Evan Osnos has a rather long article in the May 8 issue of The New Yorker, titled "What would it take to cut short Trump's presidency?"

This sort of question is second nature to leftists, who are always on the lookout for ways and means to bring Republican presidential terms to an abrupt halt – or, stated differently, but no less accurately, to overturn election results, just as the left is fond of rushing to courts to undo the legislative acts of duly-elected lawmakers, or state referenda.  For the left, elections are merely one aspect of the political process and not at all dispositive concerning the "consent of the governed."  For the left, the "consent of the governed" carries little weight except insofar as that consent coincides with leftist aims.

The Osnos article provides some eyebrow-raising information.  He quotes, for example, Stephen Moore, of the Heritage Foundation, to suggest that "a forty-per-cent approval rate" signals a premature end to the Trump presidency.  Why, I wonder, would a conservative want to provide grist for a leftist mill?  What good could possibly come from such grist?  Or does the Moore comment have something to do with the premature termination of Jim DeMint's tenure at Heritage?

Next, I noticed a reference to Senator Mark Warner, identified by Mr. Osnos as "the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee."  According to Osnos, Warner "told friends that he puts the odds at two to one against Trump completing a full term."  How about some some recusal talk for this Democrat partisan vis-à-vis his role on Senate panels concerning the president?

The Osnos article runs the gamut of Trump tenure termination talk, from the 25th Amendment to impeachment, concluding, "The power of impeachment is a more promising tool for curtailing a defective Presidency."  What, for a leftist, is "defective" about President Trump?  Why, the mere fact that he is president, silly – a fact supported by the recent AT piece on the consideration given a Trump impeachment at the Los Angeles City Council, a body that has, I can state with sublime confidence, no role at all in the impeachment of a U.S. president.

Mr. Osnos sagely points out: "[T]he first step in any realistic path to impeachment is for Democrats to gain control of the House."  To whom does Mr. Osnos turn to support this thought?  Why, to another Republican, of course (again, what is it with Republicans?) – one Douglas Holt-Eakin, identified as "a Republican economist and the president of the right-leaning American Action Forum[.]"  Probably, Mr. Osnos was cheered when Holtz-Eakin suggested that Republicans could lose as many as 35 House seats in 2018.

Osnos provides one other possibility for President Trump: that he will, Jimmy Carter-like, "limp through a single term."  But to complete this analogy, the Democrats need their counterpart to Ronald Reagan.  Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren as Reagan counterpart?  Hardly.

Machiavelli is not cited in the lengthy Osnos article.  Perhaps, however, Machiavelli, in chapter 6 of The Prince, tells us what is really going on with the massive monolithic media maelstrom unleashed at the Trump presidency – an explanation that includes insight into "lukewarm" defense accorded President Trump by congressional Republicans:

It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to manage, or more doubtful of success, or more dangerous to handle than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things. For the innovator has enemies in all those who are doing well under the old order, and he has only lukewarm defenders in all those who would do well under the new order. This lukewarmness arises partly from fear of their adversaries who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men who do not truly believe in new things until they have had solid experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever his enemies have the opportunity to attack the innovator, they do so with the zeal of partisans, and the others only defend him tepidly, so that he, together with them, is put in danger.

According to Machiavelli, when innovators "depend on their own resources and are able to use force, then they are rarely in danger."  He continued, and, in the process, coined a term applied to leaders as disparate as Trotsky and Ben-Gurion: "From this comes the fact that all armed prophets have been victorious and the unarmed ones have come to ruin."

Leftists and Never Trumps who predict the early end of the Trump presidency would do well to consider less whether Trump is a nationalist, populist, or swamp-drainer – and more, the innovator and "armed prophet" to all of us who are not on the donor lists of the Democratic National Committee and Planned Parenthood.