The Dems have been a timid party since Truman left the White House. Only briefly, during the Johnson Administration, were they bold enough to revisit FDR’s domestic initiatives. Obamacare can’t be counted as another exception. It was a baby-step toward universal health care, but one that filled its eponym and his party with mission-accomplished satisfaction. Even now, Obama cautions presidential aspirants against “ideas the people aren’t ready for.” To this, most Dems nod like obedient donkeys.
So far, they’ve handled the Trump impeachment proceedings in the same mindset. It was months after Mueller’s report that they got the gumption to launch a formal impeachment inquiry, and only then because Trump hasn’t the brains to curtail his outrages, even for a little while.
Now we learn that Adam Shiff, the leader of the Ukraine hearings, is saying he “would not foreclose the possibility” of further hearings. No doubt many other Democrats agree with his doublespeak, and that ticks me off. Further hearings should be a certainty, not a possibility!
If you asked House Democrats what their goal is, and if they answered truthfully, they would say, “Impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate.” (If not truthfully, they’d say, “Just to put the facts in front of the people.”) Of course, they have a snowball’s chance of getting a conviction, but what most of them don’t realize is that acquittal is okay, if they maximize the cost Republican senators will pay. The Democrats’ mantra should be, “With acquittal comes pain!”
How do they make the pain excruciating? Simple — they write a “Goldilocks” bill of impeachment that contains just the right number of articles, not too many, not too few. I think the Golden Number is 3.
Article 1 should be about obstruction of justice. No article could be meatier. Not only are there all the obstructions the Mueller Report laid out but additionally Trump’s persistent obstruction of Congress by ignoring its subpoena power. This is imperial insolence. It’s nothing less than Trump throwing the Constitution in the fire and declaring himself supreme ruler.
Article 2 has to be about extorting Ukraine to smear Biden, Trump’s most likely adversary in the 2020 election. This is the crime of putting political ambition ahead of the security goals of the country. Regrettably, there’s no provision in the Constitution for horsewhipping a president.
Article 3 should deal with malfeasance. The word applies to an official who breaks the law or causes needless harm by ignoring obligations or by carrying them out recklessly. A single wrongful or negligent act seldom constitutes malfeasance. More often, there is a pattern of wrongful behavior. So it is with Trump.
The article should cite these malfeasant behaviors:
- Undermining our news media. Trump calls them “the enemy of the people” and disparages them almost daily. On the contrary, they are our first line of defense against tyranny.
- Obscuring the truth with persistent lies and conspiracy theories. A democracy relies on well-informed decisions. Trump uses disinformation to short-circuit sound decision making.
- Separating families as a tactic against Hispanic immigration. From mid-2017 to mid-2018, the DHS was under orders to divide families who crossed the Mexican border illegally. Parents were jailed; their children were detained under miserable conditions. No records were kept for the purpose of reuniting families. It took a court order to stop this heinous practice. To date, hundreds of separated children still haven’t been reunited with their families. Trump calls the stoppage a “disaster” that brought on a surge of illegal immigration. The real disaster was the trauma done to desperate immigrants, trauma that for many will last a lifetime.
- Arrogating excessive power to himself. Trump deliberately understaffs the Executive branch to limit decision-making to fewer people. His decisions are therefore ill-informed, and the starved government agencies barely function. Moreover, he has the habit of making “acting” appointments, which sidesteps Senate consent and produces more servile underlings.
- Demeaning our intelligence agencies. They work diligently and take risks to ensure our foreign policy is grounded on facts. Trump, however, routinely accepts the lies of strong men over the truths of intelligence experts. His behavior doesn’t meet the Constitutional definition of treason, but it does meet the dictionary definition of betrayal, of our nation’s expertise and security.
- Appealing to haters and bigots. Trumps efforts to bring these people into his base and the consequences of doing so are well documented. I hope the House will enter these sources or ones like them into the record: The Trump Administration’s Record of Racism and The Effect of President Trump’s Election on Hate Crimes.
- Rejecting nation-wide action against environmental pollution and climate change. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge these existential problems isn’t hard to explained. He prefers the here-and-now enrichment of the fossil fuel and mining industries to an all-out fight against starvation, mass migrations, economic chaos, the destruction of coastal habitats, and the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in the Earth’s history.
- Tolerating gun violence and the terror of our children. Trump has a cruel M.O. whenever a mass shooting occurs. He makes a somber speech. It has to be scripted because he has no spontaneous warmth. He makes a show of concern by brainstorming with Congressional leaders. He waits for NRA-owned Republicans to advocate the status quo. Ultimately, he proposes a preposterous idea, like arming teachers or widening the adoption of open carry. Nothing changes, and school children are asked to learn in an atmosphere fraught with apprehension. For this alone, Trump should be removed from office.
House leaders have to slow down for the possibility that another article will develop. If Trump’s tax returns contain evidence of fraud or evasion, the Judiciary Committee must draft a fourth article that exposes him as a tax cheat. It’s therefore imperative that they wait until at least February for his tax returns to become public. Recent developments give me hope that we are close to seeing them.
Even with these powerful articles, the Republican Senate is still likely to acquit Trump, but the cost to them will be devastating.
What’s to be done about Trump? Putting him in the White House was the greatest electoral error in our history, as he unwittingly reminds us every day. Surely there must be a way to correct this blunder before January 20, 2021. If we can’t find a means, one might plausibly claim the disgrace of installing him was surpassed by the disgrace of keeping him.
The Scratching Post 