Is an Attempt to Impeach President Trump Coming – And Who Will It Help?

I never thought I would sympathize with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and I still don’t.  But if ever I was going to sympathize with her, we are getting close to when it would happen.  Two people who might sympathize with her are a couple of her predecessors, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.  Messrs. Boehner and Ryan understand the problems that Ms. Pelosi is having with the impeachment wing of her party because of the problems they had with the right-wing crazies in their caucuses.  The members of the “Freedom Caucus” and others among the House Republicans seemed to have this theory that somehow it was better to hold out for 100%, and wind up with nothing, than to agree to accept 70%.

The impeachment wing of the Democratic caucus is causing Speaker Pelosi many of the same problems – and maybe even more because it appears to be bigger than the right-wing crazy group in the House Republicans.¹ 

The impeachment wing of the Democratic Party, which may be most of the party, seems to think the most important thing they can do right now is to impeach Donald Trump.  He is so bad and has done such bad things, that they feel they have to do it.  Of course, one of the problems that some of us have in listening to their arguments is that many of them wanted to impeach President Trump the day he was inaugurated (if not the day before).

It was obvious to them back then that President Trump had colluded with the Russians to win the election.  After all, how else could he have won?  By the time Robert Mueller said that neither President Trump nor the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians, the Impeachment Now crowd was saying the Russian interference with the election was enough.  And if that wasn’t, it was obvious that President Trump had obstructed justice in his attempts to interfere with Mr. Mueller’s investigation.  The fact he did not succeed doesn’t matter.  And that is true.  Attempting to obstruct justice is a crime as much as actually obstructing justice.

I have not read the second volume of Mr. Mueller’s report so I don’t know whether the evidence shows attempts to obstruct justice that didn’t succeed or President Trump wanted people to do things that might be viewed as obstructing justice but which the people in question wouldn’t or didn’t do.

In any case, what you have, at this point, is at most* a failed attempt to obstruct an investigation into a crime, collusion with the Russia, which Mr. Mueller said did not happen.  Which leads me to several questions I would ask those who favor impeaching President Trump:²

1. How much is this really going to help if you just wind up replacing President Trump with Vice President Mike Pence? Vice President Pence would be better than President Trump, in my opinion, but how much better?

2. You are clearly convinced that President Trump has to go and that he should be impeached. But the people who voted for President Trump in 2016 and still support him, haven’t been convinced yet.  Do you really think that you are going to find enough additional evidence to convince those people that President Trump has to go?  Think about all the bad things Donald Trump has done already.  Are you going to be able to find have enough new things, things that are worse than what has already come out, to convince Trump’s supporters that he must go? 

3. If you fail to impeach and convict President Trump, are your efforts to “get” him going to weaken him or strengthen him? The impeachment efforts against Bill Clinton made him more popular and helped the Democrats in the 1998 mid-term elections.³  Is it possible that trying and failing to impeach President Trump might make him a stronger candidate in 2020 – or at least make his supporters more motivated to get him reelected?  And the fact that you can’t understand why anybody could support President Trump doesn’t matter – because they do.  And if you want to win an impeachment – or the 2020 election, you have to figure out how to appeal to the people who supported/voted for President Trump in 2016.  Hint: Calling them dumb, racist, and/or deplorable may not be the best way to do it.

4. If you are in the middle of an impeachment battle that takes up most of the media time and attention for the rest of this year and part of next, how are you going to figure out who the best Democratic candidate is? You didn’t necessary nominate the strongest candidate in 2016.  Do you want to make the same mistake in 2020?

One final point.  While you can’t admit it, President Trump and/or at least some of his political advisers aren’t stupid.  They see how an impeachment process could backfire on the people who start it, so when President Trump plays Brer Rabbit and talks about the briar patch of impeachment, consider that they might think that is exactly what could clinch his reelection.
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¹ Many of those in the Impeachment Wing of the House Democrats probably think the whole Republican Party are right-wing crazies, but that is another story.
² I have said it before, but for any newer readers here, let me say again that I did not vote for President Trump in 2016, and I will not be voting for him in 2020.
    Also, I understand that these questions are not going to convince the Impeachment Now people, but I still want to ask them.
³ At least some Republicans felt they had to impeach President Clinton because he committed perjury and that crossed a line.  It did not work out well for them.
* UPDATE (6/2/19 11:15 PM): I added the words "at most" here to better convey my meaning, since I don't know if there was an attempt to obstruct justice here or not.  I don't know all of the facts, and I don't know the elements of the crime of attempting to obstruct justice.