The American University historian Allan Lichtman, famous for his lonely prediction of Trump's electoral victory, has followed up that feat with The Case for Impeachment, a book-length forecast of Trump's doom. The impeachment, he writes, "will be decided not just in the halls of Congress but in the streets of America." I'd go further to speculate that Trump's implosion is more likely to occur before there's an impeachment vote on the floor of the House — as was the case with Nixon. But where Nixon's exit was catalyzed by an empirical recognition that he'd lost the votes he needed to survive a Senate trial, in Trump's case the trigger will be his childish temper, not the facts. He's already on record as finding the job to be more work than he bargained for. He'll tire of being perceived as a loser by nearly everyone except the sort of people he'd never let in the front door of Mar-a-Lago — and of seeing the Trump brand trashed to the point of jeopardizing his children's future stake in the family kleptocracy. When he's had enough, I suspect he'll find a way to declare "victory," blame his departure on a conspiracy by America's (i.e., his) "enemies," and vow to fight another day on a network TBA.
But as was also true with Nixon, some time and much patience will be required while waiting for the endgame. The span between Nixon's Second Inaugural and his resignation was almost 19 months. Trump's presidency already seems as if it's lasted a lifetime, but it's only five months old. Never forget that the Watergate auto-da-fé wasn't built in a day.
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