Personally, I don’t believe the Speaker is ever going to impeach, and I think this is a cataclysmic decision for the country. I think that she lives in a bygone political era where bi-partisan compromise and civility and genteel moderation triumphs over all other considerations, and such a mindset renders the idea of impeachment an unspeakable blemish upon the party that dares invoke it. I think she sees it as a repudiation of her entire lifelong project of attempting to have camaraderie within the “club” that is the Washington elite circle. Banishing someone from the club? Obviously, heh, that is so extreme and discourteous that it ends up tarnishing the reputation of the club itself, heh. She showed the same deference to Bush and Cheney once, and I think she is perfectly content to toe a line between feigning concern about Trump (just enough to inspire the base to stay active) and taking no real action herself, nothing that could shine poorly upon her legacy. And I think that the owners of the club, the oligarchs who donate to the two parties, may also feel that impeachment may spook the markets, which makes the idea a non-starter to them (which means that it is therefore a non-starter to the people trying to secure their donor money, like she is).
I am not convinced that the Speaker has the same goal as we in the base do. I think that her goal is to make sure everyone stays calm and that the fundraising stays robust, and thus if the rule of law (or even the 2020 election) is sacrificed to “protect the realm” against incivility and turbulence, then that’s a small price for her worldview to pay. To us, these outcomes are everything, because the resultant policies of Trump and the Republican Party damage us in countless ways. Is Pelosi herself damaged by them? The party lost 1100 seats while she was one of its leaders, and she was still re-elected into power. She is completely isolated from consequences within the party, within her district, and within her personal life. If Progressives were to take control (“There’s like 5 of them,” remember), that would be a threat to her power and her legacy, so she seems not shy at all at staring down her Left flank. Remember, we obviously need to push exclusively moderate policies in order to “really repudiate Trump,” and that means that Progressive priorities that (in her belief) can’t win in purple districts are therefore a no-go. But how about her Right flank? There seems to be record-breaking timidity in fighting fascism, and she is taking such an overly meticulous path forward that the odds of us getting there before “it’s too late” keep growing more remote by the day.
So I’m not hiding the ball; the above is how I feel. But I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for the sake of argument. There is a chance that she is waiting until the perfect moment to announce the beginning of impeachment hearings or of articles of impeachment. If I were extremely confident that she was just getting all of her ducks in a row first, and was then going to strike at the exact correct moment a few weeks or months from now, I’d be less harsh in judging her actions. And again, such a thing is conceivably possible, and maybe she is just tamping down expectations so that her planned, furtive “evolution” toward impeachment will be a dramatic step in the narrative. However, all we can say at this point is that she has shown no evidence of doing this. So the point of my diary is NOT a discussion about whether she is moving too quickly, too slowly, or with sufficient or insufficient prudence within the “House Democrats Eventually Impeach Trump” plot line. The Impeach Now vs. Impeach Later fight has plenty of oxygen elsewhere.
My point instead is about her larger political calculations. Here are 3 of the reasons she has given for not moving on impeachment yet.
1. It is not overwhelmingly bi-partisan, and needs to be.
2. It is divisive and does not have a majority of support.
3. Trump is a great fundraiser for Democrats (so, implicitly, why would we try to remove him before an important election that could be a referendum on him?)
But what if Trump were a Democratic president (say, someone named Ronald J Trimpe?) And President Trimpe (D) had obstructed justice, had been named as an un-indicted co-conspirator of a crime involving FEC violations and an affair with a porn star, had sued to keep his tax returns out of the hands of Congress, had bragged on national TV about firing his FBI director because he wanted to quash an investigation into possible conspiracy with a foreign country, had serious questions about decades of money laundering, etc?
1. It is quite inconceivable that Democrats would stand behind Mr. Trimpe in the same way as Republicans stand behind Trump, so therefore there would be widespread calls to hold Trimpe accountable. Look at how Democrats leapt at the opportunity to join Republicans in condemning ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, Sister Souljah, the General BetrayUs ad, Eliot Spitzer and others. Ilhan Omar hasn’t even said anything inappropriate or untruthful, nor behaved in any behavior unbecoming of her office, and many Democrats are definitely still going to push for her removal. Of course, every Republican would meanwhile be overjoyed to impeach Trimpe (in real life, they impeached Clinton over far, far less). And as a result, calls for impeachment would be pretty overwhelmingly bi-partisan.
2. While Democratic voters are kinda abysmal at holding their politicians to ideological standards, out of the constant fear that we’re always going to get something worse if we don’t allow Democrats the freedom to be strategically craven to Republicans on tons of issues (cf. Joe Manchin), Democratic voters are often quite vocal about removing almost any leader with a hint of personal scandal (weirdly, the Clintons are constantly excused from this, but a lot of Democrats [cough, Al Franken] are not). Republican support for impeachment would be at least 40% (the entire party), and Democratic support would be at least even, meaning an overall significant majority. President Trimpe would be seen as the divisive force, not the process of impeaching him.
3. President Trimpe would probably be hurting Democratic fundraising, and would almost surely be seen (rightly or wrongly) as a sitting duck in the next election, so there would be no incentive for the party to stick with him. A referendum on him would surely hurt the party. He would be “a distraction” from “our values” or however Tom Perez would phrase it. Every minute that went by would be a minute where an unacceptable Democrat was in power, and needed to be held accountable by the “adults in the room.”
So what is the point of this exercise? Trump is not a Democrat, and circumstances would be different if he were, right? I mean, for the Dems, it’s a lot worse to have the bad guy in your own party, right? You can’t do much about the other party’s bad guys but you can police your own, right? And if you don’t do so, I guess you’re actively complicit instead of just ineffectual in opposing him, right? Would there really be months of stalling if Trimpe presented a real threat to hurting Democratic causes?
Which is exactly why we should be impeaching Trump. Because Pelosi and the House DO have the power to police Trump as much as they are able to. They can’t remove him, they might not be able to rein him in at all, but they can pursue accountability against him, whatever there is of it. To not do so suggests the same kind of complicity. Surely Pelosi would never attempt to impeach a Democratic president (right????), she’s in the same party. So why won’t she act against the OPPOSITE party either?