The question is simple enough. Should the Democrats impeach Trump? And yet it’s not a simple question. It’s really two questions. The first one is: has Trump done anything impeachable? And the second one is: if so, is impeachment the best strategy for handling this?
So that’s the background. To impeach is not the solution to all impeachable offenses in all situations, just as to convict is not the solution in all cases where a person has committed a crime. In the latter case, it’s a question of whether conviction is the best way to address the crime. Is it not?
Has Trump Done Anything Impeachable?
Yes. Easy enough.
To get to this point, we don’t even need to talk about Russia, Comey, obstruction of justice, or the daily scandals in which the Trump Administration is enmeshed.
The fact is that just about every US President has done something impeachable. Noam Chomsky once asserted that “if the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” Pretty harsh there, Noam! But not without a point. US Presidents routinely violate international law. And they do so in such a way that impeachment is fully justified by the law.
And, lest we forget, there’s also Russia, Comey, obstruction of justice, et al. So, yes, Trump has done various impeachable things. We can impeach him on the merits.
So far, so good.
Impeachment and Political Strategy
But that’s not enough. It’s also worth asking whether impeachment is the best strategy. Here’s where I get more skeptical. I’ll argue it isn’t. And I’ll do so on the basis of an actual case, electoral implications, and broader political impact.
Bill Clinton
Congress impeached Bill Clinton about 20 years ago. You probably already knew that, but it’s the only modern US case I’ve got. It’ll have to do.
It all went pretty disastrously for the GOP. While they ramped up the impeachment process, Clinton’s approval rating jumped and stayed high. To boot, the Democratic Party overperformed in the 1998 Congressional elections. And, while this interpretation is more controversial, I’d say the Democratic Party also overperformed in the 2000 presidential election. They won the popular vote in an election we probably should’ve expected them to lose cleanly.
Why? Why did Clinton and the Democrats come out of it so well?
That’s the tricky part, isn’t it? You could argue Clinton was a special case. Trump is different, you might say, in that Clinton’s impeachment was politically motivated while Trump’s won’t be.
Good luck arguing that.
I’d appeal instead, pace Skowronek, to the growing power of the presidency. The president has enormous influence over US media and cultural narratives, influence extending well beyond Congress’s. And that influence provides any president with a big edge in these disputes. To overcome that edge, Congress needs to build very strong popular support before deciding to impeach.
Electoral Implications
I’m not a fan of Nancy Pelosi, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. But Pelosi knows at least one thing very well. As long as impeachment remains unpopular, Trump easily wins the battle and probably wins the war, i.e., re-election next year. And don’t kid yourselves with all of this impeachment talk in your immediate friend circles. Impeachment is very unpopular, at least as of June 2019.
The battle and the war? The battle’s the easy part. We know what happens if Democrats impeach Trump in the House. The Senate will swat it down as quickly as it’s legally allowed. Trump stays in office.
But the war is where it gets worse. Democratic presidential candidates claim all this will help them defeat Trump, but I doubt they really believe this. If any of them were in Pelosi’s position, they wouldn’t be advocating for it. Whichever Democrat wins the nomination will push Pelosi not to impeach. They’ll do so behind the scenes even if they don’t do it publicly.
It’s not that we have to endorse Pelosi’s manner of handling all this. She’s often ham-handed about it, and she’s often too quick to poo-poo the House Democrats pushing it. But she ain’t wrong about the strategy.
Political Impact
Back to the presidential candidates and grandstanders. But I repeat myself. To impeach is to work out a process issue, specifically a process issue serving a specific role in American political debate. That role is one of scoring political points with ‘left’ voters without advancing leftist movements or politics.
I’ve written about Elizabeth Warren, and I have a lot of good things to say about her campaign. But not on this issue. Warren is all-in on impeachment, and it’s pure baloney. It’s a good play for her to make to improve her chances of winning the nomination. She’s trying to carve out a larger slice of the wealthier white progressive part of the base. And it’s working for her. But it’s bad politics if she were ever in a position where she’d have to do something about it.
Other calls for impeachment come from more left-leaning Democratic House members. I don’t have much of a beef with this, so I won’t say a lot about it. Who didn’t enjoy listening to Rashida Tlaib saying we need to ‘impeach the motherfucker‘? That’s just good TV. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has sparred with Pelosi recently over impeachment and due process. And, whatever. The role of Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez is to push Democratic leadership to the left. I suspect those efforts are better placed into other issues, but there’s room for multitudes here.
It’s the presidential candidates who do actual damage. They’ll influence national debate over the course of the next year. At a time when we ought to be concerned about pushing for transformative change, they’re bogged down in process-based reforms that don’t engage people and don’t leave us any better off.
Impeach? Never Impeach?
What happens if the Democrats impeach Trump now? It’ll almost certainly strengthen Trump and increase his chances of winning re-election next year. But I won’t say ‘never’ on this. If impeachment were to, say, double in popularity, it’d be worth revisiting. Until then…nope.
My advice to the left is to leave impeachment advocacy to the partisan Democrats. And, as always, organize.
