Here's my column of June 6, 2019. Posting belatedly as I was out of town.
By MARSHA MERCER
California Democrats at a state party convention
Saturday chanted “Impeach! Impeach!” while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was making
a speech.
“We will go where the
facts lead us,” Pelosi said, trying to reassure the crowd. “President Trump
will be held accountable for his actions – in the Congress, in the courts, and
in the court of public opinion.”
But when?
“We can’t wait,” a
coalition of progressive groups declared Tuesday. The
groups wrote Pelosi to express “deep disappointment and concern” she hasn’t
gotten on with impeachment.
“In the
very near future, the Trump era will be one that evokes the question – what did
you do? We urge you to use your power to lead and to stop asking us to wait,”
the letter from CREDO Action and about two dozen other groups said.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s
investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 did not exonerate Trump, as he and
his allies claim.
“If we had confidence
that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,”
Mueller said last month in his only public remarks on the report.
But Mueller’s team also
did not recommend the Justice Department make a case against Trump.
“Under long-standing
department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he
is in office . . . Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an
option we could consider,” Mueller explained.
To many Democrats, it
seemed Mueller was inviting Congress to hold Trump accountable.
The Constitution says
the president may be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors,” but leaves what constitutes an impeachable offense to the House.
Impeachment starts in
the House, but removing a president from office then requires a two-thirds vote
of the Senate. That, as Pelosi has said, will require a compelling case -- with
facts.
It’s a heavy lift. No
president has ever been removed from office.
For his part, Trump
calls impeachment “dirty, filthy, disgusting” and is stonewalling House requests
for testimony or documents by White House aides.
Meanwhile, 11 of the
more than 20 Democratic presidential candidates have expressed “full-throated
support” for immediate impeachment proceedings, according to HuffPost, which
keeps a running list.
Joe Biden has not
jumped on the impeachment bandwagon, but after Mueller spoke,
Biden’s campaign
said impeachment “may be unavoidable.”
Nearly 60 House Democrats from true-blue districts
support opening an impeachment inquiry.
But even 60 members are less than one quarter of the
235 Democrats in the House.
Many centrist Democratic representatives from swing
districts either haven’t decided or won’t say whether they support impeachment.
They and Pelosi recognize something many on the left ignore:
Democrats could impeach Trump and make liberals feel good – and the Republican-controlled
Senate likely would leave Trump in office.
Were he to remain in office, as Bill Clinton did after
his impeachment, Trump likely would emerge stronger for 2020, his followers
more motivated to re-elect him.
A stickier problem for Democrats is most Americans
oppose Trump’s impeachment and removal, according to polls.
Among registered voters overall, 54 percent oppose while
only 41 percent favor impeachment and removal, the latest CNN poll reported
Sunday.
While 76 percent Democrats say yes, only 35 percent of
independents and 6 percent of Republicans want to see Trump impeached and
removed.
House Democratic leaders may be moving too slowly for
the party’s liberal base, but they risk alienating the 65 percent of voters who
say Trump already has faced more investigations than any previous president.
On Monday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee, will open a series of hearings into the Mueller
report. These are not impeachment hearings but could lead to them.
So far, only one Republican supports impeachment --
Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a libertarian.
We don’t know what facts Democratic investigations may
turn up that could change minds. But here are two more numbers from the CNN
poll to keep in mind: While 93 percent of Republicans oppose Trump’s
impeachment and removal, so do 59 percent of independents.
Without the latter on board, impeachment and removal
don’t stand a chance.
©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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