Impeachment Is a Moral and Electoral Imperative
Nancy Pelosi does not like talking about impeachment.
For a while she had a cover-up — not a great one, but at least something she could point to: she wanted to wait to see the results of the Mueller Report. If there was evidence of impeachable offenses she said, she would consider going forward with it, but not before then.
I took issue with this stance on many fronts, the first being that Trump has committed a plethora of impeachable offenses outside the scope of Mueller’s investigation. Plenty of the emoluments, Hatch Act violations, and inaugural committee actions that Trump and his administration have committed should disqualify any candidate from the presidency and should prime impeachment proceedings for a sitting president.
But Democrats are scared of impeachment. So frightened that many party leaders won’t even mention the word. It’s like impeachment has become the new Voldemort. A few months ago, when asked about Trump instructing aide Hope Hicks to ignore a congressional subpoena, she told a reporter “obstruction of justice” and walked away. Yes, she casually listed the most-cited reason for the impeachment of a sitting president and went on with her day like it was nothing.
It’s not just Pelosi. Other Democratic figureheads agree with her. After the release of the Mueller Report in April, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that impeachment was “not worthwhile.” Majority Whip James Clyburn said that Democrats might consider impeachment…eventually…once the public was on board. Minority Leader Schumer in the Senate didn’t even want to comment, referring the matter back to Pelosi.
The only noteworthy Democratic politicians who seem to support impeachment are the ones for which it shouldn’t matter — those running to replace Trump as president. Elizabeth Warren was the first, calling for impeachment upon reading the Mueller report after its April release. She was followed by more than half of the field of candidates for the Democratic nomination. For these Democrats, impeachment should theoretically be a non-issue. You’d think that their argument could just be “Wanna get rid of Trump? No need to impeach him, just elect me to replace him!” Which makes you think, is impeaching Trump necessary, or even politically viable? I’d argue that in both cases, yes, it is.
Impeachment is a moral necessity
As I said before, it was clear even before the release of Mueller’s report that Trump’s conduct in office is worthy of impeachment. For starters, his inaugural committee has been dogged by allegations of financial and subornation violations. He probably committed campaign finance violations in his handling of the Stormy Daniels hush payment situation. He and members of his administration have used their position in the federal government to enrich themselves or their businesses, in violation of the Hatch Act. And as far as we know, he never fully divested himself from his own company, leading to emoluments concerns regarding foreign governments and even domestic corporations that would be strictly unconstitutional.
To add insult to injury, Robert Mueller essentially said that if he weren’t president, he would probably have been indicted for his and his campaign’s conduct regarding Russia in the 2016 election, and it’s probable that legally, he still could be indicted while in office.
One of the major selling points of electing a Democratic House Majority in 2018 was that they’d be able to hold the Trump administration accountable. But so far it seems like there’s only been a halfhearted effort to do so. With leadership seemingly pushing back on impeachment at every level, it’s been left to younger, more diverse legislators to call for impeachment because they know what’s actually at stake for real people. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spent the past year making the Congressional process more transparent and visible to all of us, a nod to the time she spent working in the service industry and paying off student loans. She knows what it’s like to be a young, working-class American of color and therefore understands that we must call for and execute the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Impeachment is electorally advantageous
Presumably, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic establishment’s hesitancy regarding impeachment has revolved around the relative ambivalence that voters have expressed toward the issue. Polls during the 2018 midterm usually found that impeachment and the Russia investigation were near the bottom of the list of priorities for Democratic voters.
But just because voters don’t think it’s important now doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing. It’s worth noting that during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, President Nixon enjoyed an approval rating of at times nearly seventy percent even after the break-in to the DNC headquarters had been discovered. It wasn’t until after hearings in the Senate started that Nixon began to quickly and drastically lose public support.
The case of Richard Nixon serves as an important precedent for the situation regarding Trump’s possible impeachment. Trump’s approval rating is already dismal — only 41 percent of voters approve of his job as president. Already, that’s below Nixon’s average at the same point in his term. Trump is only popular among members of his own party. Nixon was also popular among Republicans — until impeachment proceedings started.
Democrats who are concerned about impeachment’s prospects on the 2020 election are far too short-sighted. There are only a few ways this could spell out, some definitively better than others:
- Democrats in the House pass impeachment proceedings against Trump, but he is acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate. Here, Trump will try to claim that he’s innocent because of his acquittal, which is what older and more moderate Democrats are afraid of. But only his most ardent base supporters will buy this. He was impeached, and he was only saved by partisans in the Senate. This is a much easier message for Democrats to use when running against him next year, especially for the elusive “Obama-Trump voter” that the DNC (wrongly, in my opinion) fawns over.
- Democrats in the House do not bring articles of impeachment against the president. This is by far worse for Democrats, as Trump and his cronies can parade around the country in 2020 bragging about how even the Democrats couldn’t impeach him because there “wasn’t evidence” and “it was a witch hunt.” In this situation, there is no damage control for Democrats, and it will be entirely of their own doing (or lack thereof). Independents and moderates will be much more likely to believe Trump in this situation. I mean, objectively, wouldn’t you?
Trump’s impeachment hinges on two things: the moral backbone of House Democrats, namely Speaker Pelosi, to recognize that in this case, maybe she can both have her cake and eat it too. We have to impeach Trump because of the crimes he’s ostensibly committed both as president and during his campaign for the White House. Imagine the standard we’re setting if we allow Trump to walk free just because we’re concerned about potential electoral blowback, of which I don’t believe there will be any. In fact, impeachment might be one of the best ways to help shore up support for a Democratic nominee in 2020. In any case, it’s definitely a better strategy than hoping for a recession, but who knows, we’re not great at predicting those either.
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