Impeachment politics

Several features stand out in the impeachment quest against President Donald J Trump. There is constitutional discourse as mythology and fetish. There is outrage that the executive office could have been used to actually investigate political opponents through foreign agents. There is cattiness over whether the conduct of the president veered into the territory of criminality, or fell somewhat short in his incessant obstruction.

One theme stands out: The sheer divisiveness of this effort, which tore at the Democratic camp even as it encouraged Trump. As Democrats reflected over the House vote (230 to 197) to give Trump the constitutional heave-ho to the Senate, no sores have been healed, or divisions patched across the country. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was also careful not to give an explicit show of delight. Trump the symptom remains, his voting base not necessarily convinced or persuaded.

This is something Trump is reaping with manic persistence. In a letter to Pelosi, he blustered that, “More due process was afforded those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.” He had been “denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence.” The Democrats had been, he charged, obsessed by a “partisan impeachment crusade”.

He also reiterated the basis of murky political strategy, something that resists the parameters of legal fettering. “You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars of US aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars.” This is a less than noble reminder that US politics remains, at its heart, darkened, a condition that refuses to heal.

The position taken by moderate Democrats is that voting for the measure might not have been a politically sound thing from a self-interested point of view, but was inevitable. “If I lose my seat, so be it,” reflected New York Democratic Rep Anthony Brindisi. “At the end of the day, I had to do what I felt was right for our country and the rule of law.”

What the impeachment process cannot escape from is politics. As Gerald Ford stated while a House Rep, an impeachable offence might be best described as “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers to be at a given moment in history.” The very idea of what consists of “high crimes and misdemeanours” outlined in Article II, Section 4 encourages sufficient vagueness and manipulation.

Excerpted from: ‘The Politics of Trump’s Impeachment’.

Counterpunch.org