That is the question.
I’ve heard lots of opinions on this, and you won’t be surprised to learn that I have some thoughts.
First, I’m going to start with what Mueller says (emphasis mine), “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.”
That was page 220 of the report. Mueller clearly stated that Trump was corrupt, and that he believes that only congress has the power to deal with it.
I believe that congress needs to start the impeachment process after they have Mueller testify before them in regard to his report. I think it’s important for the American people to hear from Mueller exactly what he found. I also have a suspicion that Barr may have imposed a time constraint on Mueller in order to help Trump. There are too many things that weren’t addressed in this report: Cambridge Analytica; Trump’s server that was only communicating with Alpha Bank; Eric Prince. There are several others, but you get the point.
Mueller makes clear in the report, that he couldn’t establish collusion because of all of the obstruction: the use of encrypted messaging; the deletion of emails; the destruction of evidence. I think it’s important to have him lay all of that out for everyone to hear. If he was given a deadline by Barr, that’s also something we need to hear, as it would be clear evidence that the obstruction continues.
Why do I think impeachment is crucial? Because if we don’t impeach, we don’t have a democracy. We didn’t investigate and prosecute the Bush administration for their crimes, and now we have Trump. Every time the rule of law isn’t imposed, our democracy disintegrates. The decision of whether to impeach or not can’t be a political calculation because that’s exactly how you get a banana republic.
I’m going to go ahead and address all of the political calculations I’ve heard in favor of not impeaching anyway, even though my key point stands. First let me start with the Clinton comparisons. I have issues with this on so many levels, starting with the fact that making that comparison furthers the republican framing that they’re the same. They’re not remotely the same, and you should stop claiming that they are. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about an affair. We’re already two fucking affairs and two cover ups into Trump and no one gives a shit. We didn’t give a shit that Clinton lied about his personal life then, and no one seems to give a shit that Trump is lying about his personal life now (myself included, cause I’m consistent that way). This is about working with a foreign government to manipulate our elections and then covering up those crimes.
When you make (or allow) the Clinton comparison, you’re helping republicans in furthering the “both sides are the same” narrative they so desperately need. That’s how you get a disaffected electorate that doesn’t bother to show up to vote. STOP IT! This kind of short term thinking is why democrats need to run preternaturally charismatic candidates like Obama and Clinton in order to win, while republicans win with human garbage like George W Bush and Donald Trump.
If you insist in blowing up the electorate and warping the rhetoric by making the Clinton comparisons, I’d like to point out that you’re doing it all wrong. For one thing, Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were never as low as Trump’s for any sustained period of time. He never stayed under 50% for more than five months. Trump has never even sustained a 45% (his high) approval rating for more than a week. So right off the bat, you’re making an apples to horseshoes comparison. Secondly, republicans were very shrewd in impeaching Clinton and you missed it. They weren’t interested in ending the last year of Clinton’s presidency. They were interested in damaging the democratic party, and that’s exactly what they did since republicans swept the next eighteen years of election cycles either in congress, local and state races or the presidency. Democrats lost nearly 1,000 seats just while Obama was in office. If your argument is, “we can’t impeach Trump because look at what happened to Clinton”, you’re making a completely backward case. Forcing America to talk about Bill Clinton’s sex life for a year caused Al Gore to run away from him, thereby costing him an election he should have handily won. I promise you that republicans don’t remotely regret impeaching Clinton and that they would do it again in a hot minute, and they should. It was a giant win for them.
The next argument I hear is that impeaching Trump will make him so popular that he will definitely win the 2020 election. That is pure conjecture, based in literally nothing, and it’s not a point to be taken seriously (see the Trump approval rating link above). If we’re going to do the utterly baseless conjecture for craven political calculation thing, then here’s what my crystal ball sees: If democrats don’t impeach Trump, then a lot of people will stay home because it will seem like there’s no difference between the two parties.
How’s that for rectally generated political analysis? Was that as good for you as it was for me?
I never realized how much easier it is to talk politics out your ass! Turns out that all of these years of doing research and looking at historical context was a total waste of time. I should have just been making “observations” based on literally nothing this whole time, because people apparently find that more compelling than methodically building an argument to support my perspective.
But let’s go back to my central point: The decision of whether to impeach or not can’t be a political calculation because that’s exactly how you get a banana republic. And that’s it. That’s the entirety of the reason why we should leverage the checks and balances written in our constitution to preserve what’s left of our democracy.
