IS “BUILDING A CONSENSUS” AROUND A PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT, IMPOSSIBLE?

…Michael E. Horowitz, The US Inspector General that released the latest report

The Democrats are attempting political consensus, but it is a serious up-hill event.

As expected, the Inspector General’s Report just released stated that Trump was NOT spied on by the FBI.  It also said that the Russian Investigation, and that of the Trump campaign, were totally done according to the rules.  But on the same day of that report’s release, Trump had one of his ugly rallies in Pennsylvania where he lied that his campaign was spied on and that the US FBI agents were “scum”.

The Democrats who have called for President Trump’s impeachment are hoping that all of their activity would play out the way Watergate did just 45 years ago.

The backlash against President Nixon was slow in building, as it has been against Trump, but the evidence about Nixon’s campaign’s efforts to bug the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters and, more damaging, his subsequent efforts to cover it up, finally nailed him.

Not until the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon in July 1974 did a clear majority of Americans come around to wanting him removed from office.  In that single critical two-week period, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over his White House tapes and Republicans finally broke from their president and Nixon soon resigned.

The Democrats are going to try to make the case against Trump as clear as it was against Nixon, and what Trump has done is so much worse than what Nixon did because it was dealing with a foreign country and Trump and his close supporters have continually been lying about the facts.

Once again, the House Judiciary Committee is taking a historic vote to recommend the impeachment of a president.  However, there is the same concern with the Democrats had with Nixon, that there could be no such national support. 

The two impeachment articles now before the committee will probably pass the House next week, but it will be on a party-line vote.  

From there, it will will go to the Senate for the trial, where today, the outcome seems just as preordained. Most likely, if the Democrats don’t make the impeachment for removal as real as it became for Nixon, the Republican majority there will probably acquit him, and Trump will obviously claim an acquittal as total exoneration, which would just be another lie.

Trump tweeted the follow lies just this week. “To Impeach a President who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness! #2020Election,”

It doesn’t take a fact checker to show that: It is not the “strongest economy in US history”, his is not one of the “most successful presidencies”, and he has “plenty of illegal activities,” plus he has lied to the public over 12,000 times in the last three years.

If impeaching the president is “madness”, it says more about the state of our politics than it does about the merits of the case against Trump. The articles of impeachment that Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee drew up are narrow, precise and backed by the evidence.  But the Republicans do run the Senate.

Unfortunately, nationally, the divisions between the American people are deep and all but unbreachable.  The real problem is that the division may be even worse when all of this is over. At a meeting with national columnists in late October, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked whether there might come a moment when the public begins to support Trump’s impeachment as it had with Nixon. "No", she said, “we’re not at a 70% country opinion.”

Opinion in favor of impeachment jumped sharply after the “whistleblower” brought to light the now-infamous July 25^th phone call, during which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for two things: “political ammunition to use against former vice president Joe Biden, and help in pushing a wacky conspiracy theory that contradicted the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election.”

Trump requested this as “a favor” at a time when his administration was “holding up badly needed security assistance to Ukraine.”

For the first time, the polls showed that roughly 50% of the public believed not only that Trump should be impeached, but also that he should be removed from office. Americans had felt a higher degree of revulsion they had not shown about the results of Mueller’s two-year Russia investigation report.  Then the question was of whether Trump was using his office to enrich himself or his lack of presidential character.

But recently the numbers froze and have not budged, even with the dramatic testimony of a parade of witnesses who corroborated the whistleblower’s account before the House Intelligence Committee. And, in the meantime, the suddenly real prospect of impeachment has been rallying the president’s base.  This rallying could possibly work to his benefit in those critical states such as Wisconsin.

I heard an interview with a couple that attended the Pennsylvania Rally and how they felt so sorry that the “Democrats were going after a president that has done so much good.”  This husband and wife couple were seriously concerned about the president and they of course, believed every false statement that he made at his rally.

It was not a coincidence that, within an hour of unveiling the impeachment articles, House Democrats announced that they will support one of the president’s top priorities, a North American trade deal (USMCA) a version they claim includes big concessions such as new protections for workers’ rights that had been sought by organized labor.

This is in support of Trump’s base of supporters in those critical states where he had won in the Electoral College by only a few percentage points.  Of course, the GOP House members immediately went on the air to claim that Speaker Pelosi had held up approving the USMCA agreement so they could vote their approval of USMCA just after the announcement of the impeachment articles.

The speaker is expected to do even more for those Trump supporters when the House moves toward an impeachment vote.  Look for the passage of a bill to lower the price of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical firms.  Trump would do well to seriously engage the Democrats on this issue, which is high on the list of his supporter’s priorities.

Also look for more legislative action as the House Democrats provide authorization for Pentagon operations in 2020.  This will be for paid family leave for federal workers in exchange for indulging Trump’s fanciful idea of a Space Force

So what is the Democrats plan for going forward?

They will support more issues that will be positive for those voters that just happen to also be Trump supporters.  These are the issues that Democrats also want to be talking about as they move into an election year.  They promise a way to bring people together.  Unfortunately, impeachment does not do that.

But holding Trump accountable for how he has abused the power of his office has become an historic step.

The Democrats may find that trying to build a consensus around an impeachment is an impossible one.

Copyright G. Ater 2019