Impeachment message in timely Christmas colors
By now, many people realize that the impeachment of Donald Trump involves a public relations war. On one side, we have Trump and the Republicans claiming that the Democrats are “obsessed with impeaching” Trump, to the exclusion of all else. So what have the Democrats done effectively to counter that charge? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
First, House Democrats unveiled their Articles of Impeachment against Trump while simultaneously announcing that they had reached an agreement with Trump on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade. This is a reminder by Democrats (and they are sure to remind us further) that, not only can they govern and impeach Trump at the same time, they have passed nearly 400 bills, all of which are sitting idly on Mitch McConnell‘s U.S. Senate desk.
Second, the timing of the House Democrats’ announcement of Articles of Impeachment couldn’t be better. The full House vote on the Articles is supposed to take place next week. If a majority of the House votes for at least one Article, that is the magic moment where the headlines will read, “Trump is Impeached.” House Democratic leaders have timed their actions so that, if they adhere to this schedule, Trump will be impeached in 2019, instead of election year 2020. That makes a huge difference, because otherwise, Republicans and the media would likely have turned the House impeachment into merely a partisan political circus. Instead, Democrats can run for office in 2020 on all the issues raised by their impeachment process (lawless Trump failing to protect our Democracy, selling America out to Russia, extorting our ally Ukraine, etc.), without the media successfully claiming that the Democrats are running on impeachment itself as an election strategy. Indeed, if the Democrats wrap up their House impeachment this month, and the Republican Senate trial drags into 2020 (where Senate Republicans will almost certainly run their trial in a shrill, hack fashion), it will look like the Republicans, not the Democrats, are treating impeachment in a partisan political manner. Perhaps House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues have laid a trap for Republicans here.
Third, the House Democrats streamlined their Articles of Impeachment down to just two: abuse of power, and obstruction of Congress. While the Democrats could have added more Articles, such as bribery (which is specifically mentioned in our Constitution as a grounds for impeachment), doing so likely would have lengthened the time it would take to introduce the Articles, with no real bang for the buck. No further number of Articles, or time, is likely to change the basic result: House Democrats have the majority in their chamber and will likely vote to impeach Trump; Senate Republicans have the majority in their chamber and will likely vote not to remove him. However, Democratic House leaders have run this process in a very professional and sober manner, as befits the seriousness of the occasion, and we can now add “efficient” too. At the holiday dinners later this month, impeachment certainly will be on the table.
Photo by Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/Fu96Zw
