On Impeachment and Its Failure
By 
I am not totally sure that I agree with the point that failing to convict Trump of his crimes during the impeachment meant that he would then feel empowered to not leave office after the election. But only because I feel he would have done that either way.
In December 2019, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, all stemming from a ploy in which he attempted to extort the Ukrainian government into assisting his reelection campaign. In February, the Republican-led Senate voted not to remove him from office. After that, impeachment mostly disappeared from national discourse, barely playing a role in the presidential election, even though it was a historic moment and the idea was stunningly popular, and even though it involved Trump’s attempt to scuttle the campaign of Joe Biden, who ended up as the Democratic presidential nominee. But views on Trump were already largely ossified, and besides, there was the pandemic and an economic crisis to deal with.
The memory of impeachment is back with a vengeance this week. Though Biden beat Trump, the president continues to try to overturn Biden’s victory. In a phone call on Saturday that was eerily reminiscent of Trump’s July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump tried to pressure Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia (the state, not the country) to do something, anything, to throw the state’s results back to him.
During impeachment, Trump’s critics, including me, warned repeatedly that if he were not impeached and removed, he’d feel empowered to commit the same offenses again. Trump’s current, shambling coup attempt is the price of the Senate’s failure to remove him.
Raffensperger, who seems understandably furious over Trump’s pressure campaign against him, taped the conversation and then released it to The Washington Post after Trump lied about it on Twitter. The president’s MO has not changed since July 2019—in fact, it has scarcely changed over the course of his career. All the hallmarks of the Zelensky call popped up in the Saturday coup call. Trump alternates between wheedling flattery and domineering (though vague) threats. He suggests that Raffensperger owes him one—aren’t they on the same team? He presents a proposed miscarriage of justice as a vindication of justice. Just as he did with Zelensky, Trump runs through a litany of wild and false conspiracy theories.
Trump speaks like a mob boss, making his desire clear but never saying explicitly what he wants, so as to maintain deniability. What he says is, “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” What he means is, Find some way to throw out valid votes so that I can win. (Never mind that the state’s results have been certified and its electors seated; Raffensperger’s role has concluded.)
The problem with impeachment is basically that liberals think rules still matter and they clearly do not. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t matter. But they don’t. So throughout the Trump administration, we’ve seen, over and over, liberals appeal to the “better” side of Republicans, which doesn’t exist. We’ve seen liberals really want to believe in the system, but with little result. We’ve seen liberals use the checks and balances of the government, thinking that when confronted with clear evidence of overwhelming crimes, that ultimately people will do the right thing.
The problem with impeachment was always that a) it wouldn’t work and b) no one would care after it was through. That’s exactly what happened. It doesn’t mean it was wrong to impeach Trump. It just means that that it was an irrelevant action, as many suggested it was. LGM writers were not heavily on the impeachment train for these reasons that should have been obvious to everyone.
Again, I’m not sure that Trump feels more empowered after the failure of the Senate to convict him than before. He just always assumes he can operate outside the law without consequences. I think that probably we as a nation will have a reprieve from him starting January 20. But I’m not ready to guarantee that result. Who knows what’s going to happen in two weeks.