I think we all need to pay closer attention to the cognitive dissonance between the Democrats’ unveiling of articles of impeachment against the president on the same day that they’ve come to an agreement on the revised North American trade deal, or USMCA. As The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer writes, Democrats are “handing Trump a victory on his major domestic policy priority,” which both suggests that the impeachment is just so much “meaningless partisan theater” while also demonstrating that the president fights hard for American workers and is a great dealmaker. It’s true that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has talked up the importance of getting this USMCA legislation passed as a way to protect more vulnerable Democratic House members — it’s an accomplishment they can bring back to voters to show they’re working for them — but I find Serwer’s points impossible to dismiss. Whatever the merits of bolstering Democratic House moderates, to do so in a way that validates the political goals and electoral chances of the very president the Democrats assert is a threat to the republic makes little sense. Indeed, as Serwer suggests, the only way it DOES make sense is if the Democrats don’t actually mean what they say about the threat the president poses to our constitutional order.
This is the third piece I’ve written under the “Impeach It Like You Mean It” moniker, and the ominous juxtaposition of the USMCA announcement with the release of just two, narrowly-focused articles of impeachment makes me think that the Democrats are not actually impeaching like they mean it. Will Stancil, who’s also been sounding the alarm about the craziness of the Democrats’ support of a USMCA deal with Trump, notes that the Democrats are trying to reconcile two impulses that simply can’t be reconciled: “their irresistible desire to look sober and bipartisan by always compromising” and “the absolute objective unacceptability of Trump.” Even if you grant the House leadership more pragmatic and tactical reasons for wanting to make a deal with Trump (i.e., to protect some House members in the 2020 election), I think Stancil gets the basic conundrum right, and it points to a basic fact that’s been nagging at me: even as the Democrats are pursuing impeachment against President Trump, they’re not actually behaving as though what they accuse him of is true.
The Democrats are right to impeach Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election in order to ensure his own re-election, but they’ve known all along that there was close to a zero percent chance that the Republicans in the Senate would ever vote in sufficient numbers to remove Trump from office. It seems that the point of impeachment, then, is some combination of publicizing a damning case against the president that also forces the GOP as a whole to go on record as supporting his corrupt purposes, even as it results in his ultimate acquittal in the Senate; this would seem to be the reasoning behind keeping the impeachment process short and narrowly-focused. But here’s the thing: while this strategy might work around the margins in terms of persuading some voters to oppose the president and GOP in 2020, it does nothing to actually stop the president from continuing his attempts to subvert the 2020 election: attempts that are in fact ongoing, from Rudy Giuiliani’s latest trip to Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens, to the president and the GOP continuing to propagate lies about how Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election on Democrats’ behalf (which has the goal of both undermining Democrats and providing cover for the president’s ongoing subversion efforts).
It’s hard to avoid the sense that congressional Democrats have in a sense fetishized impeachment as the central way to resist Trump, as a ritual they are beholden to enact, and which will have mysterious yet unarticulated powers to stop the president’s bad behavior even if he isn’t removed from office. But, to borrow a line from Fiona Hill, that is in fact a fictional narrative. By embracing a method to stop the president that’s doomed to fail to stop him — because of foreordained outcome in the Senate — they’ve effectively signaled that they believe they actually have no way to stop the president. The feeble power of this unfortunate message has already reached Donald Trump, who has continued to engage in and even escalate a range of activity that shows he considers himself above the law, from the blanket, unprecedented refusal for the White House to participate in the impeachment proceedings, to continued calls for foreign powers to interfere in the 2020 elections. We have every reason to believe that these efforts will only escalate following an acquittal in the Senate, which both Trump and the GOP at large are likely to pass off as an endorsement of his authoritarian efforts to attack the 2020 vote.
Given these harsh realities, for the Democrats to treat impeachment as a “solemn” (in the words of Nancy Pelosi) duty that’s grave and sober and serious that must be done quickly and efficiently because it’s so damned solemn and serious begins to feel like a whole lot of mumbo jumbo; like going through the motions; like the “partisan theater” Adam Serwer described. This president is corrupt to his core: from using the presidency for personal profit, to aligning with foreign powers to destroy his domestic opponents, he’s a walking, talking example of why the impeachment power was included in the U.S. constitution. But in crucial ways, the Democrats’ move towards an impeachment bound to fail is proving a distraction from the actual reason impeachment is in the congressional toolbox - because, given human nature, it was inevitable that sooner or later we would have a president who wanted to be a king, and that Americans would have to figure out a way to stop him.
With removal off the table, refusing to engage in a prolonged impeachment inquiry that would expose the vast extent of the president’s criminality to the full light of day, in an effort to move public opinion firmly against the president — which will be one of the key ways that we are able to beat back the authoritarian project of this president and the Republican Party — feels very much like the Democrats lack the courage of their convictions. Likewise, with extensive proof that the president intends to deny the United States a free and fair election in 2020, with the very possible outcome that he would be re-elected and the United States effectively reduced to the status of a banana republic, what possible reason is there to treat the president with anything but unremitting contempt and hostility? Why are the Democrats so insistent on talking about how solemn a process this is, when outrage and indeed rage should be the order of the day?
Another way to frame what I’m getting at: what happens in January or February 2020, after Senate Republicans have used the impeachment trial not only to acquit Donald Trump but to disseminate false stories of how it’s been the Democrats and Ukrainians all along who’ve been attempting to undermine U.S. elections? And Donald Trump continues, whether openly or secretly, to do all he can to ensure victory in 2020, from launching investigations of whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is, to inviting election interference from abroad? What is the Democrats’ plan to protect America against Trump-GOP authoritarianism then, once the impeachment bolt has been shot and missed its target? Will the Democrats simply throw up their hands and say they’ve done all they can, or will they finally start acting like American democracy is on the line?