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The House votes that may make Donald Trump the third U.S. President to be impeached are set on Wednesday. Since Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fired the first bullet in the full-fledged GOP-Democrat election fight three months ago, the U.S., a traditional bastion of democracy, has seen its mechanism of checks and balances downgraded into a political tool for selfish gains.

With the clock ticking down to 2020 presidential election, Democrats and Republicans have intensified their exchanges of attacks. Democrats brought two Articles of Impeachment against Trump: abuse of power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political vial Joe Biden, and the obstruction of Congress by refusing to cooperate in the impeachment probe.

The charges were immediately lashed out by pro-Trump Republicans as invalid. Prior to Wednesday's vote, Trump pens a scorching letter to the top Democrat, accusing her of declaring an "open war on American democracy" and launching"an illegal, partisan attempted coup that will… badly fail at the voting booth."

As a businessman-turned-president, Trump has been harshly criticized for his political immaturity in handling international affairs. But this time, he is right that the impeachment is a partisan attempted coup. "The impeachment drama is a blatant political persecution against Trump, and is, in essence, a bipartisan fight under the guise of the law," Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for U.S. Studies at Fudan University, told CGTN.

There is little suspense that House lawmakers, the majority of whom are Democrats, would vote yes for Trump's impeachment. But to remove Trump out of office still requires a two-thirds super majority in the Senate. This is unlikely in the Republicans-controlled chamber. Pelosi is fully aware of it, but still, is resolute in carrying the impeachment proceedings out.

"Pelosi is playing the impeachment card to crack down upon the reputation of Trump and his Republican Party," Xin said, adding that "her resolve in kicking the Republican president out from the Oval Office will also woo anti-Trump voters and boost the morale of Democrats." Even if Democrats eventually failed to impeach Trump, Pelosi could blame it entirely on GOPs occupying the majority seats in the Senate. Pelosi's ultimate purpose is more to strike the Republican Party than to kick Trump out of the office.

But the impeachment tactic is a double-edged sword, Xin warned. It may encourage swing voters to cast their ballot for the Republican Party if the impeachment failed and the legitimately elected president turned out to be victim of Democrats-led dirty plot. There are already voices criticizing the Democratic Party of "overzealously pursuing impeachment to the exclusion of all else."

Democrats must have made the political calculations before launching the formal inquiry, but which party will win in the end in this impeachment game is still too early to predict. Bipartisan politics means the U.S. public is much more polarized than before. As reported by Financial Times, while roughly half of American populations believe Trump should be convicted, more than 40 percent see the whole event as a deep state plot. This has made the final results of GOP-Democrats fight even more unpredictable.

In all circumstances, the U.S. mechanism of checks and balances has downgraded into a political tool. The impeachment arrangement was originally designed to put power under control, but it, in reality, is a bullet Democrats shot to Republicans. In U.S. politics, the need to triumph over rivals carries much more weight than integrity. Worse still, exerting every political mechanism to defame rivals is becoming a new normal in U.S. politics. This is a sad truth for the U.S. as the most "democratic" country in the world.

Script writer: Liu Jianxi

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