Impeachment: What’s the Message?
Impeachment: What’s the Message?
The mantra of the moment is that impeachment is not a trial and shouldn’t be governed by the same rules that apply to a court of law. True, but that means it’s really a political event, where the verdict matters less than the message.
What’s coming through the media reporting is “Trump incited a riot.” Well, he did, more or less, but that just means he’s a bad person. It’s not news that Trump is a pretty nasty role model, and I fear the reaction of many people will be that the campaign to impeach him for it is just more of the same.
I would have preferred a different message: America needs to protect its democracy from the refusal of political leaders to accept defeat. Around the world we see many countries where elections settle nothing. Defeated parties routinely claim the election was rigged and only they have the right to hold power. Street violence accompanies voting. Military coups occur regularly to impose temporary stability. The reason we should impeach Trump is to draw a line against this development in the US.
If that’s the message, the key evidence is not a single speech on January 6 or even the rhetoric leading up to it. Rather, it was the drumbeat of assertions that the election was stolen without evidence to back them up. After all, if the election had been stolen and the proof was in front of us, it would have been justified to throw sand in the gears of the system in any way possible up to and including an occupation of the Capitol building. The crime was systematic lying, of a sort that, if not identified and rejected, will lead to a breakdown of democratic power rotation.
Now I can understand why Democrats might be reluctant to make this case, since it implicates not only Trump but much of the Republican leadership as well. That would make it impossible to pick up the votes they need for impeachment, but they are unlikely to get those votes anyway. If the real goal is to do everything possible to reverse the descent of America into a country where any political defeat threatens to be permanent and triggers violent resistance, then that’s what needs to be said.
Trump supporters (and the rest of America) have been lied to repeatedly for years, both on things directly associated with Trump but also on a whole host of other things that generally tie back to Trump. Nick Sandman is a good example here. An arrogant teen with a MAGA hat bullying a native American veteran. ‘I feel like punching him’. Turns out that that he was a teen remaining remarkably calm while very weird people were aggressively doing everything possible to get a reaction out of him and his schoolmates. Trump’s Charlottesville comments prove him to love those neo-Nazis and white supremacists….except if you listen to what he actually said about them, then not so much. Brett Kavanaugh kind of/sort of assaulted a second woman at Yale….except she doesn’t seem to think so and the supposed source won’t confirm anything about it either. But it does not stop the liberal media from investing a week or more pounding out the message. “Anonymous” tells us how terrible Trump is and later we learn the source is not at all working at the Presidential level on anything. Adam Schiff’s 2018 memo on FISA is fundamentally destroyed by the Horowitz IG report, but he is a great patriot, not just a guy trying to greatly mislead Americans in an election year. Staying with Adam Schiff for $200 please: oh, you mean being in contact with the whistleblower like having contact with that person? Well when I said no, I guess I misunderstood what was being asked. Oh, those 19 or so wiped cell phones from the Mueller’s staff? Rosemary Woods springs to mind, except less credibly. There is a bunch of stuff that hardly anyone even remembers any more, like Nellie Ohr – GPS Fusion employee – becoming a ham radio aficionado at a quite advanced age. Having lived in the Czech Republic for 3 years (not Prague though), the Cohen in Prague story is one of my favorites. What is most fascinating for me about this is that McClatchy stands by its reporting that Mueller had evidence of it. Think about it. It is an insane story to simply make up. It wasn’t made up. It was a mistake. US or allied intelligence had Czech telecoms data that they thought was Cohen. But the interesting thing is not how it got told to McClatchy, but how Hillary Clinton’s oppo researcher Chris Steele got the story within scant days of it notionally happening. Intelligence agencies were working with the Clinton campaign for sure. Atlantic: a few unnamed sources tell us one thing about a trip to France and around 20 sources who will put their names on it say the story is not right, including a guy who clearly intensely disliked Trump. Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation! A federal judge who tells us Clinesmith probably thought that he was not lying when he took an email that said ‘A’ and rewrote it to say ‘not A’ and sent it on to the FISA court.
So yes, there are 10s of millions of American who are not yet willing to believe that when reporters tell them something is “baseless” and a “big lie” that this time it is the truth. Their experience has been that on quite significant events in the recent past that Trump has been more upfront and honest than his detractors have been…..’the Arab street will go up in flames’ as an example. Trump is more honest than Democrats and standard Republicans and that is part of what horrifies Democrats and many Republicans so much. How many people showed up at the 2017 inauguration? Where is that hurricane going? But on big things, the man was more honest than a ‘you-can-keep-your-plan’ former President was.
