![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
THE NEWEST MEMBER OF THE IMPEACHMENT CLUB
Dec. 21st, 2019 12:09 amSo Trump has been impeached by the House, and is fast on his way to acquittal in the Senate, after which Trump will double down, blather on about total exoneration and go on to commit as many high crimes and misdemeanors as he can before granting himself a third term.
Which is of course exactly how we knew this was going to play out. Yes, I know some of that hasn’t happened yet. But we’ve always known that with the Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell, Trump would be acquitted of any impeachment result, regardless of what he did, and his response to the Mueller Report is a good indication of how he’s going to treat his inevitable acquittal.
So, here’s some thoughts in the form of an FAQ:
1. Was there any point to this at all?
Well, we were asking that question back when Trumpeachment looked like a real possibility during the Mueller investigation, because as I say, we knew back then Trump would be acquitted. I wrote about this before, but the short version of the “pro-impeachment” argument was this: You should least do it on principle. And if you can’t remove him, you can at least hurt his re-election chances (and the GOP Congresspeople defending him) by exposing and documenting his high crimes and misdemeanors.
2. Did that work?
It doesn’t look like it. According to FiveThirtyEight, while more people are in favour of impeachment, the needle hasn't moved much in terms of election polls.
That could change, of course. But beyond that, I think Trump will not only survive impeachment, he’ll very likely win a second term.
3. Wait, did you just say Trump could actually be re-elected?
Yes.
4. Despite … [gestures vaguely at everything]
Yep.
Obviously that’s going to depend on what happens over the next few months – who gets the Demo nomination, the magnitude of Trump’s next batch of scandals, the government’s willingness to keep Russia and whoever else from engineering the election, etc.
But the polls show him either leading against various Demo frontrunners in several states or within spitting distance. His approval rating is still in the low 40s. He has an established cult, his own news channel, American Jesus and Russian hackers on his side. And remember that the 2016 polls assured us that Trump wouldn’t win. So did his behaviour. And yet he did. He can damn well do it again.
Also, ethnonationalist autocracy is very much in vogue right now. Boris Johnson is the UK version of Trump – a xenophobic, racist, sexist, pathological liar with bad hair – and he still won. So let’s not pretend it can't happen here. If it couldn’t, Hillary Clinton would be POTUS and Republicans would be impeaching her.
5. Well … hell.
That’s not a question. But yeah.
6. I see the House is stalling on handing over the impeachment articles to the Senate. Can they do that?
As far as I know, yes. I don’t think they can hold off indefinitely, but there’s no rule saying you have to hand them over right away.
7. Okay, in that case, why stall?
The official reason seems to be to force McConnell to promise a fair trial and call witnesses that the House didn’t or couldn’t. John Dean suggested something like this a couple of weeks ago – his idea was to just keep the articles, continue investigating Trump and make the list of impeachment articles even longer. Either way, the idea is to keep the issue alive so that Trump can’t move past it, and if he’s re-elected, then send them. Maybe if the GOP loses the Senate – or at least loses McConnell – Trump could be convicted and removed.
8. Right. Would THAT work?
Doubtful. McConnell doesn’t blink when it comes to these things – as far as he’s concerned, there’s no way this ends without Trump being acquitted. Also, the longer this goes on, says this guy at The Atlantic, the more Trump and the GOP will milk it to the point where it might backfire politically on the Demos.
I’m not sure if I agree with that – it depends on how long the delay goes on, but I don’t think the Demos would lose a lot of support over it. But it won’t get them a fair trial or a better chance at removing Trump, either. So apart from the satisfaction of letting Trump stew for awhile, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.
9. Okay, so if impeachment can’t get rid of an unhinged crook like Trump, is there any point in even having it in the Constitution?
Well, I don't know if it’s worth the effort to take impeachment out of the Constitution, but it’s fair to say it’s a pretty useless provision, at least in an age of hyperpartisan politics. That said, it’s worth remembering only two other POTUSs were impeached in history, and neither of them was convicted by the Senate, so in that sense the Trump case is only unusual in the sense that no one in his party is breaking ranks.
10. If impeachment is useless and we’re going to go along with the notion that sitting presidents can’t be indicted, isn’t that tantamount to admitting the POTUS is above the law and can do whatever he wants?
Pretty much, yes. Which is why I think that if we as a country think that the POTUS should be held accountable under the law, we probably need to rethink how all of this works.
The catch is that it’s trickier than it sounds. The Founding Fathers spent a whole lot of time debating this very issue, because you don’t want to make it too easy to remove a popularly elected leader. There’s a very simple reason for this: if it were easy to kick out a duly elected POTUS, the party out of power would do it every chance they got, even just for spite or revenge or whatever.
