Pelosi Is Just Plain Wrong About Impeachment

I understand why she's not moving forward. She thinks impeachment will cost her party House seats-- that a dozen members who rarely vote with the Democrats anyway could lose in swing districts. She's wrong about that and even if she were right, why should anyone give a crap about "Democrats" like Joe Cunningham (SC), Xochitl Torres Small (NM), Ben McAdams (UT), Anthony Brindisi (NY), Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Kendra Horn (OK) and Josh Gottheimer (NJ)? They may-- or may not-- be pleasant company at lunch, but they don't vote with the Democrats more than half the time anyway. The party is better off without them. And-- as we saw earlier in the case of Van Drew-- they undermine the party's values and brand.Borrowing from Paul Rosenberg's Salon piece (see below), the argument that impeachment will hurt House Democrats in swing districts next year "is premised on a number of false assumptions: That impeachment will necessarily be seen as partisan; that public opinion won’t change in response to new information; that everyone who voted for Trump in a swing district is part of Trump’s base; that voters will punish a principled stand, rather than respect it (see, for example, the standing ovation Amash received at his recent town hall); and that members of Congress can't articulate fact-based, nonpartisan arguments for impeachment, just to name some of the most obvious ones.

We’ve already seen initial evidence, both from Amash and from a few swing-district Democrats, indicating that all these assumptions are questionable at best. “We were getting about two to one in terms of the number of calls opposing impeachment and telling us to stop the investigation,” Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., told Chris Hayes last week. “Now we’re getting three or four to one saying, we need to be moving forward. This is getting too out of hand.” Hill is a self-described moderate who narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Steve Knight last fall.

Another newly-elected California Democrat, Rep. Katie Porter-- who unseated GOP incumbent Mimi Walters in an Orange County district Democrats had never won-- said she had seen “a real turning point” at her town hall, NBC reported. “Porter told voters here that while she did not run for office to impeach the president and never mentioned it on the campaign trail, ‘I will not shirk my duties if the time comes.’”

Democrats must certainly conduct a careful deliberative process along the lines of the Watergate hearings, as one participant in that process, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, has argued. “Rather than dividing the country, the impeachment process brought it together-- most Americans agreed that more important than any president or party were the rule of law and the Constitution,” Holtzman writes. “Nixon was permanently disgraced-- and the Committee’s work has never seriously been challenged.”

The key to this success was a transparently fair process, and swing-district representatives like Hill and Porter can play important leadership roles in advocating for such fairness and transparency, with little political risk-- provided that Democrats not only deliver such a process, but vigorously defend it as well.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a piece by Mike DeBonis, Rachael Bade and Paul Kane, Inside Democrats' Divisive Impeachment Debate. Why are the House Democrats dragging their feet on impeaching Trump? All the considerations at the top are nakedly, disgustingly partisan and the leadership is not considering its constitutional duty to hold the criminal fake president accountable. Even their partisan considerations are wrong; they are further wrecking whatever is left of the party's good name. "Many," wrote the trio, "feel caught between party leaders fearful that impeachment will spark a political backlash and a growing sense that history will judge harshly those who chose not to act in the face of a norm-smashing president many Democrats believe has abused his power and broken the law."

A few weeks ago Katie Hill was "on the verge" of calling for impeachment. The Post keeps referring to her district as "Republican leaning," even as they report that calls to her office were 20 to 1 for impeachment. And, despite lazy reporters assertions, CA-25 is not Republican-leaning. The district has been turning bluer and bluer for years. The Democrats now have a registration advantage. Even as weak a candidate as Hillary beat Trump in 2016, by 7 points. And in 2018 Katie Hill ousted GOP incumbent Steve Knight 133,209 (54.4%) to 111,813 (45.6%). The demographics are totally on the side of the Democrats and as long as the party doesn't do too much to disincentive the base, Republicans will never win in CA-25 again. There is a reason Hill "is drowning in calls urging her to press for impeachment" and it is not because she's in what the DCCC keeps telling journalists to refer to as "Republican leaning."

What's the DCCC got to do with it? Plenty. DCCC chair and reactionary Blue Dog Cheri Bustos has instructed the committee's staff to use scare tactics on freshmen about impeachment. Bustos didn't like hearing Hill say she "was willing to lose her seat if impeachment were the right thing to do" and "after Hill appeared on CNN last month and said her 'red line' on impeachment was Trump defying a court order to comply with congressional investigations, her office got a call from a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee official, who cautioned her staff about Hill speaking in such definitive terms, according to an individual familiar with the warning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the conversation." Bustos is spreading her anti-impeachment poison everywhere. Trump couldn't have a better congressional advocate.

Mueller’s statement last month on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has pushed many lawmakers closer toward supporting impeachment. The former special counsel said his office could neither clear nor accuse Trump of obstructing his investigation, citing a long-standing Justice Department opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Since then, freshman Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) said she has noticed an increase in the volume and intensity of pro-impeachment calls and emails to her office.

