This is the Tom Hartman program.

President Donald Trump has been impeached.

That is the first sentence of today. Trump has been impeached.

That is the first sentence of today.

What are the next sentences?

Those are the first words.

What are the next words?

Some of those words will be yours

and we'll be taking your calls. I'm Jefferson Smith and I

am sitting in for the Tom Hartman show and I'm honored to do it and I'll tell you

the big thing I'm thankful for and some thoughts I've

been noodling on. Some thoughts that I've wanted to share on political parties and on patriotism. I'm thankful to live in the

United States. I'm thankful to be an America, a U.S. American, I'll say American, for purposes of brevity today.

The story of democracy, the story of the Democratic Party, I think offers a reflection of the

story of America, a party trying to get better in a nation trying to get better.

Advocating for working farmers during an agrarian age, moving into the machine age,

working to overcome control by corrupt political machines, working the past 60 years

to overcome its own entrenched racism, becoming a party that is advocating for quality and opportunity for everybody, a party as

imperfect as our country and working to get better.

The Republican Party offers an almost opposite story.

Starting with Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation, supporting women's suffrage,

then co-opted by corporate power in the McKinley era and after

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