Looking forward to January 2019, when the 116th Congress convenes with a Democrat House of Representatives and a Republican Senate, at the forefront of the minds of political operatives and observers alike is: Why would congressional Democrats go down the road of impeaching President Donald Trump, knowing that the Senate will not convict? The answer, of course, is that they would not. Democrats are likely thinking of 2020 as the year they will depose Trump, and they are not looking to achieve this at the ballot box.
When House Republicans engineered the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in December 1998, they paid a high political price. The Democrats held a majority in the Senate and declined to convict Clinton, but it is hard to say whether the defeat of the impeachment effort made things worse for the Republicans, who may have been punished even more harshly in the next election had they succeeded in removing the 42nd president from office.
Andrew Jackson (left), Richard Nixon (Center), Bill Clinton (right)
The Perils of Impeachment
The reality is that using the legal system to remove a sitting president – for anything less than a clearly proven crime of some magnitude, such as treason, bribery, or murder – is not something for which most Americans have the stomach. Presidents are installed and removed by the electorate. Using the impeachment process is akin to nullifying the will of the people. Yes, one can argue that it is a constitutional procedure. However, the Founding Fathers included it to deal with the possibility that an actual traitor managed to become president and to prevent future holders of the highest office in the land from believing that they were above the law – which hasn’t prevented some past presidents from thinking they were.
If Trump were to be impeached and convicted, resulting in the premature termination of his presidency (and over nothing more serious than a violation of campaign finance laws), the nation would be torn apart. The Democrats would, without any doubt, be forever seen as the party that gambled with America’s future – risking even civil war – because of their mindless hatred for one man.
The Long Game
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”24″]…Democrats are already moving to launch a slew of investigations…[/perfectpullquote]
Democrats do not want to have to impeach Trump. They are playing a longer game: They want to use the threat of impeachment and the additional threat of criminal action against him, post-presidency, to persuade him to not run for re-election. They intend to use the threat of criminal prosecution to dissuade everyone from wanting to work on the president’s re-election team, rendering it impossible for him to mount an effective campaign. The idea – the hope – is that no one will have to introduce articles of impeachment because Donald J. Trump will take the Nixonian way out and resign rather than win re-election, be removed from office, and see his presidential legacy relegated to the scrap heap, as was Nixon’s.
To facilitate this ultimate act of political coercion, House Democrats are already moving to launch a slew of investigations while also working to prevent Trump from bringing the special counsel to an end. Robert Mueller has been given such a staggeringly expansive scope that he could, in theory, continue following lines of investigation indefinitely, and the Democrats want to ensure that Mueller and his prosecutors are still digging up alleged crimes when the 2020 presidential campaign gets underway. At that time, those same Democrats will be holding hearings, firing off subpoenas, and issuing threats. The cumulative effect, the president’s opponents hope, will simply be too overwhelming for Trump to present a case for his re-election and those who may otherwise have worked for his campaign will think it too much of a personal liability.
Democrats Redefine How to Rig an Election
Mueller is, quite possibly, a conscious participant in this strategy. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen – even though at least two of those three have committed crimes – have been prosecuted primarily as examples. Democrats are using the special counsel and will use their imminent subpoena power to send a message: work for Trump 2020 and we will come after you; campaign for Trump 2020 and we will come after you; support Trump 2020 and we will come after you.
Making their threats more credible is the fact that the Democrats have a much more favorable electoral landscape in 2020: Unlike 2018, it is the Republicans who will be defending a large majority of the Senate seats up for re-election. Congressional Democrats can and will talk up their chances of gaining a majority in the Senate, meaning that – even if the president managed to win a second term – Senate Democrats would be in a position to obtain a conviction if they were to vote on articles of impeachment.
Impeaching Trump in 2019 would be a futile and highly damaging exercise. Impeaching him in 2020 – just weeks before the start of the campaign season – against a backdrop of multiple congressional investigations and subpoenas for thousands of pages of documents and for Trump Cabinet members and White House staff to appear for questioning would take a wrecking ball to the president’s re-election strategy. This is what real election meddling looks like, and the Democrats have redefined it in the most sinister way imaginable.
