PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Pick your image.

Each one in the headline could portend problems for Donald Trump.

As we learn more about his misdeeds each day, a vote on impeachment articles by the U.S. House looks more and more likely, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says it will be delayed and won’t occur for several weeks instead of at Thanksgiving.

The U.S. Senate, of course, is a different story; conviction may still be a stretch, no matter when articles come over from the House.

But, I hearken back to the impeachment processes involving Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – yes, I lived through those – my sense is that, the farther we go through the process, the more the weight of evidence falls negatively on Trump.

In Nixon’s case, he was not convicted, but resigned from office because he would have been convicted based on the results of his work in an alleged criminal enterprise, plus the cover-up. Clinton wasn’t convicted, but his presidency was tainted until its end.

Of course, if Trump has a strategy here – he rarely has a strategy for anything – his approach may be to portray himself as a victim so that status inflames his base. Even his use of the word “lynching” this week sparked some support from his supporters who believed the over-the-top word was accurate, even if it implied a linkage to incredible crimes against black persons in our past.

But back to images. As we learn more information:

• It appears that a tsunami is building and, soon, could crash over Trump.
• It appears that a series of small shocks could result in “the big one” – a major earthquake that topples Trump.
• It appears that a snowball is rolling down, gathering more weight and speed as it makes the traverse to engulf Trump.

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle made a similar point this week.

“At this point, it’s clear Trump is going to be impeached. What’s open to question is whether the Senate will remove him. For a long time, that answer had seemed equally obvious: Of course it wouldn’t. There would be a quick trial amid complaints about ‘lynching’ and similar rhetoric, and Trump would stay in office. That’s still the conventional wisdom — but allow me to outline why I think it might be wrong.

“Start with the fact that congressional Republicans don’t much like him. They defend him mostly because they are afraid of his loyalists. It’s hard to know how numerous those voters are, but here’s one reasonable proxy: On Super Tuesday, 2016, when the Republican primary race was still hotly contested, Trump failed to garner 50 per cent of Republican primary voters in any of the 11 states.

“While most GOP would like to get rid of Trump, any individual who stands up to him faces a backlash from the Trump loyalists — and while they could probably prevail if they all shifted at once, so far, they haven’t been able to coordinate a collective action.”

McArdle suggests that impeachment hearings on Trump “might expose the public to his administration’s internal decision-making processes, at length, and not filtered through anonymous sources and a left-leaning mainstream media.”

She also avers that “Trump’s ill-conceived outbursts could start generating undeniable real-world consequences rather than eliciting fuzzy complaints about his lack of ‘civility’ and ‘norms.’ Outbursts could cost him his more weakly attached voters. More and more Republicans hear from previously Trump-loyal friends that that’s it, they’re through. That opens up emotional space for them to consider rejecting him, too.

“With Trump’s numbers worsening, it will then become harder to maintain the illusion that Trump is somehow immune to normal political rules. By the time the poll numbers for removal inch up to somewhere in the range of 55 to 58 per cent, it becomes clear Trump will almost certainly lose in 2020 — and worse, take the Senate down with him.

“Now his support really begins to collapse, particularly among evangelicals.”

Yet, this morning, one of my favorite columnists, Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, disagrees. He contends that Pelosi has gone too far by starting the impeachment process as a sop to the left, especially the far left, which still cannot believe that Trump won in 2016.

The left, Henninger writes, wants more government and cannot get the result with Trump, so wants to force him out office before 2020.

Well, with all due respect to Henninger who is closer to the process than I am, I believe a reckoning is coming for Trump.

To go back to the images, I believe a tsunami, an earthquake or a snowball downhill are building and could spell the end of Trump. Good.