There may be a workable way to do it. But I do think we need to have a very serious public discussion about this, because Trump has shown how bad the limitations of impeachment are.
11. Does Trump’s acquittal mean future Presidents will feel free to blackmail foreign leaders into investigating his political opponents and obstructing any investigation into his crimes?
They might. On the other hand, I’m not convinced precedent matters for things like this in the sense that political parties typically tend to operate on the principle that it’s only illegal or immoral when the opposition does it, and that’s even more true today. For example, if (say) President Biden did the exact same things Trump has done, and if the GOP has the votes, they’d impeach him in a heartbeat and argue it's not hypocrisy because Trump was innocent and Biden is guilty so they're two obviously different situations, yadda yadda yadda.
12. About that third term …
Ha ha. No. Maybe in the fantasy world he and the GOP live in where impeachment of Republican presidents is not allowed in the Constitution. But not here.
13. Any other pithy observations?
The House Republican defense during the impeachment vote was stunning in its hyperbole and diversity. Which is a nice way of saying they had no coherent defense of Trump and just threw as much batshit out there as they could.
Someone else already noted how in normal times, the GOP would have its people get up there with a fairly unified set of talking points that basically says, “We’re not convinced that Trump did anything worthy of impeachment, and we think it’s better to let the voters decide in November 2020.”
Instead, It was like the only instruction they got from the party leaders was: “Maximum bombast, be creative, have fun.”
So the defense has been … diverse. The President did nothing wrong, Democratic witch hunt, Democratic coup, Democrats hate Republicans, impeachment is unconstitutional, Biden is the real criminal here, Jesus got more due process, etc. If ever you needed an indication that the GOP is all in on Trump and will defend every scummy thing he does, no matter how ludicrous it sounds, well, this is it.
14. America is doomed, right?
In the short term, probably. I think the system can ultimately withstand whatever damage Team Trump inflicts on it. But the next few years don’t look good.
For one thing, history tells us Trump will come out of this thinking he can do whatever he wants and no one can touch him. If you thought he was an insane despotic man-child before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
What’s worse, he will whip his loyal subjects into a frenzy over this. He’s already branded Democrats and the media traitors and enemies of the country – he’ll dial that up to 12, and take zero responsibility for what his followers do after that. As I’ve said elsewhere, Trump is a temporary problem – the real danger is the 43% of the country who unequivocally support him.
To be clear, this would be the case whether the Demos attempted to impeach Trump or not. So I’m not saying it would have been better to not impeach. I’m saying we got way bigger problems. As John Scalzi has said before (and I agree): Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
Going nowhere,
This is dF
Which is of course exactly how we knew this was going to play out. Yes, I know some of that hasn’t happened yet. But we’ve always known that with the Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell, Trump would be acquitted of any impeachment result, regardless of what he did, and his response to the Mueller Report is a good indication of how he’s going to treat his inevitable acquittal.
So, here’s some thoughts in the form of an FAQ:
1. Was there any point to this at all?
Well, we were asking that question back when Trumpeachment looked like a real possibility during the Mueller investigation, because as I say, we knew back then Trump would be acquitted. I wrote about this before, but the short version of the “pro-impeachment” argument was this: You should least do it on principle. And if you can’t remove him, you can at least hurt his re-election chances (and the GOP Congresspeople defending him) by exposing and documenting his high crimes and misdemeanors.
2. Did that work?
It doesn’t look like it. According to FiveThirtyEight, while more people are in favour of impeachment, the needle hasn't moved much in terms of election polls.
That could change, of course. But beyond that, I think Trump will not only survive impeachment, he’ll very likely win a second term.
3. Wait, did you just say Trump could actually be re-elected?
Yes.
4. Despite … [gestures vaguely at everything]
Yep.
Obviously that’s going to depend on what happens over the next few months – who gets the Demo nomination, the magnitude of Trump’s next batch of scandals, the government’s willingness to keep Russia and whoever else from engineering the election, etc.
But the polls show him either leading against various Demo frontrunners in several states or within spitting distance. His approval rating is still in the low 40s. He has an established cult, his own news channel, American Jesus and Russian hackers on his side. And remember that the 2016 polls assured us that Trump wouldn’t win. So did his behaviour. And yet he did. He can damn well do it again.
Also, ethnonationalist autocracy is very much in vogue right now. Boris Johnson is the UK version of Trump – a xenophobic, racist, sexist, pathological liar with bad hair – and he still won. So let’s not pretend it can't happen here. If it couldn’t, Hillary Clinton would be POTUS and Republicans would be impeaching her.
5. Well … hell.
That’s not a question. But yeah.
6. I see the House is stalling on handing over the impeachment articles to the Senate. Can they do that?
As far as I know, yes. I don’t think they can hold off indefinitely, but there’s no rule saying you have to hand them over right away.
