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When
the story of the probable impeachment and perhaps removal of President
Donald Trump is written, Thursday, Oct. 3, is going to be one of the big
days.
It
started off with the president publicly asking China and Ukraine to dig
up – or perhaps manufacture – dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden;
see my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Timothy L. O'Brien for the sordid details. Then, in the evening, bombshell after bombshell after bombshell landed, capped off late at night with House Democrats releasing text messages that
detailed how the U.S. pressured Ukraine to go after Biden and to pursue
bizarre conspiracy theories about the 2016 election.
Put
it all together, and one thing is clear: The normal defenses that a
president’s allies in Congress would mount in such a situation
increasingly aren’t available.
One
typical excuse made when a president gets into trouble is that there’s
insufficient proof. That’s what President Richard Nixon’s defenders
often resorted to, and it’s something Republicans tried out over the
past week – noting that the whistle-blower in the Ukraine scandal had
access only to secondhand evidence. That always seemed like a weak
defense, especially once the White House published a summary of a call
between Trump and the president of Ukraine that corroborated the
whistle-blower’s account. But after Thursday, it’ll be hard to use that
one at all, at least in good faith.
Another
classic defense is to question whether the president was personally
involved. That’s how Republicans defended President Ronald Reagan during
the Iran-Contra scandal, with some success. But it was never especially
viable this time, and after Trump’s public performance on Thursday,
it’s hopeless.
That
leaves the defense that Democrats successfully used for Bill Clinton:
that the president’s misconduct doesn’t merit impeachment. Unfortunately
for Republicans, that one isn’t credible either. Not only does asking
(or pressuring) foreign nations to interfere in U.S. elections obviously
fit within traditional conceptions of “high crimes and misdemeanors,”
but there’s plenty of other evidence of Trump abusing his power, obstructing justice and more. If this doesn’t merit impeachment, nothing will.
And
so, with reasonable arguments increasingly untenable, we’re starting to
see some preposterous ones. The one to watch out for now is that
impeachment and removal is inherently undemocratic. Trump won the 2016 election fair and square; preventing him from serving out his term defies the will of the electorate.
This
one won’t fly either – even if we ignore the Framers’ intentions and
more than 200 years of precedent (including Clinton’s impeachment). The
U.S. simply isn't a majoritarian democracy, with the president as an
elective monarch who fully embodies the intent of the people. It's a
system of separated institutions sharing powers. Congress has just as
much claim to being the voice of the people as the president does. And
if upholding the law and respecting constitutional procedures is
essential to maintaining a republic, then impeachment is an appropriate
democratic remedy for malfeasance in office – especially when
the offenses involved are central to the operation of constitutional
democracy.
What
all this adds up to is that there are few good-faith defenses left.
That doesn’t mean Trump’s allies can’t spout cheap slogans and phony
“facts” and otherwise refuse to acknowledge what’s actually going on. In
fact, it’s still more likely than not that most Republicans in Congress
will do exactly that. But they’re going to get undermined again and
again by the facts of this case, and there’s a good chance that only the
most intensely loyal party voters will be swayed by what they’re
saying.
1. Dave Hopkins on Trump’s strategy for (or at least his reactions to) likely impeachment.
6. Ariel Edwards-Levy on polling showing that impeachment has become a lot more popular.
That’s no surprise; once Democrats in Congress and other opinion
leaders united behind impeachment, the most likely outcome was that
voters would follow. But while it’s worth knowing, what will move
members of Congress is Trump’s approval rating – and whether or not
there’s evidence of intense support or opposition, as demonstrated by
voters contacting their representatives. Or not. | 
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