For more than a few reasons, more and more Americans are beginning to support the impeachment of Donald Trump or at the very least believe he will be impeached eventually.
Short of Trump trying to establish himself as king, I think impeachment is a very bad idea.
That is not to say I want him to be president. I don’t. On a daily basis I think he is proving in any number of ways that he is unfit and unprepared to be the nation’s leader.
But I don’t think impeachment or hoping for his resignation is the best solution to the problems his presidency is posing.
For one thing, seeking his removal would be a futile effort while putting the nation through needless trauma.
No president has been convicted of impeachment charges brought by the House of Representatives. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton weren’t, and Nixon resigned before a Senate vote. Whether the required two-thirds would have voted to remove him is something we will never know.
Removing Trump would be the first time in our history that an impeachment led to a conviction. Since both chambers are under Republican control, neither House impeachment nor Senate conviction is a likely outcome.
Given what the nation has been through during the last 20 years, the spectacle of trying to remove Trump would not serve the nation’s best interests. Think about it.
We have seen the Republican effort to impeach Bill Clinton, the tragedy of 9/11, two unnecessary wars started by George Bush that we are still fighting, a severe recession and the immoral growth of economic inequality, eight years of rampant racism directed at a sitting president, an obstructionist Republican Congress that rendered our government essentially dysfunctional, and one of the ugliest presidential campaigns in our history.
How much more can our country endure?
It seems to me that the impeachment of Donald Trump, doomed to fail as it would be, would do nothing more than add to our considerable collective pain. He is not worth it.
His removal is also a bad idea because impeachment is not a criminal procedure, but a political one that would enrage his base support all the more.
“High crimes and misdemeanors” is an ill defined phrase by intention, according Professor Greg Weiner of Assumption College in a recent provocative article in the NY Times: “Criminal law looks backward toward offenses committed,” he says. “The object of impeachment is not to exact vengeance. It is to protect the public against future acts of recklessness or abuse.”
From this perspective, Trump’s removal would require that two-thirds of the Senate believe his current behavior is a sure indication that he poses a real and present danger in the future.
That is a very high bar to get over, Weiner notes, just as the founders planned for it to be.
Convicting a sitting president of crimes he might commit in the future is an extremely difficult case to make. It also strikes me as a very slippery political slope for our country to go down.
The Republicans went down it with Bill Clinton and succeeded only in exacerbating bitterness and division in the country. It also had the unintended consequence of making Clinton more popular rather than less.
But the primary reason trying to remove Trump or hoping he will resign is a bad idea is because there is a better way to do damage control.
It’s called the 2018 mid-term elections that will provide an opportunity for voters who oppose Trump’s presidency to do more than complain.
We can go the polls and elect a Democratic Senate, House, or both, thus laying the groundwork for taking back the White House in 2020.
Trump’s behavior and the actions thus far of the Republican Congress make one of those victories in 2018 quite possible
When and if that happens it will be the equivalent of the proverbial killing of two birds with one stone, stopping both Trump and Republican efforts to take the nation back to pre-Great Depression times.
It is critical that those of us who are social progressives not lose sight of the fact that we have as much to fear from congressional Republicans as we do from Trump himself.
If they have their way Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment compensation, Food Stamps and all social programs will suffer major cuts, just as they are trying to do now with healthcare.
Trump’s removal would do nothing to stop them. If anything, a Mike Pence presidency would increase the likelihood that their agenda would prevail.
That does not strike me as a better outcome than Trump continuing in office,
The mid-terms are a different story. A single Democratic victory would represent a decisive victory for our democracy as a majority of Americans use the power of the ballot box to say we have had enough of the Trump circus and Republican extremism.
Yes, the nation would still have Trump, but he would not have the nation, and in the end that is what would matter most.
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