Writing to learn was once a popular concept in education. The idea was to write about what a student was learning. It was hardly revolutionary in English, but it was pretty cutting edge in math.
If my recent post is any guide, writing to learn works. I had written a very narrowly focused post, but old BMG pals Somerville Tom, Christopher, and Gmoke led me to some important realizations about impeachment:
- The Force is with us. The punditry is part of the growing pressure leading toward impeachment. Their reasoning is less consequential than their pushing. Somerville Tom, Christopher, Justin Amash, everyone else pushing for impeachment now is part of this force.
- Impeachment? Inevitable. I didn’t realize this until Gmoke said that he anticipated it happening this summer. Trump’s crimes are too numerous, too obvious, and too harmful to be ignored forever. The courts keep rejecting him in court. He’s not going to be able to run the clock out, and he’s doing an admirable what Pelosi termed “self-impeachment.”
- The 10%. Electorally, we’re fighting with the GOP over about 10% of voters. Maybe a bit more. Hardcore Trumpists will never give up, but Trump’s support can drop by at least 10%. At his least popular, George W. Bush was at 24% approval. Even with today’s hyperpartisan political arena and the hermetically sealed conservative infosphere, Trump’s approval can easily go as low as 30%. He’s at about 41% approval now.
- Hanging Fire. Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are not stupid. They can only file so much legislation that won’t go anywhere. Gmoke says it well: “[Pelosi] seems to want the House to proceed as deliberately and correctly as possible, dotting all i’s and crossing all t’s, so that when the time comes no one can credibly claim that there was a rush to judgment by Democrats. It also seems to me that she wants the public, the people to force the House to act so that impeachment will be seen less as an act of the Democratic House but more of a demand by the voting public.” John Dean agrees.
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I was speaking to a good friend at work (we keep our politics within a small circle of us) and she said for the first time since he was elected, she feels as if the end is near for him. I have to agree.
On another perspective, after reading house leader Pelosi’s remarks about an intervention, it is still a terrifying time in history.
Pelosi is doing some world-class trolling:
Frankly, I don’t know why they didn’t troll Trump sooner. He doesn’t react well, and he’s prone to make mistakes.
It’s only a matter of time before his finances come out. I won’t say he’s toast because who knows what he’ll do, but I think you’re right, some sort of end is near.
@I won’t say he’s toast because who knows what he’ll do, but I think you’re right, some sort of end is near.
This is what wakes me up at night.
He has the ability to destroy all humanity. I can’t remember another figure in my lifetime who I felt was insane enough to do it. If Mr. Trump self-destructs, I fear he will try very hard to take the rest of us with him.
I hope and pray that SOME mechanism is in place to stop that.
Definitely a scary time in our lives and our national history.
As Yeats might have said, voters lack all conviction while the worst have a passionate intensity.
I’ve come around on holding hearings. There’s no way to get information otherwise. Trump has brought impeachment down on himself, not the Democrats.
Why? One of the reasons conservatives consistently strategize rings around liberals is that conservatives focus on what actions will do, liberals focus on how actions will feel.
Impeachment will not:
Result in Trump’s removal from office because over 34 Senators will vote to keep him;
Result in policy changes because the same policy apparatus will remain in place;
Result in more liberal policy choices because Trump et al are pushing through ideas that already poll in the basement like family separation and total bans on abortion;
Result in bringing to light testimony or facts that can’t be gained through subpoena.
Impeachment will :
Obliterate the left’s winning message of “we’re fighting to keep you from getting screwed”;
Allow the president to play the victim. I believe that’s his most effective card;
Put those Democrats upon whom our majority is built in a politically untenable position.
There’s a reason Nancy Pelosi is Speaker. She knows strategy, and is focusing on winning, and not feeling good about a noble defeat.
Why what?
The Democrats’ winning message of “we’re fighting for you to keep you from getting screwed” is lost. They’re passing all kinds of legislation. Who notices? Nobody. It’s not turning into law. I’m not sure it’s a winning message when nothing happens.
