The case for impeaching President Trump
For more than a week now I’ve carefully considered all the reasons put forth why congressional Democrats shouldn’t begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
1. They will lose in the end. Even if the Democratic House approves articles of impeachment, there’s no way at least 20 Senate Republicans will ever join the Democrats in providing the two-thirds majority vote needed to convict and remove Trump from office.
2. Most people don’t want it. A Politico/ Morning Consult poll taken the weekend after the April 18 release of a redacted version of the report of special counsel Robert Mueller shows just 34 percent of voters favor the commencement of impeachment proceedings.
3. It might backfire on the Democrats. More investigations and hearings will look like petulant zealotry and distract from the positive message that Democrats must offer if they’re going to oust Trump in the conventional way by winning the White House in 2020. The drama and acrimony will also harden and energize Trump supporters.
Together they constitute one elemental argument:
Impeachment is bad politics. And maybe that’s true. Certainly it’s futile if the goal is removing Trump from office before the end of his first term in January 2021.
But while the public doesn’t seem to have the stomach for all the drama and recrimination of impeachment hearings, the public also doesn’t seem to have much of a stomach for Trump: His historically low job approval ratings are mired in the low 40s (39 percent in that Politico/Morning Consult poll).
Didn’t Republicans pay a political price for impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998? Not really. Even though Clinton was far more popular then than Trump is now — his job approval numbers held fairly steady in the mid-60s before, during and after the failed effort to oust him, and his transgression, lying under oath about sex, was minor compared with the bill of particulars against Trump — the GOP won the presidency and maintained control of both the House and Senate in the subsequent election.
Impeaching Trump risks galvanizing the staunch Republican base that supports him seemingly no matter what he says or does.
But not impeaching Trump risks deflating Democrats, 59 percent of whom tell pollsters they want the process to go forward.
Can we dispense with the pearl-clutching about impeachment increasing partisan rancor and polarization? This nation could hardly get more polarized and rancorous, and it’s beyond absurd to contend that Congress would be able to take action on the so-called kitchen-table economic issues that interest most Americans if Democrats failed to act on the damning evidence in the Mueller report that Trump repeatedly obstructed justice.
Yes, it’s possible the voting public would punish the Democrats for taking a strong stand against all the ways Trump has disregarded and trampled on the law.
It’s possible a significant number of voters will say, “Sure, there’s massive proof that Trump is a lying, narcissistic con man and aspiring tyrant, and if the Democrats would just let it go, I’d gladly support them.”
I doubt it. But either way, the Democrats should risk it. Because another elemental argument should carry the day:
Impeachment is good government. The framers provided for it with just this sort of situation in mind — a president exhibiting little regard for the rule of law and separation of powers whose self-interested maneuverings pose a growing existential threat to the republic.
Checking such behavior is the duty of Congress. Outsourcing that job to voters is cowardly, particularly when voters won’t be able to have their say on the matter for more than 18 months.
And shying from that duty today will leave a frightening question for history: How low are we willing to set the bar? If these allegations and this evidence against Trump are insufficient to justify beginning formal impeachment proceedings, then what will ever justify it?
Even an unsuccessful and unpopular impeachment will send a signal that principle must outweigh practicality in the face of certain threats. It will protect us against the next president who is tempted by autocracy and disdainful of democratic institutions.
If the feckless Democrats stand down in hopes of winning the hearts of swing-state voters who are just sick of all the political rancor, they deserve to lose next year.
A compromise voting rule for prisoners
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders sparked a national debate Monday when he told a questioner at a televised town hall event that he believed imprisoned convicts should be allowed to vote, as they can in his home state of Vermont.
What about Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the naturalized American citizen now on death row for setting off the explosive devices that killed three and wounded hundreds in 2013?
Yes, he said. “Because once you start chipping away and you say that person committed a terrible crime, not gonna let him vote, or that person did that, not gonna let that person vote — you’re running down a slippery slope.”
Sanders contrasted his view with that of Republican governors and legislators around the country who are actively attempting to suppress voting rights in ways that disproportionately affect racial minorities. And he makes a good point, though the idea of Tsarnaev or anyone else who committed a heinous crime having a voice in the governance of a society in which he has been ruled forever unfit to live does stick in many craws, including mine.
So how about this: Let’s allow an incarcerated prisoner to vote only when his or her prison term will expire before the terms of office expire for the candidates for whom they are voting. In other words, prisoners with a scheduled release date prior to Jan. 20, 2025, would be allowed to vote in all elections related to the 2020 presidential election, and so on.
But condemned prisoners, lifers and those with sentences that will extend beyond the term of the president we elect next year would not be allowed to vote.
It’s a variation on the principle of allowing 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections if they will be 18 on the date of the general election, and it reflects the reality that the vast majority of those now in prison will be released someday and deserve a role in shaping the government under which they will live.
Re: Tweets
The winner of this week’s online reader poll for funniest tweet is, “A guilty party is not as fun as it sounds,” by @JohnLyon Tweets.
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