Impeachment is not one and done

Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community says that finding moderate GOP senators willing to vote to remove the nasty guy after impeachment is simply wishful thinking.

Any Republican even partially dependent on Trump’s rabid and virulent base for re-election can count on having that base turn against them if they vote to convict Donald Trump. The number of votes, for example, that Susan Collins is going to gain from “moderates” in Maine would not outweigh the number of votes she is likely to lose by infuriating Trump’s base. That’s true, no matter how “moderate” Maine is overall. Trump’s voting base is now a cult, and a vote to convict their leader is simply incomprehensible to them. Anyone who takes such an action will be shunned, if not subjected to actual violence. On Election Day those people will sit on their hands, and at this point, there are a lot more of them than there are “persuadable” moderates

And nothing the Democrats uncover—no crime, no association, no betrayal or act by Trump—will change that.
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[Trump’s] historical pattern suggests that he will trumpet his acquittal and use it to justify committing further crimes, with a renewed and much higher degree of impunity. After all, there is literally nothing to stop him from doing so—no legal constraint whatsoever. The Supreme Court isn’t going to stop him, and absent a blatantly illegal war crime, the Armed Services aren’t going to stop him either.
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The months between the time the Senate acquits Trump and the November 2020 election are going to be the most harrowing months in this country’s modern history, because this Republican-controlled Senate will have allowed a criminal president to run amok with no legal means of restraint to stop him.

So the nasty guy and the GOP will enlist all possible foreign assistance for re-election. It is the only way the nasty guy – and Putin – can survive. They’ll do everything to make sure they survive.

But the Constitution doesn’t say impeachment is one and done. Impeachment inquiries should and must continue from the day of the GOP acquittal to the day the nasty guy leaves office.

And make no mistake, the effects of continued impeachment efforts would be severe and unpredictable. They might be so severe as to rip the country apart.

But Democrats really will have no choice. It’s either that or acquiesce to someone who is essentially going to consider himself a dictator, one totally unfettered by any legal constraints.

Lawrence Lewis, also of the Daily Kos community, adds:

Democrats can’t limit investigations in the House, because there won’t be any investigations in the Senate. Democrats can’t fail to follow the facts, and they’ve only scratched the surface of the facts. This is an existential crisis for the republic. This is the moment. And unless the polls already are moving so strongly in favor of Trump’s removal from office that these unscrupulously debased Republicans feel they have no other option, the republic will fall.