I’m not pushing for impeachment. I think it’s going to happen. I say why above. I think Pelosi’s strategy is a good one. I think she’s taking time before impeachment happens. I think the subpoenas play out before she actually gets to the point of impeachment. I think the Democrats get pushed into impeachment by GOP obstruction and Trump’s approval dropping more.
I don’t think the landscape is as black and white as you suggest.
If Mr. Trump is impeached next summer or even early next fall, but still before the 2020 election, then I think the Senate that decides the outcome may have a different composition than it does now. I think that GOP Senators who insist on advancing policy choices that a majority of Americans oppose may not be re-elected in 2020. I think they may see that train coming during the election year. The presence of an impeachment inquiry makes the grounds for ignoring the several subpoenas already issued MUCH weaker.
I am well aware of Ms. Pelosi’s skills. I suggest you are talking about tactical, rather than strategic, skills. She has won some battles. I suggest she and we are losing the war.
The only wins I see so far are feel-good actions that pass the House and absolutely DIE in the Senate, as well as subpoenas that are ignored by their targets. I hear lots of table-pounding about how awful the GOP is, and see absolutely NO action.
When people ignore a congressional subpoena, they need to face stiff fines (I like the $25,000/day number currently on the table) and jail.
I think Mr. Trump strengthens the impeachment case against him with each assault on both the rule of law and common sense. He strengthens the impeachment case each time he orders that a subpoena be ignored. I like to think that even GOP Senators will be taken aback by directives to arrest Mr. Comey, or pardon convicted war criminals, or destroy and even kill our own intelligence assets.
I don’t see Nancy Pelosi or the Democrats “winning” anything yet.
Playing victim will be effective to his base, but let’s please remember they are the minority. Dems need to lead on this, and I think we can send both messages that we are out fighting for people and protecting our government AND actually fight for people and protect our government. Plus I would say one entails the other anyway. I’m now firmly in the damn the political consequences camp a la Elizabeth Warren, though I’m also more confident than you appear to be that support for impeachment will develop just like it did for Nixon (whose impeachment also did not enjoy broad support when hearings first started).
I think you are right sabutai on the politics of impeachment, I worry that the rule of law requires us to impeach even if the politics of it are lousy for the Democrats right now.
Why would it be “required”? Impeachment is a political act, and will happen only if the politics are right.
I think people feel like impeachment is going to recall the republic from the brink, but it isn’t so. The only way to defeat Trumpism will be to defeat it at the polls, through a series of election cycles. I don’t see how impeachment would help that, at least at the moment.
I kind of think that the Democratic nominee should run on a Democratic platform, and resist the temptation to react to Trump’s antics– in fact, the candidate should not even acknowledge his existence at all. Skip the debates, even: they’re just foolishness anyway.
@Why would it be “required”?
I think Elizabeth Warren answered this best (emphasis mine):
I think it’s important that any impeachment resolutions be limited in scope, meticulously prepared and detailed, and irrefutable in their facts. I think the same should be true of any impeachment case made in the Senate.
If Senators vote to acquit Mr. Trump anyway, then future generations of Americans will be the judge.
I have no illusions that this will recall the republic from the brink — I think we might already be well past the point of no return. I think we still have to try anyway, because I think it’s the only approach that might work.
Impeachment is the best and perhaps even the only way to put the evidence and facts in front of present and future voters. We will never know the full extent of Richard Nixon’s actions because he was never actually impeached or tried. This, in combination with Mr. Ford’s subsequent pardon, deprived all of us of vital evidence against Mr. Nixon and his conspirators.
The later impeachment of Bill Clinton was driven at least in part by a desire for “retribution” from die-hard GOP extremists who still maintained decades after the fact that Mr. Nixon was an innocent man “railroaded” from office by hyper-partisan Democrats. In contrast to Mr. Nixon’s impeachment resolutions, the impeachment of Mr. Clinton was transparently partisan and so weak that even its GOP proponents knew that it was unsupported by evidence.
In my view, these are MUCH more than mere “antics”. Mr. Trump is doing everything in his power to destroy our ability to resist relentless Russian cyber attacks. He threatens to expose and/or kill our own intelligence assets that are close to Mr. Putin — assets that take decades to create.
