Dispatch to Democrats: Let’s Impeach Like Mitch McConnell Would
I said something on last week’s podcast and upon further reflection, I was wrong.
I know. It’s a shocker for one of us to call ourselves wrong instead of waiting for Kevin to do it. But here we are.
Anyway, I said that impeachment is a matter for calendar 2019 and I’m pretty sure I’m wrong and I’m going to tell you why. Buckle up.
Every analyst with a functioning knowledge of Congressional procedures can give you the basic rundown of how a traditionally constituted impeachment process of Donald Trump would go. The House would file articles. There would be hearings, There would be a vote, with a likely outcome of referral to the Senate, passed along party lines. Then the Senate would hold further proceedings, presided over by Chief Justice Roberts, and they would vote to acquit, probably along party lines, with a few possible Dem defections.
The whole circus would take about 4 months and at the end, Trump would go on a victory tour for the entirely of 2020. He’d hold rallies and talk about how the Witchhunt 2.0 exonerated him even more bigly than the Mueller report did. In my opinion, Trump basically wins a traditional impeachment process and probably wins the election as well.
Traditional impeachment proceedings, while the morally correct thing to do, are a political minefield for Democrats and could turn into a giant PR victory for Republicans.
But what if we dispense with tradition? What is we take a page out of the Republican handbook and scrap tradition and decorum and political norms? What if we kick all of that in the teeth? What if we, the Democrats, pull a move as lowdown and dirty as the time Mitch McConnell denied a duly elected president his constitutional right to seat a Justice on the Supreme Court? Something as potentially damaging as Jim Comey dropping a letter about Hillary’s emails mere weeks before the election?
What if we impeach a president during an election year?
Here’s what I’m thinking we do. Let’s spend 2019 investigating Trump some more. We already have several committees subpoenaing documents, requesting testimony, and planning hearings about the Mueller report and about irregularities in the way the Trump organization does business. And the administration is already stonewalling like their freedom depends on it. Powerful House committee chairs like Jerry Nader, Adam Schiff and Gerry Connolly are already threatening contempt of congress Citations, fines, and possible referral to the DC US attorney for prosecution for individuals who defy subpoenas. And they’re not out of line: Princeton professor of history Kevin Kruse was on Twitter saying that the same threats were made during Watergate and they were potent enough (and legitimate enough) to compel reluctant witnesses to head to the Hill.
“These are not sacrosanct persons,” Ervin noted in April 1973. “Divine right of rule perished in America with the American Revolution, and it doesn’t belong to White House aides.” pic.twitter.com/XgZwKcUPl8
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) April 26, 2019
I say these threats, and more, are all good. Let’s turn the whole thing into a street fright. Lob subpoenas at the administration in a steady stream and start fining the hell out of anyone who refuses to appear. If the administration sues, so what? Let them take it to court. It doesn’t make them look any more innocent or any more cooperative if they’re willing to burn tax dollars defending their refusal to answer to Congress’s enumerated powers of oversight.
We can run the clock out on 2019 with these kinds of ugly little fights and at the same time, non-oversight committees can keep writing bills that deal with healthcare and education and stopping ICE from putting babies in cages. Show the country exactly how well Nancy Pelosi’s caucus can walk and chew gum. Meanwhile, the 2020 Dem candidates can all stay above the fray by saying “Speaker Pelosi is trying to do her job and I support her. Too bad the White House won’t cooperate. But have you seen my latest proposal on universal pre-k? It’s great, if I do say so myself!”
Then, on February 4, 2020, file articles of impeachment.
Why February 4? I’m so glad you asked! That’s the day after the Iowa Caucus. While Trump spends the morning on Twitter wanking to FoxNews’s slavering coverage of his victory, we slap with him impeachment.
Then we play as dirty as we can and schedule every hearing to coincide with a primary. Take every Trump primary win and steal the media attention by bringing in a major witness to testify against him.
Trump will be furious. He will investigate the investigators. He will spend hours on social media calling everyone with a D next to their name horrible things but you know what? He’ll be out of line. The Democrats in the House will just be doing their jobs. It won’t be their fault they had to wait so long to start this process. If the administration had cooperated in 2019, this all could have been over by Thanksgiving.
The key will be keeping it going until after the conventions in August. We do not want to refer to the Senate until after Trump has accepted the nomination because the optics of him accepting the nomination after being acquitting by Putin’s gang of bitches from the Senate will hurt the Dems. McConnell-ski and (Russian) company have to be forced to decide whether to take the vote in the early fall or not take a vote at all.
This would be the ugliest political campaign since Aaron Burr went door to door against Jefferson. But literally nothing I’m proposing is against the law or outside of the role of Congress. Pelosi has a right and a duty to do all of these things. Nothing in the Constitution says she can’t do them during an election year. And I think we all know traditions and norms don’t – can’t – matter in the era of Trumpian politics.
Republicans have lied, cheated, and used stolen materials to rig the system in their favor. We can’t be afraid of paying them back in kind.
