Democratic leadership announced on Tuesday that the House will vote on two articles of impeachment, accusing President Trump of abusing his power and obstructing justice.
The charges aren’t new, and neither is the demand to remove Trump from office. Indeed, the House has spent much of the past year conducting investigation after investigation, looking into Trump’s dealings, his financial records, and his family’s business enterprise.
The only “smoking gun,” however, was his July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he “solicited foreign interference” in the upcoming election, according to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler.
“It is an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit,” Nadler said.
What’s more: Trump’s refusal to provide documents and allow witness testimony from current and former administration officials has amounted to an “unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry,” Nadler said.
From the beginning, impeachment was the solution in search of a problem. Trump’s interaction with Zelensky was certainly inappropriate, and it could even amount to an abuse of power. But that doesn’t mean it merits impeachment. Presidents abuse power constantly, as the Washington Examiner’s editorial board noted last month, and impeachment is very rarely the proper response.
That doesn’t make Trump’s actions right. He did, in fact, prioritize his personal interests above the nation’s, and Republicans would do well to admit as much. Few House Republicans have, and even fewer in the GOP-controlled Senate will.
The Democrats’ articles of impeachment will move to the Senate, and that will be the last we’ll see of them. Few Senate Republicans will break from the party, if any, and Trump will likely be acquitted early next year.
Democratic leadership must have known this would be the result. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that the Senate already considers impeachment dead on arrival, and if the GOP sticks together, they could use their tactical edge to shift the investigation’s focus to House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower, and the relationship between the two.
So why move forward with impeachment? Why not settle for a congressional censure? To put it simply: The Democrats have no choice. They put all of their eggs in this basket, and now they must see this through. Impeaching Trump isn’t just a talking point anymore; it’s a campaign promise and a defining feature of the platform.
The problem is that impeachment was never as popular among moderate swing state voters as it was among the Democratic base. Recent polls suggest the effort is backfiring in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and some vulnerable Democrats up for reelection have privately expressed concern over the party leadership’s lack of nuance.
These are the consequences of a rushed impeachment over an ambiguous transgression, and the Democratic Party will be facing them long after the Senate acquits the president.