7. Okay, in that case, why stall?
The official reason seems to be to force McConnell to promise a fair trial and call witnesses that the House didn’t or couldn’t. John Dean suggested something like this a couple of weeks ago – his idea was to just keep the articles, continue investigating Trump and make the list of impeachment articles even longer. Either way, the idea is to keep the issue alive so that Trump can’t move past it, and if he’s re-elected, then send them. Maybe if the GOP loses the Senate – or at least loses McConnell – Trump could be convicted and removed.
8. Right. Would THAT work?
Doubtful. McConnell doesn’t blink when it comes to these things – as far as he’s concerned, there’s no way this ends without Trump being acquitted. Also, the longer this goes on, says this guy at The Atlantic, the more Trump and the GOP will milk it to the point where it might backfire politically on the Demos.
I’m not sure if I agree with that – it depends on how long the delay goes on, but I don’t think the Demos would lose a lot of support over it. But it won’t get them a fair trial or a better chance at removing Trump, either. So apart from the satisfaction of letting Trump stew for awhile, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.
9. Okay, so if impeachment can’t get rid of an unhinged crook like Trump, is there any point in even having it in the Constitution?
Well, I don't know if it’s worth the effort to take impeachment out of the Constitution, but it’s fair to say it’s a pretty useless provision, at least in an age of hyperpartisan politics. That said, it’s worth remembering only two other POTUSs were impeached in history, and neither of them was convicted by the Senate, so in that sense the Trump case is only unusual in the sense that no one in his party is breaking ranks.
10. If impeachment is useless and we’re going to go along with the notion that sitting presidents can’t be indicted, isn’t that tantamount to admitting the POTUS is above the law and can do whatever he wants?
Pretty much, yes. Which is why I think that if we as a country think that the POTUS should be held accountable under the law, we probably need to rethink how all of this works.
The catch is that it’s trickier than it sounds. The Founding Fathers spent a whole lot of time debating this very issue, because you don’t want to make it too easy to remove a popularly elected leader. There’s a very simple reason for this: if it were easy to kick out a duly elected POTUS, the party out of power would do it every chance they got, even just for spite or revenge or whatever.
There may be a workable way to do it. But I do think we need to have a very serious public discussion about this, because Trump has shown how bad the limitations of impeachment are.
11. Does Trump’s acquittal mean future Presidents will feel free to blackmail foreign leaders into investigating his political opponents and obstructing any investigation into his crimes?
They might. On the other hand, I’m not convinced precedent matters for things like this in the sense that political parties typically tend to operate on the principle that it’s only illegal or immoral when the opposition does it, and that’s even more true today. For example, if (say) President Biden did the exact same things Trump has done, and if the GOP has the votes, they’d impeach him in a heartbeat and argue it's not hypocrisy because Trump was innocent and Biden is guilty so they're two obviously different situations, yadda yadda yadda.
12. About that third term …
Ha ha. No. Maybe in the fantasy world he and the GOP live in where impeachment of Republican presidents is not allowed in the Constitution. But not here.
13. Any other pithy observations?
The House Republican defense during the impeachment vote was stunning in its hyperbole and diversity. Which is a nice way of saying they had no coherent defense of Trump and just threw as much batshit out there as they could.
Someone else already noted how in normal times, the GOP would have its people get up there with a fairly unified set of talking points that basically says, “We’re not convinced that Trump did anything worthy of impeachment, and we think it’s better to let the voters decide in November 2020.”
Instead, It was like the only instruction they got from the party leaders was: “Maximum bombast, be creative, have fun.”
So the defense has been … diverse. The President did nothing wrong, Democratic witch hunt, Democratic coup, Democrats hate Republicans, impeachment is unconstitutional, Biden is the real criminal here, Jesus got more due process, etc. If ever you needed an indication that the GOP is all in on Trump and will defend every scummy thing he does, no matter how ludicrous it sounds, well, this is it.
14. America is doomed, right?
In the short term, probably. I think the system can ultimately withstand whatever damage Team Trump inflicts on it. But the next few years don’t look good.
For one thing, history tells us Trump will come out of this thinking he can do whatever he wants and no one can touch him. If you thought he was an insane despotic man-child before, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
What’s worse, he will whip his loyal subjects into a frenzy over this. He’s already branded Democrats and the media traitors and enemies of the country – he’ll dial that up to 12, and take zero responsibility for what his followers do after that. As I’ve said elsewhere, Trump is a temporary problem – the real danger is the 43% of the country who unequivocally support him.
To be clear, this would be the case whether the Demos attempted to impeach Trump or not. So I’m not saying it would have been better to not impeach. I’m saying we got way bigger problems. As John Scalzi has said before (and I agree): Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
Going nowhere,
This is dF
