As the Democrats continue to lay out the damning facts of the president’s corrupt scheme to subvert the 2020 election, now via the public testimony of witnesses in the ongoing impeachment inquiry, two irreconcilable realities spark and clash on a daily and escalating basis. One is a world where facts and truth have an actual chance of persuading enough Republican senators to support removing Donald Trump from office in the name of the national good. The other is a propagandized, Fox News-supported fantasyland in which the president has done no wrong and is being henpecked by a vast armada of, in the words of the immortal Republican Senator John “not that John Kennedy” Kennedy, “the ‘cultured,’ cosmopolitan, goat’s milk latte-drinking, avocado toast-eating insider’s elite.” (Pro tip to the senator: throw that goat’s milk latte and avocado toast into a blender along with a manly handful of kale, and you’ve got yourself an absolutely delish (and nutrish!) breakfast treat, best served in an Elizabeth Warren-branded “Billionaire’s Tears” coffee mug.) The GOP is doing everything it can to protect the president by promoting this alternate reality, from filling their questioning time with the propagation of the same discredited conspiracies that underly the president’s impeachable efforts (and so making themselves complicit with his offenses against the republic) to simply advising Republican voters not to watch the proceedings.
This underlying reality of clashing world views means that the question “What is the point of impeachment?” looms over the proceedings, unanswered by those Democrats with the power to do so. If no matter what, a sufficient number of GOP senators are 99% likely to vote for acquittal, then the actual goal must obviously be something other than removal of the president. In that case, the logical point of impeachment would be the full airing of facts in order to convince not GOP senators but persuadable members of the public, with an eye to the 2020 elections, of the president’s unfitness for office. The other logical point would be to expose the GOP’s collective refuge in conspiracy, lies, and propaganda, again with the political goal of gathering a winning coalition behind the Democrats for 2020.
It is somewhat bothersome that no members of the Democratic leadership are acknowledging either of these practical impeachment goals. Yet, as I’ve written before, whether you think impeachment has a chance of actually removing the president should strongly inform the nature of the proceedings. If the Democrats’ real goal is not removal but a full airing of the president’s corruption with an eye to defeating him in 2020, then the refusal to expand the inquiry beyond the Ukraine scandal feels risky and self-defeating. It would be more powerful to demonstrate a pattern of corruption beyond foreign policy, and to expose multiple upsetting offenses that can change minds for 2020. Given the centrality to the GOP’s defense of painting Joe and Hunter Biden as corrupt, it feels as if Republicans are all but begging for the Democrats to turn the spotlight on Trump’s profiting off the presidency — and not just his personal aggrandizement, but that of his corrupt brood, with son-in-law Jared thrown in for completeness’ sake. Likewise, nothing is stopping the Democrats from describing the basic insanity of the GOP’s defense of the president: not only in its distortions and refusals vis-a-vis reality, but also in its end goal of placing the president above all accountability. A better way of saying the second part is that Republicans agree with the president’s authoritarian vision for America, where not only whatever the president does is legal and good, but where anyone or any institution that questions him is by definition an enemy of the state. The Democrats need to be hammering this home, as the proper context for understanding the GOP’s stance on impeachment.
Against all evidence, though, I still find myself hoping for another way forward, a way that I concede can feel almost as much of a fantasy as the GOP’s hermetically-sealed propaganda bubble: that rather than breaking America more firmly apart, impeachment will end up cracking the Republican authoritarian consensus just as it seems to be at its strongest. Call it a faith in the power of actual reality, particularly its contingent and unpredictable aspects. For instance, we have already seen the Republicans blindsided by the increasing number of witnesses to the president’s direct connection to the Ukraine scheme; a phone conversation between Trump and sad-sack EU ambassador Gordon Sondland the day after the president’s infamous July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was overheard by as many as three U.S. officials (not to mention various foreign intelligence agencies, since it was conducted in public on an unsecure phone). More such evidence will increasingly push the GOP into the cul-de-sac of acknowledging the president’s actions but defending his lawlessness as just fine. This may be satisfying for GOP die-hards, but it will hamper their work of winning over centrist voters in 2020.
There’s also the matter of Republican congresspersons continuing to claim that they and their staff lawyers are not being allowed to question witnesses. . . . despite the fact that, on national TV, we are watching Republican congressmen and their lawyers questioning witnesses, and, in a meta-twist, making these very same claims that they are not being allowed to do so. Designed to be played free of context on Fox News and the like, this line of mendacity may work for Republicans in safe red seats. But for those like Representative Elise Stefanik of New York — who faces a credible Democratic opponent who has already raised nearly a million dollars in the last few days by calling out Stefanik’s untruths about not being allowed to speak at the inquiry — has the Fox & Amigos mediasphere reached the point where its self-perpetuating insularity machine is beginning to grind adherents between its infernal vulpine gears?
