Personally I'm going to take a few days to try and process the whole Mueller Report before I try to figure out what it all means, but I'm fairly confident of this: impeaching Trump without hope of conviction by the Senate and removal from office is a bad idea basically all around.
To begin with, what exactly, is impeachment followed by failure in the Senate suppose to accomplish other than being an event of symbolic politics? Like I get why it will be good theater and all, but other than that I'm with Scott Lemiuex, "What would it accomplish? What end would it serve?"
I've read many Twitter threads and hot takes about this today and as far as I can tell nobody really knows, other than vague ideas about "doing the right thing". Which might make it worth it, if it wasn't for the major downsides and opportunity costs associated with a doomed impeachment drive (more on that is a bit).
Other pro-impeachment people claim that impeachment is something of a "use it or lose" thing were if the House doesn't move to do it right now (on Good Friday? Really?) they won't be able to in the future. This of course is just made up nonsense, there's nothing in the Constitution that says that just because impeachment isn't persued in April means it couldn't be picked up in September.
While others draw on Captain Picard and say "The line must be drawn!" otherwise it could never be drawn in the future. Setting aside the fact that Lilly is right in that scene and Picard is being deeply unreasonable by leading his crew on a doomed suicide mission (not that that's at all relevant!), this argument strikes me as being fairly nonsensical. What is the important difference between a "line" between the House impeaching Trump and those articles going on to fail to get a majority (let along the 2/3 super majority required for removal) in the Senate, which at this point is what almost certainly will happen and not impeaching? None that I can see, other than well, the political symbolism involved.
Another argument pro-impeachment folks like to bring up is the idea that impeachment focused hearings will get "everything on the record" or something like that. Again this is a weird argument, the House already has the power to hold hearing, issues subpoenas, and hear testimony on all sorts of Trump scandals, including those related to "Russiagate" or whatever we are calling it, and all the other large number of scandals swirling around the Trump Administration. All making it about impeachment would do is narrow the focus of those hearings to Russia and obstruction issues while relegating other major scandals to the sidelines.
The big thing here to me though is that while their clearly isn't much upside to an impeachment push that is doomed in the Senate, there are some pretty major potential downsides. Let's list them:
- Impeachment is really unpopular at this time. The polling we have is pretty uniform that most voters are opposed to impeachment, indeed it's actually less popular than Trump is which is saying something. Moreover people who voted in the midterms are opposed to impeachment by a large margin too.
- People don't care about Russia. While Russiagate (again we need better terminology for this scandal) is obviously a Yuge deal, it's just not that important to most voters. Out of 12 issues Gallup surveyed voters about before the 2018 Midterms "Investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election" came in dead last, indeed it was the only issue to fail to get a majority of respondents to call it extremely or very important.
- There's a real "bait and switch" danger for Democrats here. The biggest issue for the Democrats in the 2018 Midterms was health care, deciding to just focus on impeachment just four months after being thrown in could be a major problem in 2020. Would you, as say a newly elected House member from a well to do suburban district that just swung blue (which is the type of district that got Democrats their House majority) want to go to the voters and say "I know you wanted me to deal with health care and education, and I promised to do that, but look, the political symbolism of impeachment is more important!" I sure wouldn't. Might you be seen as just another lying politician full of it? Is that the best strategy to win in your first reelection campaign?
- Negative partisanship. Negative partisanship, the documented phenomena of voting for a party not because you like their ideas or plans but because you really, really dislike the other side is part of why Trump was able to win with the narrowest of possible margins. Basically he got a lot of people who didn't like him to none the less "take the Trump plunge" because they disliked Hillary Clinton even more. In other words if just a small chunk of his 2016 coalition defects he's kind of toast and a lot of these voters are probably "getable" by appealing to issues other than "What do you think about the life and times of Hillary Clinton." Making impeachment the main issue of 2020, which it will become, will arguably drive those voters back into the arms of Trump via the same negative partisan reaction that got him elected.
- Opportunity costs are real. If you read accounts of the Nixon or Clinton impeachment sagas, one thing that becomes apparent is that once started they became something like political black holes sucking in everything and everyone in Washington. All other political concerns and most media coverage gets replaced by "all impeachment all the time" and little gets done with even government agencies become somewhat paralyzed as bureaucrats try to figure out if there's going to be a whole new administration to deal with. Divided government and a weak and embattled administration seeking reelection means the 116th Congress won't do a lot, but that hardly means nothing will get done. To pick one recent example at random (okay not at random as I worked on this) Congress and Trump recently made the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent, this is a good thing as the fund has been something a partisan bargain chip recently despite being popular and dolling about $18.5 billion for conservation programs over it's 50 year history. This sort of bipartisan deal making is just the sort of thing Impeachmentgeddon makes really hard and while letting LWCF (as the kids call it) die might be worth it in exchange for saving the Republic, I don't think it's worth it if all I get in return is political symbolism.
- The Future. American society obviously has a lot of problems. And the Democrats have, I think, some reasonable solutions to these problems while the Republicans largely have white identity politics, never ending culture war focused on owning the libs, and a Trump personality cult. This is largely why I want to see the Democrats back in power. But one of the big problems facing Democrats is how should they prioritize their issues? Should they focus on climate change? Redistricting reform? Making DC and PR states? Another health care law? A universal basic income? A jobs guarantee? A infrastructure plan? "Getting big money out of politics"? Getting rid of the Electoral College? Universal paid family leave? High speed rail lines? A "Green New Deal"? Reparations? Child care subsidies? Student loan reform? A bigger Supreme Court? Regulating big tech? Anti-trust enforcement? Immigration reform? Abolishing ICE? Ending oil pipe lines? Breaking up big banks? Taxing the rich? Zoning reform? Early childhood education? That's just a partial list of policies I've seen Democratic contenders for the presidency talk about, and while smug progressives might want to answer "yes" to this question the reality of life, and our political system, is that trade offs and paradoxes are everywhere. Obama's decision to prioritize health care reform in 2009 instead of cap and trade was a big deal, while his focus on "good government reforms" in terms of vetting and staffing his administration made it much harder for him to get judges confirmed and people to take important jobs in the agencies. My worry is that "impeachment fever" makes the hard work of picking priorities for a future administration that much harder during this presidential nominations cycle, which in turn will make enacting a successful agenda the next time the Democrats get into power in the future that much harder as well. You see this with the Republicans where they simply failed to do the political and policy spadework during the Obama years needed to develop their own governing agenda. Which predictably lead to legislative fiasco and political disaster during the 115th Congress. This is not a good model to emulate.
- The Fourth Estate. Many of the same people who constantly complain about how terrible the media's coverage of Trump is are also the ones shouting online for impeachment. I find little reason to think the press is going to change their current style and method of covering Trump overnight because of article of impeachment being debated and instead see a lot more "'Views differ about partisan witch hunt' and 'Democrats, the only party with any causal impact on American politics, fail to remove Trump because they’re failures' coverage" instead, to use Lemieux's words. Robert Farley was a bit more blunt. Anyway I really don't get why a progressive person would invite this sort of thing.
It would be historic and highly symbolic (only Andrew Jackson has been Censured) and sounds like a better plan than the current progressive idea of: do an unpopular thing that damages our ability to solve short or long term problems solely for the point of political symbolism. Or as Lemieux put it: "The only considerations of impeaching Trump with no hope of removal are political, and there’s every reason to think that the downside far exceeds the upside."
