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.
Continue reading “The Impeachment Dilemma: Good Politics versus Good Governance”