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It’s been noted recently that-ironically enough-the GOP is talking a lot more about impeachment than the Dems.
“Legal blows fuel impeachment fears” declared Politico in a headline on Tuesday, after news broke that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen had entered a guilty plea and a jury had convicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on eight counts of various financial crimes. The story featured three Republicans (and no Democrats) speculating about the possibility of Democrats impeaching President Trump if they win control of the House in November. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested that impeachment is, “the only message they seem to have going into the midterms,” referring to congressional Democrats. Even Trump himself appears to have impeachment on the mind.
“Here’s the thing: If the Democrats are planning to impeach Trump if they win control of the House, they are doing a really great job of hiding it. Congressional Democrats aren’t talking about impeachment.”
“On Wednesday, for example, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a leading candidate for speaker of the House if Democrats win control, againall but ruled out an impeachment push, saying that Democrats would use congressional power to oversee the Trump administration and make sure the president does not interfere with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment resolutions would likely be introduced, spent Wednesday pushing a bill he sponsored that would make it harder for Trump to fire Mueller. Nadler has suggested that the party will only pursue impeachment if they think they can get the 67 Senate votes they’d need to remove Trump from office — a very high bar, since that would mean something like 17 Senate Republicans would agree to vote out a Republican president.”
Let me just say, I hope that’s not true. Democrats should impeach Trump if that’s where the facts lead and let the Senate worry about itself.
“And it’s not just Democratic leaders who aren’t talking about impeachment. As part of FiveThirtyEight’s project looking at what types of Democrats are doing well in primaries for Senate, House and governor this year, we looked at the campaign website for each of the 811 people who, as of Aug. 7, had appeared on the ballot in Democratic primaries for races with no Democratic incumbent. Only one candidate (Nate Kleinman, running for a House seat in New Jersey) featured a call for impeaching Trump on his website. And he lost his primary, getting just 9 percent of the vote in a four-way race.1 And the latest Cohen and Manafort developments haven’t seemed to bring a surge of calls for impeachment, either. For example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the party’s nominee in a very Democratic-leaning House district in New York City and a new hero of the left wing of the Democratic Party, has sent out several tweets since the news about Cohen and Manafort — none of which mentioned impeachment.”
FN: Though note that AOC strongly now in the House supports impeachment
But I think the writer, Perry Bacon, is being too literal minded. The Democrats aren’t talking about impeachment-yet. I don’t believe it’s off the table-it certainly shouldn’t be.
“I’m a bit surprised that impeachment has not gained more traction among Democrats. In an article in March, I described how Democrats could (perhaps accidentally) find themselves on the path to impeachment, despite Pelosi’s reluctance, if:
- They won the House.
- The majority of House Democrats were pro-impeachment.
- They had a pro-impeachment speaker (meaning that if the speaker was Pelosi, she’d be forced to favor impeachment to keep the speakership).
- And Trump had committed impeachment-worthy offenses.
“No. 1 has a good chance of happening (see our House forecast). Nadler hinted yesterday that the Justice Department has grounds (though perhaps not the power) to indict Trump for his role in the payoffs that Cohen pleaded guilty to, so I think top congressional Democrats now feel they might have a solid reason to impeach Trump — which means their reluctance is probably more about the Senate than anything else.”
Again, let me say that the question of wether Dems impeach Trump in the House should not in any way be influenced by them first doing Senate math.
“But our data suggests that a Democratic majority in the House in 2019 is unlikely to include a lot of new members who campaigned on impeachment and are clamoring to try to push Trump out of office.”
“Would Democrats downplay impeachment during the campaign and then flip to aggressively pursue it once they had control? I doubt it. (Unless new information about Trump’s activities comes out and is deemed impeachment-worthy, of course.) Remember, the perception that politicians don’t at least try to follow through on their promises is wrong. In 2006, when some on the left were saying that George W. Bush should be impeached for, among other things, taking the U.S. to war under false pretenses, Pelosi, as the House Democratic leader, promised there would be no impeachment push if Democrats won control of the House. And there was not.”
But this is not really comparable to the Bush years and Pelosi has not said there will be no impeachment just that Dems should not get ahead of themselves.
I’ve got to hope, then, that Bacon is simply mistaken in his interpretation and I believe he is. What the Democrats are saying is not there will not be impeachment but that it’s premature to talk about it. That they have to follow the facts where they lead.
They are waiting to see the Mueller report. In addition they need to reopen the Russia investigation in the House, more, they need to setup a full Select Committee. One of the biggest coups was the way the GOP Congress used Mueller as the pretext to scale back Congressional investigations into Russia.
Remember what Republicans in the House and Senate told you: it doesn't matter if our partisan "investigations" of Trump-Russia collusion fall apart, because this is Mueller's purview. Welcome to the bait-and-switch: now they're going to let Trump fire Mueller by firing Sessions.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) August 23, 2018
Watergate had a Congressional Select Committee along with Leon Jaworski’s Independent Counsel.