“There are many people who said, six months ago, ‘It’s harmful to the country.’ And today they’re saying, ‘It’s harmful to the country but for a very different reason.’ So there definitely is momentum,” said Hayes, who added: “We have to do something. I don’t know what that something is.”

Grappling with what to do, freshman Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) has reached out to pro-impeachment Judiciary Committee members to ask whether an inquiry would actually help Democrats obtain documents and testimony they have sought through the courts. Levin huddled with [Dan] Kildee and Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-MD), a Judiciary panel member and former constitutional law professor, on the House floor last month, and Raskin told him impeachment would speed the process.

“Ultimately if [Judiciary members] believe that that’s what they need in order to most effectively conduct the investigations, then I would support that decision,” Levin said.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) is moving in the opposite direction. Even though Hillary Clinton carried his district with 84 percent of the vote and he voted for impeachment articles in the last Congress, he isn’t certain he would do the same now. [In the primary it was in Gomez's district that Bernie had his strongest showing. Bernie won the district in 2016 and will win the primary next year as well.]

“It has to be ironclad, and it has to be a mountain of evidence,” said Gomez, who favors launching an inquiry. “It’s too serious of a step, and it can’t be done willy-nilly just because people want it.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who was first elected in 1998 and hails from a liberal district, is balancing a pro-impeachment constituency with her longtime loyalty to Pelosi.

Pro-impeachment calls to her Washington office spiked from 130 the last week of May to more than 160 the first week of June, Schakowsky said. And during a recent meeting with senior Democrats, Schakowsky challenged Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL), head of the campaign committee, and her claim that voters don’t seem to care about impeachment.

But while she has “absolutely no doubt that [Trump] has committed high crimes and misdemeanors,” Schakowsky said she is not there yet. “I think there may be just a bit more that we can do to make sure that we are traveling with the American people to that destination.”

Sunday, Newsweek reported that Michael Gerhardt, who teaches constitutional law at the University of North Carolina, in his summary of Congress’ view of impeachment, explained that "Impeachable offenses encompass serious abuses of power, breaches of trust, and serious injuries to the Republic." Other than conservative Kool Aid drinkers is there anyone in Congress who doesn't see that fitting Trump? Gerhardt added that those offenses must include two elements of misconduct-- 'bad intent or bad faith,' and 'bad acts.'" Who's going to argue-- other than miscreants like Gym Jordan and Matt Gaetz-- that that doesn't fit Trump to a T?

Newsweek also reported that Judiciary Committee member and pro-impeachment advocate Jamie Raskin said that "Trump's activities mirror President Nixon’s, but then go way beyond. Certainly, we can see the same kind of obstruction of justice, we certainly see the same kind of contempt of Congress, and we certainly see the same kinds of abuses of power."




Beto told the ABC News audience yesterday that "If we do not hold the president accountable, we will have set the precedent that some people in this country because of their position of power are in fact above the law and if we do that, we will lose this democracy forever. So regardless of the popularity of the idea or what the polling shows us, we must proceed with impeachment so that we get the facts and the truth and at the end of the day, there is justice for what was done to democracy in 2016."

Paul Rosenberg, writing for Salon this past weekend, noted that there are 11 things Pelosi has wrong about impeachment and that her "position no longer makes any coherent sense... If one ignores the threat of democratic backsliding, then it could be rational, pragmatic and even principled to be guided by fears of a political downside to impeachment, and to view everything through that lens. But that’s a threat one cannot ignore: Even if you view the argument in Pelosi's terms, the political downside of refusing to impeach is potentially far greater than the downside of impeachment itself." Here are the 11 points she's wrong on:

Pelosi believes that the American people don’t support impeachment, and that pursuing it will prove disastrous for Democrats. She’s focused on the downside of impeaching, while ignoring the downside of not doing so. This is clearly her overriding concern, and it’s fundamentally mistaken... 1) Trump wants impeachment, and is deliberately luring Democrats into it; 2) Impeachment will divide the nation, and 3) We don’t have enough facts to know whether impeachment is warranted.

• Mistaken Argument 1: Trump wants impeachment
• Mistaken Argument 2: Impeachment will divide the nation
• Mistaken Argument 3: We don't have enough facts
• Mistaken Argument 4: Impeachment will hurt House Democrats in swing districts next year
• Mistaken argument 5: Impeachment will distract from the Democratic agenda
• Mistaken Argument 6: The people don't want impeachment
• Ignored Argument 1: An impeachment inquiry is primarily about informing the public
• Ignored Argument 2:  There's a serious potential downside for Republicans, even if Trump is acquitted by the Senate 
• Ignored Argument 3: House Democrats' primary need is to demonstrate their seriousness
• Ignored Argument 4: Democrats have no reason to wait
• And one last thought on her strategy: It "neglects what may be the shrewdest political calculation of all: Putting Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate in the position of acquitting a president the House has calmly and deliberately proven to be a criminal. To repeat Adam Jentleson's formula, 'The decision not to impeach is not a decision to focus on other things, it is a decision to cede power, control, and legitimacy to Trump.' Surely Nancy Pelosi is too smart to do that."

Oh? We'll see about that, won't we?