SUPER CHARGED?

As the impeachment investigation in the House of Representatives continues, the guiltiness of Donald Trump's behavior is becoming more and more obvious.  Right now,  Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the European Union, is giving testimony to the fact that Trump's attempts to get the country of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden's son consisted of a lot more than a phone call from the president to the leader of the Ukraine.  “I know that members of this Committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’” Sondland said. “The answer is yes.”
This overwhelming evidence should mean that, if this were a just and honest world, Trump's own party would turn on him and he would be bounced out of office and possibly into a jail cell where he belongs.  But, alas, the country we are now living in is not just and honest.
The Republican party is now the party of the Trump cult and nothing else.  No matter what happens, the registered voters of the party still support him, so the congressional Republicans must do the same.  Which means that the Republican votes needed in the Senate to oust Trump will be almost impossible to get.  Why would  they turn on him now, when they supported his campaign as he lied, bragged and insulted his way into office?  They supported him after he called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers, refused to put his businesses in  a blind trust or  release his taxes. Not even  the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape could stop them from sticking with him. Which means that once again, the man who has spent his whole life doing terrible things and never paying any consequence will once again skate away unscathed.

As if that isn't horrible enough, the sad fact of the matter is that Trump's almost inevitable vindication in the Senate may super charge him.  Instead of seeing himself as weakened by being impeached by one house of congress, Trump may very well see himself as being invulnerable.  Because he truly does seem to believe that he has done nothing wrong in this scandal (or indeed, that he never done anything wrong in his entire life!), the senate vote may unleash him to be even more corrupt and deranged in the upcoming election.  It is entirely possible that during the campaign Trump will openly start asking for aid from foreign countries.  In his speeches, in his tweets, in financial dealings, he will just make the same demands that he made with Ukraine: help me win reelection and I will help you, if you don't help me  I will use the might of the largest economy in the world to strike back at you.   Even worse, it's easy to predict how the two parties will react to this: elected Republicans will shrug and say that they don't agree with his methods but still support him, and Democrats will be left screaming into a void, unable to sell the idea of impeaching him all over again.
This is the rock and a hard place that the Democrats have been stuck in ever since the impeachment proceedings began.  While I certainly think that it was the right thing to bring these charges against Trump in the face of such obvious corruption, it may actually wind up helping him win reelection by embolding him to openly seek aid from Russia and other countries.  And as long as the feckless Republican party do nothing to stop him, America will become more and more of the  complete disgrace it became since he took office.