Mr Trump’s actions — I’m not talking about just his words — are doing real damage to the crucial foundations of America each and every day.
He must be removed as soon as possible because his behavior is indistinguishable from that of a Russian agent intentionally causing as much damage to America as possible.
I don’t see that anything is required. He won the election. At the moment he is likely to win the next one as well. All impeachment is, at least as of today, is a time-machine fantasy.
Republicans didn’t turn on Nixon out of some sense of honor or duty; it just reached a point where Nixon hurt them more than he helped. This isn’t because of some silly fantasy about the ignobility of Republicans contrasted with the mighty civic virtues of Democrats; they’re all politicians and act only–all of them, without exception, always– out of pure self-interest. The calculus turned because the Congress, controlled by Dems, was able to methodically build a case that made Nixon a liability to self-interested Republicans.
Maybe that is something that can be done now. Maybe, in the age of Fox News, it isn’t. But without it, impeachment is something that is unlikely to succeed, is unlikely to solve or even prevent the various things that have the left all exercised, and is most likely to cement those things in place for the long term.
Dems were forced to outsource their investigation to Mueller because they lost the House. Now they’re back in, and they are starting the process that took 3+ years on Nixon, assuming that they are capable of retaining control of Congress.
I would prefer that they keep on keeping on, grinding away with the subpoenas etc., and maybe work on giving people a reason to vote for Democrats other than “Trump and his Republican allies are sleazy evil scum.”
Which is what the Speaker seems to be doing.
The lesson of 1998 is that a party-line impeachment effort is damaging, I see no reason to repeat that damaging action.
I don’t really see that situtaion changing, as it does not seem that Democrats are capable of winning and holding the Congress. Even today, there are like 30 people who probably should be running– as a longshot, against semi-vulnerable Republican Senators, but are instead running silly no-shot campaigns for President.
Beat them at the polls.
It sounds like we agree that the 1973 impeachment model is superior to the 1998 version. I might quibble with some of your language, but I essentially agree with your characterization of how the Nixon impeachment effort ultimately succeeded in removing Mr. Nixon from office. Specifically, I agree with this: “Congress, controlled by Dems, was able to methodically build a case that made Nixon a liability to self-interested Republicans”
I think that’s what must be done now. I think it’s required because I think Mr. Trump is behaving like an active and dangerous Russian agent. The common thread that joins all of his actions and statements is that they harm American interests and help — either directly or by leaving a vacuum — Russian (and Chinese) interests.
I enthusiastically agree with you that we must NOT launch a party-line impeachment effort.
Calls for an impeachment investigation of Mr. Nixon escalated in October of 1973 in response to Mr. Nixon’s firing of the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Formal impeachment hearings began in May of 1974. He resigned, under threat of successful impeachment, on August 8, 1974 — less than three months after impeachment hearings began.
This is the right time for Congress to begin a formal impeachment investigation.
Right now, I’m more in favor of impeachment than against it. Since I’m not in Congress, I’m not too worried about choosing sides on the question.
I think Pelosi is waiting for the subpoenas to play out before she agrees to impeachment. At that point, there will be even more inculpating evidence. If Trump & Co. ignore the courts, or continue to delay, impeachment will, and probably should, happen.
BTW, there is no dichotomy between “Beat them at the polls” and “begin an impeachment investigation”.
We can and should follow the Watergate model and do both.
a) He ‘won’ the election on a technicality.
2) there is no reason to assume he is ‘likely to win the next one as well’ either based on past elections or present performance
iii) If he is as corrupt and as crooked as it appears, it will catch up to him and appetite for impeachment will be as strong, if not stronger, after the election than before: either on these charges or new ones.
Nixon tried the ‘I won and they’re just sore losers’ argument, also. It worked for a time but character is as character does… and Nixon’s character caught up with him in the end. It will for Trump as well.
I think we should operate on the assumption that the Democrats are going into this election at a disadvantage rather than an advantage due to the perceived strength of the incumbency and economy. I also worry that a single bad message will dilute 24 competing good messages from our candidates. Hopefully this will get easier as the field narrows down-but we should not assume that Trump’s victory was a quirk or aberration of history. It’ll be a nasty and brutish campaign.