#ITMFA
Impeaching Trump will be bad for the Democrats? Please.
The conventional “wisdom” against impeaching Donald Trump is that a) it would hurt the Democrats’ chances in 2020, b) look what happened to the Republicans when they impeached Clinton, c) most people are against impeachment and only really care about issues that affect their lives, d) the Senate won’t convict him anyway so why bother? e) acquittal in the Senate will further empower him on the campaign trail, and f) he wants to be impeached, so we shouldn’t give him what he wants.
The underlying mistake here is thinking that this election is like any we’ve seen before. It’s not. We’re living in New America now, a country whose very worst citizen — a man who possesses not one of the Seven Virtues while embodying each of the Seven Deadly Sins — can be chosen as its leader. As much as we may have disliked or disagreed with previous administrations, this is the first time we’ve been ruled by a full-fledged kakistocracy (government by the least qualified and most unprincipled people). It’s hard to think of any member of any previous administration in our lifetime who was worse than the current holder of any position. Overlaying the voting or polling templates of any previous election onto this one is meaningless.
So, let’s eviscerate these impeachment shibboleths.
It would hurt the Democrats’ chances in 2020. How? This party has been playing defense for so long that timidity is its default position. As always, the fear is that they have to be veeeery careful, lest they enrage … WHO?
The Independents that the campaigns are aimed at, the non-ideologues whose minds are not already irrevocably made up? Avoiding impeachment — tantamount to asking them to accept that they no longer live in a nation of laws — does not seem like a winning platform.
The already perpetually enraged people who voted for Trump last time and, even if they’ve lost their jobs, declare their continued allegiance? Grievance is their religion and, impeachment or no impeachment, they’ll be worshipping at the Trump church on November 3rd, 2020.
Meanwhile, the far left showed us in 2016 how far they will go to indulge their sanctimonious spite. If the Democrats merely replace the Republicans’ active complicity with their own passive complicity in normalizing the most unlawful government in our history — if they fail to use the power they finally were given to at least try to save the nation at this most critical moment — it will be hard to make the argument that they should ever be given power again. The Democrats will not be penalized for taking a stand against brazen lawlessness. They will be penalized for not doing so.
Look what happened to the Republicans when they impeached Clinton. What happened to them? They lost a few seats in the House and two years later they controlled everything. In fact, in 1998 a large majority of independent voters thought that impeachment for lying about an affair was bullshit, whereas most independents in 2020 will understand that Trump’s impeachment would be far from frivolous.
Most people are against impeachment and only really care about issues that affect their lives. Maybe now this is true. Let’s see what they think after impeachment proceedings provide months of televised exposure to the fine points of Trump’s lifetime of crime. And besides, it’s not either-or. The Democratic candidates can campaign — indeed, are campaigning — on the issues and holding opinions on impeachment.
The Senate won’t convict him anyway, so why bother? Conviction, though it would be a nice bonus, isn’t the point. The point is getting out as much evidence as possible, so voters who haven’t had time to be mesmerized by this grotesque spectacle are made aware of exactly what Trump has done (and continues to do). The point is to reveal so much pathological criminality that the public will be repulsed. The point is to make it clear that Republicans who refuse to convict this moronic thug will be effectively endorsing lawlessness — to shine a klieg light on the former Law and Order Party cravenly protecting a mob boss.
The point is, in this era when facts are under attack from the top down, to get it all on the record that in 2016, however it happened, a stupid and depraved criminal became the President of the United States, and — surprise! — governed like a stupid and depraved criminal. We owe it to those not yet born to record this deranged moment in our history with the breadth, the depth and the accuracy it deserves and demands, on the off chance that our descendants might learn from it.
Acquittal in the Senate will further empower him on the campaign trail. Acquittal will surely launch a thousand self-righteous, self-pitying tweets and endless braying about “TOTAL EXONERATION!” but isn’t that what we already have? Umbrage is the entirety of Trump’s raison d’être, and I don’t believe that a single mind has ever been, or ever will be, changed by it.
His base needs no exhortations of “No Collusion!” and “No Obstruction!” to get riled up. They awaken riled up and go to bed riled up after spending the day riled up. If the Senate acquits him — and again, that result may be assumed now but let’s see where we are after months of devastating testimony — it seems more likely that he’ll overplay his hand and turn out enemies to vote against him whose hopelessness and ennui might otherwise have led them to stay home.
And who, after all we’ve already seen and after all we’ve yet to find out, is going to take the Yertle McConnell Senate’s acquittal as having any bearing on what actually happened? How many people stopped thinking O.J. did it after his jury rushed back in with its verdict?
He wants to be impeached, so we shouldn’t give him what he wants. He fired Comey and got Mueller. He turned on Cohen and Cohen turned on him. He has alienated the media, the FBI, the CIA, the careerists at the Justice Department, and pretty much everyone who comes in contact with him, for which he has been repaid with a tsunami of leaks exposing his absurdities and inadequacies. If this preternaturally self-destructive fool thinks there will be some advantage to being impeached, what better reason is needed to bring it on?
The only relationships Trump can truly engage in are adversarial. He cannot have a relationship based on mutual love and respect with anyone. (He even made fun of Hannity for being too sycophantic!) If he’s not engaged in combat, he ceases to exist, and what bigger battle could there be than impeachment? Of course he wants it. His whole life has been leading up to it.
The oft-asked question is: How can his bottomless rage not have led to a heart attack or stroke? In fact, he thrives on hate. It’s his fuel, just as ridicule is his Kryptonite. No one can hate others — and so many others! — that much without hating himself. His self-loathing is so intense that he is going to keep himself alive to endure the degradation and humiliation that await him. No one knows better than he how much he deserves them.
The only thing the Democrats can’t afford to do is nothing. The 2020 election is a fight for the survival of the country’s soul, if not for the survival of the country itself. Millions of people already understand that, and millions more will understand it after the impeachment hearings. The press, which today takes a dim view of impeachment, will come around. History will treat the Democrats’ initiation of impeachment proceedings — and make no mistake, Trump will continue to beg for it until he gets it — as a noble effort to rescue us, while appeasement will cement their image as useless wusses who deserve to go the way of the Whigs.
All our lives we’ve heard quadrennial heraldings of “The Most Important Election Ever!” Well, this is that — a truth viscerally understood by the Great Sentient Majority. This isn’t (D)s vs. (R)s or left vs. right. This is right vs. wrong, sanity vs. lunacy. Good vs. Evil. The epic election of our lifetimes, if not of American history. Yes, people care about health care, climate change, income inequality, gun control, voting rights, abortion, immigration, LGBTQ protections and many other issues. But Priority One — the one without which none of the others will be possible — is getting this HINO (Human In Name Only) out of power before the damage he wreaks is irreversible. To get this malevolent imbecile out of the hole he has burrowed in our heads. To get back to a time when you could go entire days without even thinking about the President.
To just MAKE IT STOP!
Paul Slansky (@slansky) is the author of The Clothes Have No Emperor and several other books. As there is now little money to be made in book publishing, he currently rants for free on Medium, Twitter and Facebook, where he founded the group TrumpelThinSkin.
