“While I doubt any impeachment fans feel equanimity toward a Trump reelection, you have to wonder if they are really thinking through what it means to brush off 2020 concerns as “political” and less important than engaging in a quixotic effort to pretend Trump can be removed from office any way other than at the polls.” — Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
Here’s the debate: a number of Trump’s critics have argued that the House of Representatives must impeach Trump as a matter of principle and that declining to act out of concern for political consequences constitutes a moral failure. Elizabeth Warren, the first prominent 2020 candidate to support impeachment, makes this argument. (“There is no political convenience exception to the constitution of the United States of America. You know, there are some things are bigger than politics. And this one is a point of principle.”)
Brian Beutler (in sync with Warren) excoriates the “Pelosi standard” for impeachment: that the House should not move forward with impeachment unless the case against Trump is “compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan.”
Beutler (“The Democrats Great Impeachment Abdication”) objects that the failure to impeach
will establish a new precedent in our country that presidents can make themselves untouchable, to the law and to Congress, if only they’re willing to be as selfish and malevolent as Trump. And it will do so at a moment when one of the country’s two political parties has fully embraced an ethos of corruption, greed, and will to power.
Beutler grants that moving toward impeachment in 2019 would not play out as it did in 1974 (in large part because Fox News and the conservative media bubble would shield Republicans from any good faith effort to hold the president accountable) and doesn’t regard acquittal in the Senate as reason to refrain from impeachment. He wants to see a trial! He wants to require Republican Senators to vote for acquittal.
“If Democrats build a solid case, and pass compelling articles of impeachment, the Senate’s rules obligate it to conduct a trial, with the chief justice of the United States presiding, in a manner that will be very hard for Republicans to cheapen.”
Does Beutler believe that Republicans would in any significant way be constrained from cheapening a Senate trial? That conceit is hard to accept. This doesn’t, however, blunt Beutler’s argument that a Senate trial would place the case for impeachment front and center for voters in 2020 “to render the final verdict.”
There is that. But, as Kilgore has argued in the past: “A 2021 Trump in charge is a progressive hellscape.” The consequences of a Trump reelection are highly significant. So significant that it makes no sense (politically or morally) to insist that the House must impeach without more than a shrug at the possibility that this would aid and abet Trump’s reelection prospects.
Beutler argues that the House must impeach because otherwise Democrats have given Trump and Republican carte blanche to commit any outrages they wish (so long as Fox and company can keep the base onboard).
“Under the Pelosi standard no abuse of power is too severe to tolerate if a third of the country can be convinced to overlook it. Under the Pelosi standard, Republicans enjoy a handicap where they and their propaganda allies can short circuit the Constitution through relentless disinformation and culture war nonsense, and never face a referendum on their underlying conduct or character. Under the Pelosi standard, Republicans can openly embrace any impeachable conduct that actually delights their supporters, which means Trump and future GOP presidents will have a freer hand than they already do to sic the Justice Department on their political enemies.”
“… and never face a referendum on their underlying conduct or character.” To reiterate: Beutler wants to compel Republican Senators to vote against impeachment and then to face the voters regarding their choice.
Without impeachment, Beutler argues, “Republicans can openly embrace any impeachable conduct that actually delights their supporters,” and the result is “Trump and future GOP presidents will have a freer hand than they already do to sic the Justice Department on their political enemies.”
In numerous discussions on the web (such as at Daily Kos), a handful of advocates for impeachment will concede that Trump’s reelection is a price they are willing to pay to see Trump get his comeuppance in the House. Most, however, stick to their guns without critically engaging in consideration of whether or not a House impeachment would make a second Trump term more likely. They reject this out of hand or simply decline to think that far ahead. The principle they embrace — Democrats in the House must take a stand – is too important to sully with discussion of real world political consequences.
Beutler, to his credit, has looked ahead. He insists that not impeaching would make future bad behavior by Republicans more likely and would make future presidents “untouchable.”
But this projection isn’t credible. As Kilgore argues, Senate acquittal with reelection offers an even worse prospect than failure to impeach and Trump’s defeat in November 2020:
“Talk about untouchability! A reelected Trump would be rampant, vengeful, and (of course) unrepentant. The Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary would likely become a confirmed enemy to progressivism for a generation. With one or two more Trump appointees to SCOTUS, reproductive rights would almost certainly be vaporized. Climate change might well become truly irreversible. Trumpism (or something worse) would complete its conquest of one major political party, and the other would be truly in the wilderness and perhaps fatally embittered and divided.”
Although Beutler nods toward a future in which impeachment has a beneficial effect on the conduct of presidents and senators, that’s not (on my reading) the basis for Beutler’s conviction. As he weighs the question of impeachment, and whether to refrain or move forward, Beutler writes:
“The pro-impeachment proposition is that Democrats should build the case, hold the trial, and let Republicans in Congress decide whether they want to shred our shared standards of accountability—to let their votes be counted—instead of doing it for them as they quietly sidestep the question.
In either case, the voters will render the final verdict, but in an impeachment scenario, the question would be laid before them clearly, and will place the entire Republican Party on the hook directly for the crimes they’ve been passively abetting for over two years now. It would also preserve important norms about what kinds of behavior should be impeachable.”
As I read Beutler, he wants a public accounting. And — though he doesn’t say it outright — he implies: consequences in November 2020 be damned. It’s all about principle. Even the last comment about preserving democratic norms is consistent with my interpretation.
Impeachment and acquittal don’t preserve norms. Rather, impeachment (with or without acquittal) represents for Beutler a stance on what norms “should be” in place.
That, in my view, is pretty weak tea. ‘Should be‘ doesn’t move the needle. The way to preserve democratic norms is to be rid of the man and the party that undermine them. Absent Senate conviction, the opportunity to make that happen will be found at the polls in November 2020.
If I’m wrong about this, if Nancy Pelosi is wrong about this, show me how. I’m open to persuasion. If impeachment now makes it more likely that we boot Trump out of office in 2020, show me how.
But don’t — with so much at stake — simply brush aside that possibility. It won’t do — with so much at stake — to embrace acting out of principle, as though this absolves you of responsibility for the real world consequences of your stance. You must, as a moral agent, as a political actor, as a defender of the Constitution, reckon with the consequences.