Beware: Those arguing the Dems are making a miscalculation have got it all wrong.
Beware: Those arguing the Dems are making a miscalculation have got it all wrong.
T he Wall Street Journal’s editors gave voice on Tuesday to the conventional Republican wisdom: Democrats are pressing ahead with the impeachment of former president Donald Trump, despite the obvious divisiveness it portends, because “their goal is to banish Mr. Trump from running for office again.” This is a miscalculation, the theory goes, because the trial is likely to result in “his acquittal and political revival.”
I’ve made the same argument . . . though I’ve come to believe the conclusion that Democrats are miscalculating is itself a miscalculation (and if you read on, the Journal’s editors ended up hedging their bets, too).
The line of thinking that Democrats are pointlessly, heedlessly pursuing Trump’s impeachment was also behind Tuesday’s futile Republican gambit to shut down the impeachment trial just as it got underway. Of the Senate’s 50 Republicans, 45 lined up behind Kentucky senator Rand Paul’s bid to dismiss the proceeding as unconstitutional on the ground that Trump has already left office and is therefore ineligible to be removed.
I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that Senator Paul’s objection was voted down because all 50 Democrats, having no doubt studied the jurisprudence just as deeply, found themselves deciding that the impeachment trial of a non-incumbent is valid. Just like the Republicans, they managed to conclude that constitutional law and their own political preference aligned perfectly. Funny how that happens.
In point of fact, the question — specifically, whether a former president, who is now a private citizen, may properly be impeached in order to trigger the Constitution’s disqualification penalty upon conviction — is a close and contested one. We’ve repeatedly demonstrated that at National Review. (See, e.g., today’s latest offering by Robert Delahunty and John Yoo on the originalist case against such a proceeding, as well as John Bolton’s similar conclusion; compare, e.g., this explication of the originalist case in favor by Dan McLaughlin. I’ve also written on the subject a number of times, going back to 2016.)
A number of Republican senators are, in fact, deep thinkers about the Constitution. They’ve undoubtedly reasoned their way to the “against” side of the question in good faith, as have many impressive scholars for whom Trump’s involvement is irrelevant. That said, it’s impossible to believe that all or even most of the 45 who joined the Paul objection would see it the same way if a former Democratic president were in the dock. Or, for that matter, that Democratic senators would not grab on to any plausible theory — and even some implausible ones — that would spare a Democratic former president.
The blunt fact of life here is that Trump, who is self-absorbed and vindictive, retains powerful influence over a bloc of voters. How attached to Trump that bloc will remain as time passes and new issues and political dynamics emerge is uncertain. I have always believed that, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the former president did not so much “create a movement” as co-opt the Tea Party’s anti-establishment streak. Many of those voters (not all, but many) will reattach to Republicans as the latter become more anti-establishment in opposition than they are when in the majority. For now, though, the Trump devotees are a significant factor in electoral politics — for Republicans who want to avoid primary challenges, keep their seats, and move up in the world.
Consequently, Republicans want to be able to show Trump voters that they fought the impeachment. This fine legal point on the constitutionality of the Senate trial presented a convenient opportunity to “fight for Trump” without appearing to defend the former president’s indefensible conduct.
It should go without saying that Senators Paul, Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the 45 who lost Tuesday’s vote are smart folks. They had no illusions about winning on the legal point. Their real objective was to illustrate that the votes will not be there to convict the president, no matter how the trial unfolds after it begins in earnest on February 9. There are 50 Senate Republicans, it would take 17 of them to convict, and (as Rich Lowry observes) yesterday’s vote strongly suggests that the convict side is at least a dozen short. As succinctly put by Maine senator Susan Collins, one of the five Republicans to break ranks, “just do the math.”
To summarize, Republicans are trying to signal that Democrats should just drop the whole thing. The votes are not there; ergo, it’s a waste of time. All it will do is raise Trump’s profile, give him a platform to air his grievances, and launch his political revival. Who wants that?
The Democrats want that.
Despite President Biden’s pretensions about bringing our nation together, Democrats want to impeach Trump because it will be divisive, not despite its divisiveness. They are banking on his being acquitted and politically revived, not underestimating that possibility. They want him to run for office again, not banish him.
Yes, the former president’s impeachment trial will be divisive for the country, but not in a way that troubles the Democrats. Rather, it will unite the Left while intensifying the Right’s internecine conflict.
With Republicans having agreed to delay the trial proceedings for a couple of weeks, impeachment will be a boon for the fledgling Biden administration. The new president will get his major appointees confirmed and installed in the various executive departments and agencies. Meantime, Biden will get a double windfall.
First, impeachment will distract attention from the new administration’s unimpressive start on vaccine roll-out. Biden was not elected because Americans were desperate to rejoin the Paris climate accords and ensure that mediocre boy-athletes could rack up medals in girls’ high-school sports. He was elected to do two things: not be Trump temperamentally and lead the country past COVID-19. So far, as Jim Geraghty expertly details daily, the vaccination ramp-up has been less than ambitious; the biggest problems continue to be coordination with and distribution by Democrat-controlled states; and the biggest scandal is extortion by the Democrat-patron teachers unions, which is keeping kids out of public schools. Impeachment will give the media-Democrat complex something else to spotlight.
Second, as an opportunity for centrist Democrats and post-American progressives to unite against their arch-nemesis, impeachment will, for a time, distract attention from President Moderate-Joe’s efforts to throw his left flank the red meat it was mostly denied in his cabinet selections. A few weeks of Donald Trump coverage couldn’t come at a better time, with Biden appeasing the climate-alarmists, killing the popular Keystone XL pipeline (and killing thousands of jobs with it), making way for a raft of economy-stifling regulations, doubling down on transgender ideology and immigration amnesty, planning to rejoin the ludicrous Iran nuclear deal, and intensifying societal tensions by selectively condemning insurrectionist violence.
Finally, as the Left perceptively sees it, the impeachment trial is already causing deep rifts in Republican and conservative circles. Democrats do not delude themselves into believing Trump will be convicted at the Senate trial and disqualified from future office. To the contrary, they want him to remain a force, wreaking havoc on the 2022 GOP midterm-election effort and the 2024 presidential campaign — splitting the party; forcing the nomination of Trump-populists with narrow appeal who cannot win general elections; and either getting himself nominated or mounting an independent presidential run that will geometrically increase the chance that Democrats hold on to the White House.
Democrats do not want to disqualify Trump. They want to keep him radioactive. They want to remind the country in lurid detail of the former president’s role in the lethal January 6 rioting — the demagogic speech, the failure to take action while the seat of government was under siege. And then they want to force a vote — conviction or acquittal — that will be framed as every GOP senator’s choice to stand with Trump or against him.
How do Democrats want Republicans to vote? No matter . . . it’s a win-win.