Linkee-poo late edition

"After months of expressing caution on a push for impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump Tuesday." So now we can stop tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. And while the media will focus on the Ukraine call, the Democrats better not limit their actions to that.

Of course, Trump has said he will release the transcript of the call with the Ukrainian President to show it was entirely above board. He's described the conversation as "perfect." No one describes their own conversations that way. That's what people say when you're accomplished all the points you had preplanned in the way that was outlined in advance. "Perfect" is a debate rating. So, yes, I expect that any conversation there had enough plausible deniability to pass the spin-cycle. But then, competency has never been this administration's calling card.

And again I'll say that speculation about the Ukraine call is just that, speculation. There's no actual confirmation that the whistleblower complaint was about, or only about, the Ukraine call.

The Democrats now have hard work ahead of them. They need to construct their argument, the testimony, their conversations with the press and public, all in a way that would make absolving this president and overt act of abandoning the Constitution and any pretense at being a nation of laws. Voting for this president should be seen as a vote against democracy. And no, I don't think they'll do a good job of it. The desire to grandstand and the Democrats propensity to believe everyone knows everything they know and can see through the bullshit is well known.

John Scalzi has a quick and decent analysis of this (and the Brexit thing). The path to "victory" (for various definitions of victory) is narrow, and it will need to be played well. And as John states, the Democrats aren't really known for their finesse and deftness.

But for the moment, while we can't "enjoy" what we (as a nation) are going to go through these next eight months (and yes, it might take that long or longer), we can have some hope we are going in the right direction. For the moment.

And saddle up, cause this process is going be at least twice the effort it took to get to this point. And you can expect the GOP to make this as unpleasant (including strife between people, friends, family, coworkers) as possible. There may be some violence, there will be reprisals, and it will not be "fun."

But it will determine if our experiment with democracy has some more life to it, or if we are fated to tyranny and rule by despots.