But it’s the president himself who’s the biggest wild card of all. Accused of vast and disqualifying corruption, he has attacked witnesses throughout the proceedings. This includes a tweet denigrating former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during her actual testimony, which led Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff to note that he takes witness intimidation “very, very seriously” (if you listened closely, you could make out the clackety-clack of a congressional staffer typing up a new article of impeachment). The tweet blew up the GOP strategy to avoid appearing disrespectful of the ambassador; The New York Times reported that “his inability to hold his fire on Friday raised fresh doubts among his allies and White House advisers about what he will do next week, when eight witnesses are scheduled to testify in public hearings over the course of three days,” and that his tweet left “some of his advisers deeply dispirited.” The president’s willingness to display the very corruption he’s accused of, in real time, may impress the Republican base, but along with unsettling his congressional defenders, it will also further push middle-of-the-road voters into the Democratic camp.
Such behavior by the president, and GOP representatives’ appeals to blatantly false narratives, may rally the most loyal, but I am wondering if the rest of us have been a little taken in ourselves by the power of the right-wing machine and the depth of the president’s support. Can even the most extreme acts of the president be explained away by the loyal talking heads? And if the real-time attack on Yovanovitch set off warning lights, couldn’t this happen again? The machine doesn’t need to break down completely; it is possible that enough cracks in the suffocating narrative of Trump’s rightness could push Republican rank and file into less vigorous support, or neutrality. Which leads to my second point, the very real possibility that the president’s base is neither as large or committed as generally perceived. His hard core of support is certainly a minority of the population, but it seems to me that there is a big difference between whether 40% of the country supports him, versus 30% or even 35%. With 40%, he has a viable path to a narrow electoral college victory in 2020. At 35% or lower, it starts to look quite iffy. And Trump’s hold over the GOP has everything to do with whether it perceives he will be re-elected or not. Even if there is no sure catastrophic tipping point in the size and intensity of his base, even a slow chipping away could change the calculations of GOP politicians, both in the House and Senate.
I’ve frequently dug into the Very Important Idea that the GOP is essentially becoming a permanent minority party in the United States, based on a demographically dwindling white population, and increasingly dedicated to preserving its hold on power by manipulating our political system to prevent majority rule, such as by gerrymandering or, more malignantly in the case of the president, by enlisting the aid of foreign powers to help subvert national elections. What has been less discussed — because it hasn’t been as imminent as it is now — is whether the GOP is truly willing to irrevocably say goodbye to ever holding a majority in the House of Representatives again, and possibly to ever winning the presidency post-Trump.
As dangerous and damaging as Trump’s reign has been, he and the GOP have maintained power only at the price of advancing the GOP’s permanent minority status, at least in terms of overall support among the U.S. population, from likelihood to near-certainty. Addicted to the worship of a faithful base, Trump has made clear that he serves the white, the conservative, and the male, in the process poisoning the GOP’s prospects for winning over anyone else. The long-term damage will make itself known in the coming years, but at a minimum, we can see signs that he has badly soiled the GOP brand, perhaps irrevocably, among younger voters for whom his presidency is now their formative political experience; for non-white voters who have been told they are not real Americans; and for women appalled by his misogyny and the allegations of his sexual assaults.
Given this reality, to which GOP politicians are hardly blind, impeachment may represent the final, irrevocable decision point for the Republican Party. They have already seen gerrymandering’s failure to hold the House. And while the structure of the Senate means that they have a decent chance of maintaining a thin edge there for the foreseeable future, are Republicans really willing to continue to support the president if his support drops below some critical level where his re-election becomes doubtful? Is the GOP truly ready to be a party that may be able to block legislation, but will increasingly see its ability to wield affirmative power dwindle? Are Republicans willing to fully embrace permanent minority status as a de facto white nationalist party in order to defend a president unlikely to win in 2020? Is every single member of the Republican party in Congress down with this vision? The lockstep approach up to now may prove particularly brittle if even a small number of Republicans begin to look past the immediate future, and towards a future Republican Party that stands for actual conservatism rather than a self-defeating hash of white nationalism, authoritarianism, and capitalism run amok.