The moment Democrats decided not to litigate in order to obtain the requisite testimony for impeachment, the Senate trial was destined to prove as dumb as our times deserve.
In a fitting conclusion to this clown show of an impeachment process, impeachment manager Jason Crow decided to dust off the most hackneyed trope in the #Resistance treasure trove — relying on a fictional wizard to make the case that the Senate ought to remove he-who-must-not-be-president from office.
“There are a lot of things outside our control, but my wife and I have tried to teach our kids that what we can always control are our choices,” the Colorado Democrat said in his closing argument. “It’s in that spirit that hanging in our son’s room is a quote from Harry Potter. The quote is from Professor Dumbledore, who said, ‘It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.'”
The Trump era, full of its constant exposure, toxic hyperpartisanship, and Faustian bargains within both parties, lends itself well to fictional analogies. Trump, a character frequently undone by his preference for sycophancy over competence or honesty, finds an obvious parallel in the tragic King Lear, and even more trite examples such as 1984 or Harrison Bergeron ring true at times.
Yet in his final remarks for the third presidential impeachment trial in this nation’s history, Crow decided to leave his legacy by invoking a cliche from Harry Potter.
As the joke goes, read another book.
Then again, maybe a joke is just what this disgrace of an impeachment performance deserves.
