragmatism and personal engagement. As someone who’s knocked on a lot of doors and made a lot of phone calls in a lot of campaigns, I can attest that what happens on the ground is quite different from what media hype would have you believe. People I talked to in the swing district I visited every month in the run up to the mid-terms worried about healthcare, good jobs, traffic, and affordable housing and education. Russia and the Mueller investigation never came up.

Besides which, criminally guilty or exonerated, we’ve never needed evidence beyond what Trump and his Republican enablers display multiple times a day. From despicable character to destructive policies to deep corruption, it’s there plain as day. As George Conway (husband of Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway!) writes in the Washington Post, “If the charge were unfitness for office, the verdict would already be in: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Let’s do something about that. Mueller Time must now be Our Time.

Ever since jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, setting off an era of fear, the notion of piloting and who’s at the controls has become a subconscious motif in the American psyche.

George W. Bush was at the helm on that fateful day, and it defined his presidency. His record as an actual pilot in the Texas Air National Guard presaged his performance as commander-in-chief: put into the position through dubious means, a spotty service record, and, most catastrophically, neglecting his duties, this time by failing to take pre-9/11 intelligence warnings seriously. President Bush then dragged us into the disastrous Iraq war and presided over the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression.

Another plane crash closed out the Bush Administration. Just days before President Obama’s first inauguration, US Airways Flight 1549 lost engine power shortly after take-off from LaGuardia Airport. Captain Chesley Sullenberger brought the stricken vessel to a safe landing in the Hudson River, then he and his crew calmly and professionally guided everyone to the wings of the aircraft to await rescue.

Captain Sully’s maneuvers heralded a new era. His cool, calm demeanor found its twin in President Obama, who rescued the country from economic collapse. A man who also took his job seriously, he guided us for the most part skillfully and without fanfare through perilous times.

As the Obama presidency drew to a close, two of the most unpopular candidates in our history vied to replace him, and again flight metaphors emerged.

“Let me put it this way,” a pilot I know remarked right before the election. “I think they’re both idiots. But at least Hillary knows how to fly a plane.”

Instead, we have someone totally unqualified about to step into the cockpit. In just a few days, cool-as-a-cucumber President Obama must hand over the controls to his opposite—an erratic, uncouth ignoramus governed solely by ego and self-aggrandizement. The contrast was starkly illuminated by President Obama’s graceful farewell address followed the next morning by Donald Trump’s snarling and incoherent press conference.

After the election, it was common to hear people—including President Obama—say that we should wish for Donald Trump’s success.

“Do you want him to fail?” asked a man I met who was pro-Trump because he was anti-choice. “After all, if you got on a plane, would you hope that the pilot would crash?”

Actually, I would hope that the pilot knew how to fly a plane.

But the question is a trap. Of course I do not want Donald Trump to drive the country into the ground. But his “success” means not only rewarding a bully with the bully pulpit, but destroying the progress of the Obama years. Trump and his enablers are taking direct aim at healthcare, reproductive rights, education, environmental protection, economic and racial justice, immigration, women’s, and minority rights, and so much more. So no, I do not want him to succeed. Besides, I do not see a man in charge who will guide the country safely—Trump is busily appointing people who are intent on hijacking the missions of the departments they are supposed to lead. His is shaping up to be a crash-and-burn administration.

Like it or not, we are all on this airplane now. Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

It was disconcerting Tuesday morning to walk downtown through the Hub, a big intersection that is crammed with people waving placards for every cause and candidate every election day. The Hub was deserted. Certainly our small town in its deep blue bubble was not a place to expend national resources, but no one? Not even people vying for highly competitive local races? It was as if the election weren’t even happening, except for a Trump/Pence bumper sticker on a parked truck a block away, and a handmade poster complete with horns and a pitchfork that read “Hellary 2016.”

Despite these ominous signs, I was sure I’d be celebrating the election of our first female president that night. The polls were looking pretty good, despite the FBI’s damaging salvo. During my final phone banking shift, when we were making calls to Florida, one supporter I spoke to told me her seven-year-old daughter’s class held a mock election, and Hillary had won in a landslide.

Then came another inkling of trouble that I also dismissed. A man told me that his first-grader was one of only ten Hillary voters in her classroom’s poll. “This is a blue county,” he said, “And Trump blew her out of the water. I am so frightened.” I told him about the woman I’d just talked with, reassuring myself if not him. A few hours later, as I headed off to our friend’s house with a plate of scrumptious chocolate layer bars and a bottle of bubbly, the closeness of the Virginia returns was worrisome. But I told myself that the northern suburbs had not yet come in, and remained confident.

As we tuned in to MSNBC, CNN, even Fox, looking for a different reality than the one that seemed to be unfolding, I started fielding texts from our daughter:

“I’M SO NERVOUS HOLY CRAP! HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?

“Keep the faith,” I texted back. “It will just be closer and a longer night than we’d hoped.”

Two hours later, as Stephen Colbert’s national wake ended on Showtime, I had dropped all optimism, all pretense of maternal comfort, unless “Fucking unbelievable” counts as reassurance.

Our host took the dog out to pee, and upon his return reported that the party at the neighbor’s house seemed oddly raucous, unlike our gloomy gathering. My husband and I left a bit before 10:00, still with no verdict, but with our champagne unpopped and our hearts broken. Some people were leaving the party across the street, and we heard a voice call out, “White men rule!” We tried to convince ourselves that we might have said the same thing in an ironic attempt at gallows humor. But we could not deny that they were celebrating, while we were in shock and mourning.

I know that I must engage in soul-searching to understand what I missed, and why. I must acknowledge my own failures of empathy, my candidate’s poor choices, the legitimate concerns of those who voted for her opponent. There are a million different converging factors that have resulted in this outcome, and I know that blaming it on racism and misogyny is overly simplistic and insulting. Still, it is naive to deny the powerful influence of these virulent strains. They are here in my own backyard.

This is our deep blue bubble. This is my deep denial. This is where we live.

*

What was your election day and night like?

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I was 17 years old and vacationing in Germany with my parents, who sat facing me on the train. I stared out the window, the seat beside me empty. As the train traveled through the Rhine Valley, we picked up more passengers. Eventually a middle-aged man boarded the crowded train, sat down next to me, and unfolded his newspaper. I continued to stare out the window. After a while, the train entered a tunnel and everything went dark.

Suddenly, the man was all over me, pressing his face into mine, groping my breasts, my thighs. I froze, too shocked and embarrassed to move or utter a sound. The instant the train emerged from the tunnel, he returned to reading his newspaper.

My parents looked at my ashen face and asked what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I mumbled.

I hadn’t thought much about this incident over the years.

Until Donald Trump was caught on tape bragging about forcing himself on women.  Then I was back in that dark tunnel again, along with millions of women remembering the unwanted advances we’ve silently endured.

Meanwhile, Trump’s doubled down on the disrespect that’s been evident throughout his campaign by demeaning and threatening those who have come forward with allegations against him.

“I don’t know these women,” he says dismissively.

He’s right about that–though not in the way he intended.

Trump did not know the woman who says he groped her on the plane, just as the man on the train didn’t know me. No one who views others as simply there for the taking bothers to know—or care—anything about them.

Trump may not know us, but we know him. And we’re tired of putting up with him and his kind.

I am no longer that scared-silent girl on the train. I have found my voice, and I intend to speak up.

*

Please feel free to share your experiences and your thoughts.