If our Republic was operating under the Constitution as it was so carefully designed and intended to work, there would be no question in my mind that President Trump should be impeached. I could probably lay out at least a dozen reasons for it, including things like his constant lying to the American people, publicly attacking private businesses, fomenting dangerous outrage against the free press, obstruction of justice, using his bully pulpit to constantly divide the country on partisan lines, profiting from office, cooking his books in order to cover up payments to a porn star (and others) in order to manipulate an election, unconstitutionally seizing powers from the Legislative branch, general douchebaggery, and more.
In my opinion, all of these things are impeachable offenses (ok, ok, the douchebaggery one was tongue-in-cheek) and just one of these things should be enough to determine that he should not be in the White House…not even as a visitor. All of these things (and more) combined, there is no question in my mind that he is unfit and unworthy, and the epitome of the person the Founders had in mind when they included the impeachment option in the Constitution.
However, our Republic is not currently operating under the Constitutional system that was created. Many of the checks and balances that were put in place have been destroyed. The result is that actually impeaching a President and removing him from office is near impossible under the current extreme partisanship that we are living under. The offense would need to be very egregious and the evidence indisputable in order to break that partisanship.
Removing a President through impeachment is very difficult, by design. The founders knew that if it was easy (like a simple majority), partisanship would play too much a role in the process and Presidents would be removed through pure politics. This would create a very unstable situation. They gave Congress total control in determining what is an impeachable offense, but they also made it so there would need to be a fairly large consensus between them to make it so.
Things have been made much more difficult in the impeachment process since the Senate has been so drastically changed in the way the Senators are elected. This makes the body much more susceptible to politics, partisanship, and putting too much weight on the whims of the people, rather than focused on what is right for the country and, in particular, for their States.
The founders did more, however, to protect the Republic from being led by someone who is unfit, yet too difficult to remove. And this is actually the part that is our biggest problem. Trump should never have been elected in the first place. It could not be more clear that he is the exact dishonest, unfit, non-virtuous, foreign influenced demagogue that the founders worked so hard in preventing from ever obtaining the office of the Presidency. The method of election, through the Electoral College process, was specifically designed for that purpose. The breakdown of that system is the bigger problem.
And it only looks to get worse as more and more effort is put into eliminating the Electoral College altogether and going to a straight popular vote. That move will ensure that we get more and more demagogues like Trump.
With all of that considered, I don’t think that moving forward with impeachment at this time would be beneficial. Depending on what develops from Mueller’s report and continuing Congressional investigations, however, that could change rapidly.
So, I can’t disagree with Pelosi’s statement about not being prepared to move forward with impeachment proceedings.
But make no mistake, a large part of Pelosi’s comments are most definitely political gamesmanship on her part. If she believed that impeachment proceedings would be good for the Democrats, there is no doubt in my mind that she would do it, whether or not it causes further division in the country. I agree with others that she is biding her time and playing her cards in a way that she sees most advantageous to Democrats. For now, she is playing the mature, rational, “I’m concerned more about the country than the Party” hand. This will come in handy if the Mueller report or further investigations reveal something much more actionable. She can then make the claim that she was very hesitant to impeach, but these new charges are just so serious that she cannot ignore them.
I believe that another part of the political play is the calculation that having Trump as the opponent in the 2020 election is the best option for Democrats. He is the reason for increased passions on the Democrat side and why they did so well in the mid-terms. They would like to extend that through the 2020 races as well. Even though Trump eeked out a win over Hillary, he was still the best option for her to go against. The Trump supporters want you to believe that he was the only one that could have beaten Hillary. That’s just inane nonsense. In reality, he was probably the only one that could have lost to her, and he nearly did.
Pelosi and the Democrats know that. They know that Trump would drive the Democrat turnout in 2020 more than any other opponent. They also know that Trump’s support has not grown at all. Using him to drive the vote is their best option and removing him from the electoral equation would only benefit the Republicans. Of course, the Republicans are too stupid to realize that, but that’s another issue for another day.
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