I thought I’d never say that. I could trot out my arguments neatly. Impeachment a crock to begin with. “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” anything you make it if you have enough votes in the House. Something our Founding Fathers dreamed up on an off day along with the Electoral College. Something that has yet to work since the beginning of the Republic. An empty gesture. House finds the criminal president guilty and Senate pardons him. A lot of “Sound and Fury,” “Strutting and Fretting” overacting and noisy political battle scenes with a “signifying nothing” ending.

Why should it be any different this time than it was when Bill Clinton was nabbed for lying about having extramarital sex or Andrew Johnson was found guilty of firing one of his Cabinet members in violation of a silly-assed (and surely unconstitutional) law passed by the Congress for the express purpose of entrapping him? And you can be sure it will come to nothing this time too even though this president has committed, and continues to commit, so many heinous offenses that it will be hard for the House Democrats to sort out which ones he should be charged with.

So why should I change my mind and charge lustily to the pro-impeachment barricades now? I have been sitting by quietly for some months keeping my mouth shut and trying to ignore the fray while our “Maximum Leader” El Donaldo charges crazily around finding new and unexpected ways to rip the guts out of American Democracy and sabotage the Federal government. Patiently I tore the pages off the calendar…just 16 more months to election day, now 15, now 14. I was about to doze off when I read an article titled “Trump is not Well” that brought me to my feet. Its author, Peter Wehner, argued that Trump is “temperamentally unfit to be President.” I had heard that same argument long ago. But never had I heard it so powerfully, convincingly and urgently put.

Wehner’s words even taken out of context say it all: unstable, erratic, unprincipled, obsessive, impulsive, and vindictive. And the phrases: ‘craving for adulation,’ ‘subject to bizarre fixations,’ ‘a sexual predator.’ All coming from the mouth of a lifelong moderate Republican who had served in every administration from Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, to George W. Bush. And the most shocking phrase was quoted from “a Republican strategist who is in frequent contact with the President and reports that he is deteriorating in plain sight.” Our presidential unholy hybrid of the Roman Emperors Nero and Caligula is not just out of control but out of his tiny mind…and becoming madder and more incoherent by the day. He must be removed!

Only the 2020 Election can remove him. All we can do is hope that he doesn’t cripple the Republic before then. Meanwhile, we must do everything possible to see that he is not re-elected, that the Democrat majority in the House is maintained, and the Republicans lose their Senate majority. It is time for impeachment to be added to that “everything possible.” A slow-walked impeachment coordinated with the Democratic Party’s presidential campaign. An impeachment that showcases Trump’s myriad wrongdoings while he is on the campaign trail. Impeachment proceedings that haul (or try to haul) him before the Bar to defend his clownish actions in his own witless incoherent words.

An impeachment proceeding that delivers its guilty verdict during the final stages of the presidential race and turns it to over to the Senate for removal from office vote. It will be highly educational to watch Republican Senators squirm at the prospect of voting against the removal of a mentally incompetent and thoroughly discredited president while 23 of them face their own re-election. The dirty pool you say? Damned straight dirty. Everything in this campaign’s gonna’ be dirty. But how can they drag things out so long? You might ask. Well, for one thing, the Democrat-controlled House will be in charge of the pace of the proceedings, and for another Trump will aid in his own destruction. He will delay and try to disrupt. Rant, rave, bluster and emit clouds of pathetic lies on Twitter. Play his favorite infantile role of the “why’s everybody always pickin’ on me” victim. A role that won’t score him any points except with his hardcore supporters. And in the end, impeachment, Zen-like, will succeed by failing.

An impeachment trial will fire up the Democrats’ base and bring their many factions together on at least something. It might even distract them enough to make them drop some of their pie-in-the-sky social welfare schemes for the duration of the campaign. They can always get back to them later when they turn the rascals, especially Rascal #1, out; though a Democratic president will likely have to devote most of his or her first term to repair the damage Trump and the GOP has done to the American government, the U.S. economy, and America’s stature in the world. It may take more than one term.