Bacon is either misinterpreting the Democrats or there’s a real problem. There is nothing more precious than our democratic system of government and if Trump is found to be guilty of colluding against it to steal an American Presidential election he must be held accountable. And impeaching him is holding him accountable even if it doesn’t include removal from office.
FN: In retrospect it’s clear there may be a real problem. It’s true most of the Dem candidates didn’t mention impeachment-though it’s still open to question how you interpret this fact-see Sarah Kendzior’s point that even if they didn’t run on impeachment it was certainly inferred by many voters.
"On Impeachment: A @GaslitNation Essay"
Read: https://t.co/2qpRbkPL15
Listen: https://t.co/9PFGveLEIA* * *
"As we have previously stated in multiple episodes, Gaslit Nation stands in favor of impeaching the motherfucker."— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) April 19, 2019
Indeed in retrospect three of Bacon’s four conditions obtain: 1 and 4 are easy and we now have 2. The weak link remains 2-evidently Pelosi thinks the Founders were wrong to give Congress this power. Many of the incoming freshman may not have run on impeachment but now support it-while Bacon is right candidates usually try to keep their promises-though FDR felt no constraint in doing so-it’s not like the Dem candidates all took a vow not to impeach.
End of FN
It’s true that in 2018 Republicans are discussing impeachment much more than the Democrats which is ironic as in 1998 they also did, but then it made intuitive sense-it was a Democratic President who faced impeachment; but now with the shoe on the other foot they are still the party talking about it more.
Apparently they like to talk about impeachment. However, as a Democrat I do too-or I do right now, and I know first hand that a lot of the Dem base-as opposed to leaders-are talking about it.
“Democrats in Washington are wary of any talk about impeaching President Trump, but in this swing district in North Carolina, Janis Silverman is feeling no such constraints. A 72-year-old retired teacher, Ms. Silverman wrote to her congressman Tuesday to demand the House start impeachment proceedings.”
“President Trump shows no respect for our laws or the Justice Department,” she wrote to Representative Robert Pittenger, a Republican, the day that Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, accused him of illegally arranging to pay hush money to influence the 2016 election.”
“For me it was liberating,” Ms. Silverman said of Mr. Cohen’s characterization of Mr. Trump’s involvement. “My view is that he’s directly linked with criminal behavior.”
“Yet Dan McCready, a politically centrist Iraq War veteran who is the Democratic nominee for the House seat here, has shown little appetite to talk about impeachment. On his campaign website and Twitter account and in public remarks, he focuses on supporting businesses, teachers and Social Security.”
“A chasm has opened in recent days between Democratic voters, who want to see Mr. Trump impeached or held to some political accounting, and Democratic candidates and strategists nationally, who view the “I word” as a red cape that will inflame the Republican base and possibly hurt their chances of taking control of the House. Talk of impeachment sprang readily and without apology to the lips of Democratic voters in interviews this week.”
Ok, so as some of you know I ran in the NY2 primary for Congress this year-I’ve since endorsed Liuba Grechen Shirley who is a great nominee and has a real chance to end Peter King’s 25 year reign and be part of the new Democratic House. When I ran I was a little less reticent to talk about impeachment-remember the Impeachment Train t shirts?
But even I don’t think the Democrats should impeach him yet. But if the evidence leads there-as I think it will, but we’ll have to see it first-then impeach him they must and certainly they should not first do the Senate math. The House has its role, the Senate has its own. There’s nothing wrong with impeaching but not convicting Trump if that’s the natural outcome.
As for the GOP it’s clear they did overreach in 1998.
FN: Still it’s not at all clear they didn’t on balance ultimately gain-they may have lost a few seats in 1998 but won back the WH along with both Houses of Congress in 2000 and would have total power in DC until 2006. It’s quite arguable that impeaching Clinton-even while most Americans thought it was overreach-nevertheless sullied the Clinton brand-arguably had Gore campaigned with him in 2000 he’d have won-by more thereby avoiding Bush v. Gore.
It’s further arguable that impeaching Clinton-even though the public saw it as clearly politically motivated-further sullied the Clinton name to the extent that Clinton’s two Presidency campaigns could never transcend the full weight of it. To be sure, the proximate cause of Clinton’s 2016 ‘loss’ was facilitated by the GOP nine Benghazi investigations. This ought to be a lesson for Democrats-the GOP was rightly ridiculed for it’s Benghazi obsession but it was ultimately what enabled them to steal the 2016 election.
The idea that pursuing scandals of the opposing party and it’s President is just totally ahistorical.
End of FN
The GOP, however, does have some excellent ideas for hearings the Dems should call in 2019.
“Congressional Republicans are getting ready for hell. Axios has obtained a spreadsheet that’s circulated through Republican circles on and off Capitol Hill — including at least one leadership office — that meticulously previews the investigations Democrats will likely launch if they flip the House.”
Why this matters: Publicly, House Republicans are putting on a brave face about the midterms. But privately, they are scrambling to prepare for the worst. This document, which catalogs requests Democrats have already made, is part of that effort.