Impeach Now? Y/N
Answer: Y
A month ago Elizabeth Warren was the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for the impeachment of Donald Trump ASAP.
Robert Reich, non-presidential candidate but straight shooter, did likewise in The Guardian on May 8.
In both cases, they saw evidence of obstruction of justice so plainly exposed in what was the redacted version of the Mueller Report, that the case for impeachment was transparent and compelling.
Last night on CNN Tom Steyer, who has been calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump since the man took office (even before the Special Counsel’s investigation had started), once again called for impeachment ASAP. In Steyer’s view, the Mueller (Special Counsel’s) report had strengthened an already ironclad case.
The political counterargument
The argument against starting impeachment immediately is political. It’s the Nancy Pelosi-led camp urging the Democrats to go slowly and carefully with investigations to build a body of evidence incrementally—and to proceed with impeachment only if the body of evidence reaches critical mass. Otherwise, the violence of the reaction from the Trump base, plus the exhaustion of the political center of the electorate, would make Trump the victim he has consistently claimed to be, and turn the public against a rabid, overreaching, unjustifiably partisan Democratic Party.
The put-a-hold-on-impeachment policy is spun as “let the people decide,” as in, the verdict on Trump should be delivered in the 2020 election. (Based on the questionable assumption that the election will not be decided by Vladimir Putin.) What outrages Trump may commit in the interval between now and November 2020 are overshadowed by political considerations.
Right now, we see what is happening with the incremental approach. With one Congressional investigation after another, the administration is stonewalling and buying time, and in the process making Congress appear ineffectual, engaged not in realistically pursuing justice, but in creating political theater.
What’s most at stake here?
From the political point of view, caution and deliberateness are warranted, in order to show that the ultra-liberal wing does not represent the national Party. Come 2020, Trump’s record, sans impeachment, will have earned enough widespread ill-will to bring him down politically, along with a raft of Trump-supporting Republicans—conceivably enough to win back the Senate.
Tread lightly seems to be a prudent strategy, because impeachment cannot lead to conviction in the Senate, so why pour so much time and effort into a losing cause, losing in both legislative terms and possibly in public opinion?
The contrary, full-steam-ahead-on-impeachment view rests on key principles of good governance. The principles are the rule of law and putting checks on executive power—let no one be king. You have to defend those principles, whatever the political cost, or say good-bye to democracy.
A further key principle is accountability. This is a theme that Warren has hammered on for years, and doubled down since the Special Counsel’s (redacted) findings have gone public. She contends that to pursue impeachment will put every legislator on the record: to decide whether to vote for the rule of law, or vote for a President who flouts the law whenever the law stands in the way of his agenda. Since we can be sure that an impeachment vote in the House will be supported by the Democratic majority, then the charge will go to the Senate where individual senators will have to decide where their allegiances lie—with the people, or with a would-be autocrat.
Elizabeth Warren’s and Robert Reich’s positions are, let the political chips fall where they may—impeachment is the obligation to uphold the Constitution.
Interviewed on CNN last night, Tom Steyer had a slightly different slant on the impeachment issue. He was challenged again and again by Chris Cuomo citing polls that show the public is against impeachment. Steyer’s comeback? Steyer claims to have taken the temperature of the electorate over the last two years, crisscrossing the country, talking with voters and holding town halls. The public by and large, he asserts, is intelligent and decent enough that declaring articles of impeachment with a compelling weight of evidence will turn the tide in the polls—if not tomorrow, then once the case has been argued in the Senate, whether the Senate’s verdict be yea or nay.
Per Steyer, impeachment is not only required on principle, but is also a political win. However, Steyer is not a politician, and to date his oft-repeated impeachment refrain has not won over the majority of voters, so what does he know? Is pushing for impeachment throwing political caution to the winds?
Throwing caution to the winds
I applauded Warren’s call for impeachment a month ago, and do so today. If laying out the reasons for removing Donald Trump from office in articles of impeachment cannot sway the public, the country may be doomed anyway. Might as well go down fighting.
I also agree with Tom Steyer, that impeachment proceedings will expose enough wrongdoing by Trump and his administration, to turn public opinion to a degree that will show up in the polls and in an election, should Trump, as expected, survive impeachment. Let’s hope the polls point to a landslide, in order to prevent Trump from claiming an election was stolen from him, as he was angling to do in 2016.
(Note I agree with Steyer on the intelligence and decency of the public at large. BUT intelligence and decency do not apply if the people are not paying attention—focused attention. Few Americans have ever paid much attention to politics (as reflected in our dismal voter turnout), and much of the noise in a culture fragmented by social media discourages paying focused attention. They don’t call it “the attention economy” for nothing.)
The Trump administration’s stonewalling each and every Congressional investigation may nevertheless incite impeachment proceedings sooner rather than later. Perhaps that’s the point—they are daring Congress to impeach.
Even Nancy Pelosi’s patience seems to be wearing thin. She knows it’s almost certainly coming—the only question is when to pull the trigger. Maybe it’s time for her and others in her camp to re-read Hamlet.