Quid Pro Quo
At first, the announcement by Nancy Pelosi of an inquiry was somewhat startling. She had spurned the idea of impeachment for a long time, but finally found that this violation of federal election laws was too flagrant. I suspect that Pelosi is the smartest person in the room, and this was part of her strategy--just let Trump keep up the tomfoolery, and sooner or later he would hang himself. Many on the left clutched their pearls and said this was not a good idea, since a conviction in the Senate (which requires a two-thirds vote) was extremely unlikely, and thus Trump would be vindicated. But the narrative has changed a bit, and I believe most of the liberal/Democrat/progressive side now see this as necessary. Congress must do their job, and the country is slowing coming around to recognize Trump as the crook that he is.
Trump, and his confederates (namely Rudy Giuliani) have not helped, by making histrionic and unglued statements. Trump has called for civil war, for the arrest of House Intelligence Committee chair Anthony Schiff's arrest for treason, and a state-run television network. Polls suggest that the nation is finally getting tired of his act, and would like to see him gone. Of course he will have his die-hard supporters, but they remain at about forty percent of the population (this is also the percentage of Republicans that don't believe Trump asked for help from Ukraine, when Trump freely admits he did).
The facts seem apparent: Trump did ask the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, for some sort of corruption involving an oil company on which Hunter was a board member. All indications are that there is no evidence of this at all, and is yet another right-wing fantasy. There is also the suggestion of a "quid pro quo;" that Trump would withhold military aid if Zelensky didn't play ball (aid was mysteriously held up this summer). Trump defenders indicate that there was no quid pro quo, but certainly there is a non-verbal wink in the conversation, and if it isn't spelled out it was certainly implied. More importantly, the quid pro quo isn't relevant--it was the asking of the favor that broke the law. The law states that no foreign government can provide a "thing of value" to a campaign, whether it be money or digging into your opponent's dirty laundry.
Trump has become unhinged at the accusations, so much so that, in some misguided attempt to prove that what he did is not bad, did the exact same thing, in public, asking China to look into Biden's affairs. This is like being accused of bestiality and then fucking a goat on the White House lawn to show that it's no big thing. Trump, able to get away with illegality all his life, may have finally reached his Waterloo. There is also the question of obstruction of justice, as Attorney General William Barr attempted to quash the whistle-blower report. If there's any justice, Barr, Giuliani, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who listened to the call, will all go down. Trump also threw under the bus his own VP, Mike Pence, giving liberals daydreams of a President Pelosi.
In the final analysis it's clear that Trump broke the law and will be impeached. He will not be convicted, although some Republicans, like Mitt Romney, may not roll over. At some point Trump will become a liability for Republicans seeking re-election, and a trial won't do them any good, so they may urge Trump to resign. He has far too massive an ego to do that, though. Richard Nixon had a modicum of integrity, and fell on the sword, Trump will never do that.
I would like to add that I find it amusing that Zelensky was a comedian and actor before he was president. We've had these before (Ronald Reagan, of course), but it appears that Trump's election has thrown open the doors to anyone to become a world leader. This resembles the plot of Robin Williams' film Man Of The Year, about a comedian elected president. In 2006 this was a fantasy, and now has become sadly true.
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