Julian Perea doesn’t hate Joe Biden. If anything, he feels sorry for him, given his age and what Perea considers the president’s severe mental and physical disabilities.

“That man is gone,” Perea said.

Still, the retired Fresno police officer is glad that the House of Representatives, led by his congressman, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has taken the first step toward impeaching the president.

“We as conservatives have to fight back,” said Perea, who served in the military for more than three decades and sprinkled his views with several references to war and warfare. “You must keep the enemy off balance at all times.”

When McCarthy announced the start of a formal investigation into Biden’s impeachment last week, the Bakersfield Republican sought to shore up his shaky speakership and prevent a government shutdown by the Republican Party’s remaining torch-and-fork wing in the House of Deputies to mitigate.

It hasn’t worked, as McCarthy continues to falter and Republicans head toward a deadline at the end of September.

But the move clearly suits many of the voters McCarthy represents in California’s oil and agriculture country, a wide swath of the state’s center and the reddest red grass that supported President Trump’s reelection in a landslide. McCarthy was sent to Washington with 67% support.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Claudia Warkentin said of Biden’s impeachment.

The 43-year-old political independent lives in Clovis, a Fresno suburb, and works in the waste management industry. She voted for Trump in 2020 and may support him again in 2024.

Biden has “made a fool of our country,” Warkentin said, pointing out the weaknesses she sees in the 80-year-old president. Impeachment ‘should have happened a long time ago’.

That rough consensus isn’t very surprising. After all, McCarthy represents a region littered with road signs condemning “woke politics.” Gavin Newsom (“Stop wasting our dam water!”) and McCarthy’s predecessor as speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

What is striking is how little Biden’s alleged, unproven corruption has to do with pro-impeachment sentiments.

His son Hunter, the subject of a special prosecutor investigation, may have blatantly made money trading on the family name. Many consider him ripe for criminal charges.

But the case critics are making against the president goes much deeper and has little to do with the investigation underway in Congress.

It is driven in large part by anger and fear: about inflation and rising gas prices

,

green energy, crime, homelessness, policies towards Israel, all support the sense that the country is heading irrevocably in the wrong direction.

“The fight is bigger than just Biden,” said Perea, the retired police officer. Impeaching the president is “fighting for our way of life.”

Perea, 72, was at a supermarket in Visalia, at the north end of McCarthy’s district, which extends south to the edge of the greater Los Angeles area. He was buying lemonade for his granddaughters and their elementary school classmates.

“What used to be abnormal is normal. What used to be normal is abnormal,” Perea said. “It is abnormal to be a Christian. It is normal to be a transgender woman who wants to be the first to have an abortion.”

To many, Biden himself seems almost irrelevant.

The president was widely seen as not only incompetent, but also inert: a figurehead, a puppet manipulated by others: former President Obama. Or Vice President Kamala Harris. Or subversive bureaucrats within the Washington Beltway.

“He’s just a mouthpiece,” said Republican Lori Helmuth, 61, as she left the spa where she works in Hanford. “And not a very good one.”

Of course, not everyone sees the merits of the House investigation, or McCarthy’s surrender to far-right extremists.

As Helmuth walked to her car, Jeremy Rhoten came from the other direction and passed the Kings County Courthouse, a neoclassical landmark now home to a variety of small businesses. He went for a haircut.

“You can say

inflation is bad, gas price is too high,

we are not happy about it,” said Rhoten, 48, a web designer. “But nothing happens where there are clear violations of the law.”

(Republicans have tried for years to draw a link between Biden and his son’s foreign affairs activities, but have yet to find evidence of criminality.)

“I don’t like Biden,” said Rhoten, an unaffiliated voter who supported the Democrat in 2020 and will do so again in 2024 if the choice comes down to the president.

or Trump.

Still, Rhoten said, “I wish we would stop wasting our time on government procedures that just don’t get anything done. It’s a waste of time. It’s a diversion to divert attention from whatever nonsense is happening.

Real

going on.”

Lynne Gate agreed.

“It’s all political. It has nothing to do with reality,” said the 69-year-old Visalia Democrat, a retired flight attendant.

She sees the investigation into Biden and the threat of impeachment as a reward for the investigations Trump faced as president and the two times he was impeached.

“I honestly think it was an agreement that McCarthy made with the other Trumpster representatives in the House of Representatives, who said, ‘I will vote for you for Speaker of the House if you follow these certain things. If you don’t, If you do, we’ll vote you out.'”

Revenge was on the minds of many.

For Republicans, this is exactly what awaits Biden and his fellow Democrats.

Edmund Pascua, 61, is a bus driver in McCarthy’s hometown of Bakersfield. He was on a break from jury duty and took shelter from the 96-degree heat under a palm tree outside Kern County Superior Court.

Democrats went after Trump “from the beginning,” from the moment he launched his presidential bid, Pascua said, and they haven’t given up on him since, now that he’s out of office and tormenting him with lawsuits and multiple criminal charges.

“It’s only fair [Biden] should be impeached,” Pascua said.

Not that he or anyone else sees impeachment as a way to make housing more affordable, lower the cost of living, or otherwise improve their lives.

In Clovis

,

Scott Addison stepped outside a rowdy, Western-themed bar in Old Town to share his decidedly mixed views on the president and his opponents.

Addison, 47, thinks that in all the decades Biden has spent in politics, there is bound to be some dirt that Republicans can dig up. So yes, he said, they should continue their investigation.

But at the same time, “I don’t think Republicans would do this if they did that.” [Democrats] didn’t go after Trump.”

‘It’s a power struggle

B,

”

nonsense,

said Addison, a Republican who works in construction. “It all sounds too much like tit for tat.”

What will it achieve? “Nothing!” hi late out.

So what’s the point?

“Good question,” said DeVory Darkins, who lives a few blocks away. He tried to answer it.

Darkins, 35, served in the military for 13 years. He said experience has taught him there are different rules for politicians and those who serve in the military or law enforcement.

“If we ever got caught doing these things [politicians] If we did that, we would be done,” said Darkins, a Trump supporter and small business owner. ‘They would demote us and we would get a dishonorable discharge. You would lose your badge. But Democratic or Republican, you can get away with a lot.”

An American flag hung from his porch. Another sentinel stood in a flower pot.

“I think people should be held accountable,” Darkins said, “even if this doesn’t lead anywhere.”

He added another thought, about his beleaguered congressman and the rearguard action McCarthy is waging with members of his own party.

“Maybe he’s trying to save his job,” Darkins said. “If he doesn’t do anything, Republicans are going to want him out of there.”

So Biden now faces the prospect of becoming only the fourth president in the country’s history to be impeached. That would make him the second in a row.

The nation’s target

45th 46th

The president is of course bound to sanction the

44th 45th.

That fact is evident here in the Central Valley, where for many, including the local congressman, bridging the country’s vast partisan divide is less important than settling old scores.