Stop daydreaming: You won’t get 19 Republican senators for impeachment

Despite the furor surrounding James Comey’s Senate testimony, there remains only one certainty about the future of the Trump administration: The president will not be forced from office through the constitutional impeachment process. Pundits and politicos who agitate for using that mechanism to end the Age of Trump ignore history, delude themselves, and damage the country.

Only three presidents of the prior 44 have faced serious drives for their impeachment.

Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard Nixon in 1974 and Bill Clinton in 1998. All confronted an awkward political reality that left them vulnerable to the opposition party, with the president’s enemies controlling both chambers of Congress. This meant that critics could get a majority of the House to vote articles of impeachment on a largely partisan basis. That’s what occurred for Johnson and Clinton, and was about to happen with Nixon when he short-circuited the process by resigning his office.

Even in Nixon’s case, removal from office wasn’t a sure thing if he had chosen to fight. The Constitution requires two-thirds of the Senate to oust a sitting president. To drive Trump from the White House, that would mean that 19 Republican senators (out of 52) would need to join all 48 of their Democratic and Independent colleagues.

This mathematical reality raises the most powerful of pertinent questions: In the past, how many senators of the president’s own party have ever voted to remove him from office? The answer is a perfect zero. Democrats voted unanimously to protect both their embattled presidents, Johnson and Clinton. They were joined by seven Republicans who delivered the crucial votes to save Johnson, and by five Republicans voting “no” on both articles of impeachment against Clinton.

With the White House no doubt hitting back with indictments of “fake news,” “Benedict Arnold Republicans” and efforts of some grand conspiracy to thwart the will of the people, it’s tough to imagine that more than a third of Senate Republicans will risk alienating the conservative base by voting against Trump.

Facing these brutal political realities, some impeachment advocates nonetheless nurse forlorn fantasies of the Nixon option: inflicting enough humiliation and frustration upon Trump that he’d be willing to resign, for the sake of party and country, rather than waging a last-ditch fight to save his presidency. Can anyone who has followed Trump’s career imagine that he’d choose such a humble, apologetic course?

The president’s opponents should wake up from their toxic impeachment daydreams. Let special counsel Robert Mueller do his job in investigating Trump’s associates, while trying to work with this president for the common good, no matter how appalling his imperfections.