Eric:
I see nothing in Peter Dorman’s post referring to Kavanaugh, Steele, Nick (the little sh*t head who should have been spanked), Charlottesville, Anonymous, Schiff, Woods, Mueller, Cohen, Clinton, Hunter, FISA, etc.
In front of all of America’s population, Trump incited a riot and did nothing to stop it was his his army of sycophants attacked the capitol. He should have been jailed then. Instead, he was impeached and allowed to go free by McConnell and Republican Senators who made up a minority.
Trump has lied each and every day that he spoke in public. You and trump lost. The anybody but trump or a democrat crowd did not skew this election.
Impeachment seems to me to be more of a political (small p) rather than legal issue. If this is true, then linking all of Trumps “stolen election” memes/lies leading up to the incitement to storm the Capital would be fair game. The necessity for a two thirds vote in the Senate would make it very similar to a “vote of no confidence” that occurs in the removal of leaders under a parliamentary political system. Since it has been rare that the US Senate has had two thirds of one party in control, impeachment should be viewed as the only logical way to remove bad actors from the office. It wouldn’t need to be so tightly connected to some legal standard for the vote, taking the Mitt et al view of being an “unconstitutional” act out of the question.
The message seems to be that conviction of high crimes brought via impeachment isn’t real. No one can be removed from office unless the president’s opposing party controls the house and a super majority in the senate.
Political tool doesn’t begin to describe it. Impeachment is the same as a non-binding resolution to slap the president’s wrists gently, only with less consequences.
Seems impeachment was meant to deal with presidents, and others, found to be without virtue, i.e., bad actors. That in itself may be the offense.
Dorman
pretty much agree with you. but would like to reinforce some points.
first, impeachment (and trial by Senate) IS a political act. the only rules are what the House decides for act 1, and what the Senate decides for act 2. and the only punishment is (should be) removal from office (I don’t like the bar from future office, because I think the people should have the last word. I also think there should be no bar to office or voting rights because of ANY crime or conviction, because it’s too easy to find a way to convict a political rival, or person likely to vote for political rival, of a crime.
that said, it should be pretty difficult to get a 2/3 vote to convict unless the political crime (i really mean “bad behavior”) is serious enough to offend or alarm a significant majority of Senators, who are supposed to be of exalted character. (supposed to be. but in any case “in a government sense”. don’t care much if he steals the coasters or has a younger girlfriend). anyway that 2/3 vote IS due process in an impeachment.
very much a red herring to drag in all that due process, and constitutional, and elements of the crime, and witnesses and evidence stuff. the only thing that matters is convincing 2/3 of Senators to remove the “defendant.” and hope they are doing it, or not doing it, to assure “good government.”
and THAT said, in our case we don’t have a Senate with sufficient number of members of high character, interested in good government. but the impeachment WAS a good thing to do nevertheless. it brought to attention in a very convincing way the bad behavior of Trump, and the danger he represents to American democracy. That fact may be lost on 36% of the voting population. but given the limits of human intelligence, that may be the best you can hope for.
and as a bonus it also brought to attention the low character of most of the members of the Republican Party, their danger to American Democracy. And if we have not learned that lesson now, we would not have learned it with a conviction.
Peter, I think you’re right. Unfortunately, we’ve already crossed that ugly line where facts, truth, and oaths of office have no meaning. Trump told his followers they were patriots. He gave them purpose. He legitimized & glamorized their hate for government, Democrats, and minorities. He gave their delusion & despair recognition. The fact that he lost a free and fair election, legitimized by the courts and every state, did not matter.
Senate Republicans had the opportunity to correct this filthy stain on America, but they chose not to. Instead, their failure to act has now emboldened Trump and future autocrats. Now those that want to destroy democracy know that insurrections are acceptable and elections and the impeachment process are just minor roadblock on the road to dictatorship.
McJeffferson
well, i guess we just have to hope the people learned enough from the impeachment trial that they will show the road-to-dictatorship folks that they won’t let it happen.
i think it is a mistake to claim we have been utterly defeated before we have begun to fight.
quite possibly not all the Senators who voted not to acquit (not the same as a finding of “not guilty”) really want to see Trump get away with it. perhaps they are just afraid of the current political situation (losing their power to affect future policies by standing in front of a riled up mob that still has the momentum), or they really believe that those in power should not have the power to deny the people the right to vote for the person they believe will fix what they see as the problem.
i get a little worried when I see that Progressives really have the same instinct for absolute power as the insane Right.
Eric,
What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Trump Won.
Democrats election fraud was the final blow to the Republic.
You people aren’t very bright.