Be Careful What You Ask For
House Democrats gave Republicans and the President what they asked for yesterday. Trump supporters have decried the process of impeachment, demanding that the Democrats stop their “illegitimate” approach to investigating Mr. Trump’s actions. Republicans demanded “a vote” to put the impeachment process “on the record.”
Thursday they will get what they want. Speaker Pelosi is putting the impeachment inquiry resolution up for a vote. The Speaker doesn’t leave anything to chance, if the vote is going to the floor, then the vote will pass. Past Democratic arguments over the vulnerability of some of their House members are now over; the evidence is convincing enough that most of them are “inoculated” from sacrificing their seats.
And then, Republicans will have their “process problem” solved.
Of course, they won’t. Senator Lindsey Graham, sponsoring a Senate bill decrying the House process, has already used that famous legal trope “…you can’t ‘un-ring’ the bell.” He means that, in his view, once the House began without a resolution, they can’t add one on now. But Graham would find any fault to try to save the President from impeachment.
Hammer Time
Speaking of legal tropes, we have recently heard a lot about this one:
“If you have the law, hammer the law.
If you have the facts, hammer the facts.
If you have neither the law or the facts, hammer the table.”
As witness after witness speaks to the House Intelligence Committee, the information coming out has made it clear that the Republicans have neither the law, nor the facts. The President of the United States, in a months-long concerted effort highlighted by a direct phone call to the President of Ukraine, withheld vital defense funds from that country to extort a public investigation of his Democratic political opponent.
Those are the facts. The law is just as clear, the President of the United States used needed defense funds to force Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son. Biden is a likely opponent in 2020, and more importantly, is the one that currently has the greatest chance of beating Trump in the election. Asking a foreign nation to intervene in US elections is a violation of campaign law, and Trump’s actions also violate Congressionally mandated spending.
Much like bribing a “porn star” to keep his affair from the public, Mr. Trump’s team is likely to say, it’s only “election laws” not really important ones. They got away with this argument once, though Michael Cohen is paying the price in jail today. But this “payment” is much more serious, it’s not Mr. Trump’s money laundered through a dummy corporation, it’s US government money, our money, that’s being used to advance his political campaign.
So Republicans will keep hammering the table.
Convince the People
Speaker Pelosi is outlining the next steps towards impeachment: open hearings of the witnesses. Democrats will lay their case before the public, a public that already supports the impeachment inquiry 51% to 42% (RCP.) The Democrats’ goal: to convince the majority of the American people that the President has abused the powers of his office, and deserves to be removed from it.
But it’s not just the American people that Pelosi wants to influence. When the President is impeached, the Senate of the United States will sit in judgment of his actions. It requires 67 Senators approval to remove the President from office. There are 47 Democrats and Independents; to remove him twenty Republican Senators would have to turn against their President.
In this age of extreme partisanship, it seems impossible to imagine that twenty Republicans would have the courage to stand against the President’s twitter rampages, and more importantly, the 42% of Americans who still think that he is doing a good job (RCP). The “age” of Profiles in Courage seems long gone.
But Pelosi isn’t depending on courage. Her goal is to depend on the Republican’s sense of self-preservation. If the polling numbers continue to shift against the President, there will be a point where Mitch McConnell sees Trump as an anchor dragging down the GOP Senate majority. At that point, McConnell could well “cut the line,” knowing that Vice President Mike Pence is even more amenable to Senate Republican interests.
What is the real percentage of Mr. Trump’s hardcore base? Should the job approval ratings drop into the low thirties, or the percent for impeachment get near sixty, Majority Leader McConnell will have a real choice to make: save the President (perhaps only to lose in 2020) or save the Republican Senate majority.
As Nixon Went
It’s already started. When the “whistleblower” report first came out, there were questions about whether the Senate would even “hold” an impeachment trial. But as the Democratic investigation has progressed, Mr. McConnell has laid out a full judicial process of Senate impeachment trials, and made it clear that Senators can expect perhaps a month of six day-a-week hearings. As the information got more serious, so did he.
Richard Nixon, through most of his administration, had a job approval rating of 55% or more. It was only in the last year that his ratings dropped, averaging 34% and ending in the last two months at 24% (Gallup.) The present era is different – for those who remember the controversies of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the divisions today seem even worse. The “sides,” “Trumpers” and “Resistors,” seem even more set in stone.
So while Trump never saw the “high” approval rating Nixon reached, he probably won’t see the low either. But there is a point where, shorn of all but his most loyal supporters, the Senate may be unable to sustain him. If that happens, like Nixon, Trump will have to chose between removal or resignation.
And that’s what Speaker Pelosi is trying to do. Her strategy isn’t just a House impeachment; it’s a plan to remove the President from office. But she can only do that if the American people are convinced she is right.
