The Impeachment Question

The case for and against House Democrats talking about it.

Lots of people want congressional Democrats to impeach Donald Trump, or at least – since they can’t do that – try really hard to impeach Donald Trump. House Democrats, for the most part, are not enthusiastic about it, as David Weigel and Kadia Goba report.

To begin with, the substantive case for impeachment and removal is a pretty easy one; Trump has repeatedly attacked and attempted to undermine the Constitution. Michigan Democrat Shri Thanedar has introduced articles of impeachment, and it’s a reasonable starting point to the case one could make for removing him from office.

When it comes to procedure, however, the basic facts are straightforward. Democrats do not have the votes to impeach Trump. There are currently no House Republicans who would vote for impeachment. Therefore, any formal action on impeachment – and that’s what’s at issue here, not whether they talk about it – would basically be a form of publicity, not a real effort to remove Trump.¹

They also cannot force Republicans to conduct an impeachment inquiry, or do anything else at the committee level. However, House rules do allow Democrats to force a vote on an impeach resolution (sort of; they can’t force a final vote, but they can make Republicans take a vote on whether or not to vote on an impeachment resolution, a vote that Republicans would win). They also could do this multiple times. They cannot, however, force any debate or careful consideration of an impeachment resolution.²

So there are three real options: Bring it up once; bring it up multiple times; or don’t bring it up at all.

The first option is the easiest to discuss. A one-and-done losing impeachment vote just wouldn’t matter. It would be, at best, a one day story, and barely that. Forcing that vote (and then losing and moving on to other things) wouldn’t influence anyone in their opinions about Trump at all, because hardly anyone would hear about it. It wouldn’t relieve the pressure on Democrats to Do Something, since those who insist on that would hardly be satisfied. Nor is there much downside to doing it, since again: No one would notice.

So that makes the real question whether they should make pests of themselves on the House floor over impeachment or not.

The best argument for it is basically that publicity stunts are all that House Democrats can really do, so they might as well do any that they can.

I think, on balance, the case against it is stronger.

Suppose Democrats started forcing frequent impeachment votes, and suppose that it caught on with the national media. One might think that’s a win for Trump opponents. But I’m not sure it is, for two reasons.

The first one is very simple: It’s a vote that unites Republicans. The winning move for Trump opponents right now is to add to their coalition, and that means expanding beyond just Democrats, but impeachment for the foreseeable future has no appeal at all for any Republican politicians, and certainly not anyone within GOP-aligned media.

But also? If Democrats succeed in making impeachment and removal the central question about Trump, they’re shifting the argument from his crimes to potential remedies. And that’s a harder sell, and, really a distraction at the point. Trump is doing a lot of terribly unpopular things, and others that might be unpopular. It makes much more sense, to me, to keep pushing on what he’s doing wrong than on whether they rise to the level of impeachment.³

One might argue otherwise if Democrats had a majority in the House and had the option of actually passing articles of impeachment. That would especially be true if they also had a Senate majority and could therefore conduct a full trial, one that might put real pressure on Republican Senators and would certainly capture the attention of the media.

But none of that is the case. Instead, pushing hard for impeachment would unify Republicans behind Trump and waste the opportunity to continue to hit him on the things that are currently driving his popularity down, without much of an obvious upside.

One might argue that stressing impeachment could convince people of the importance of Trump’s various attacks on the Constitution. Perhaps. Or perhaps that’s unnecessary. And after all: Democrats want to convince everyone and have the support of all those who believe, say, that disappearing people to foreign prison camps without any legal process is a bad thing. Even if they don’t agree it merits removing Trump from office.

I’ve seen several people claim that without supporting impeachment, Democrats cannot convince people that there’s a serious attack on democracy going on. I don’t buy that at all. It’s an assertion without evidence; I might as well say that if people aren’t lighting themselves on fire in protest that they can’t be taken seriously in saying that the republic is in trouble. Impeachment discussed that way is just an arbitrary marker. We can’t assume that most US citizens use it to decide how serious the out-party is with their accusations.

On the other hand, I also don’t particularly think that premature impeachment talk is likely to make it harder to round up the votes if the situation changes and impeachment and removal becomes a viable option. We saw Trump and his allies lean on that argument during his two first-term impeachments, repeatedly bringing up stray Democrats who had talked impeachment soon after the 2016 election and then after he was sworn in. But I’m extremely skeptical that it swayed anyone or came close to doing so.

The bottom line here is that the the minority party in the House has few institutional levers to do much, and on top of that the national media isn’t likely to pay attention to any attempts to generate publicity.⁴ Democratic Senators are better positioned for publicity; elected officials at the statewide and local levels have better substantive possibilities. That doesn’t mean that House Democrats shouldn’t try. They should! And, in many cases, they are. But just don’t expect game-changers from them. Whether it’s impeachment talk or anything else.

1. They don’t have the votes in the House, and they’re even farther from having the supermajority needed in the Senate to convict and remove.

2. House Democrats could do an unofficial impeachment inquiry. I think holding unofficial hearings is a good idea in general, although so far when they’ve tried it they failed to grab much attention. They should keep trying, whether the topic is impeachment or specific crimes the administration is committing.

3. There’s a debate out there about which things Democrats should focus on, and my sense is that there’s no correct answer, and it probably matters less than people think. I do think that Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of their shadows; if they believe something is criminal, unconstitutional, or just plain wrong they should go ahead and say so. But I also think that there’s nothing wrong with sometimes focusing on really unpopular stuff, even if it might not be the most important. Mostly, I don’t think they need to resolve this. Different Democrats (and other Trump opponents) will naturally try different things, and that’s fine.

4. Yes, AOC is an exception. She’s very good. But that doesn’t really change anything for the rest of the party in the House.