This article was written by Alex Andrasik from Yates County. It was first published on The Brackish Line at Patreon.com

Proud to be a Democrat tonight.  Proud, for the first time in a minute, to be an American, too.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

As the dust clears and we all breathe in to consider what’s next, I’m seeing a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking of the whole impeachment process.  (Ugh, sports metaphor.)  People are wondering what political price we’ll pay for going through with this.  There’s fear that this will energize the Trump base more than it does ours.

I happen to be optimistic on that front.  A friend of mine said it well when she pointed out that Trump voters are Trump voters.  Trumpers gonna Trump.  There’s no turning them from the dark side at this point.  But there are a heck of a lot of Americans who might not identify as “political” but who feel like the rule of law is pretty important, when you get down to it.  This will play well with them.

Plus–can’t Democrats get energized too?  Why is it always about what energizes the Right, and only ever about what depresses and demoralizes the Left?  We don’t just lose in every situation, you know.

But I think we need to look past all that politics stuff.  This is about showing that actions have consequences.  This is about holding the line.

Regardless of whether it was “good” or “bad” politically, impeaching Donald Trump was the right thing to do.  And isn’t that what we’re always saying we want from our leaders?