On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi formally called for Articles of Impeachment against President Trump. This is based on the report issued by the House Intelligence Committee led by Adam Schiff which alleged after weeks of testimony, that Donald Trump attempted to use the power of his office to solicit Ukraine for assistance in his 2020 reelection campaign, which Trump confessed to on live TV months ago.
To be blunt, nothing's going to come of this. Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership in the House have bungled this from the very beginning, which isn't a surprise given that the leadership never wanted to impeach Trump in the first place.
We'll start with the bungling. One criticism that has been lobbed at the hearings from the very start is that they're boring as hell to watch. Obviously, there's a disingenuous aspect to this critique when it comes from people like Trump's son or on Fox News since they have a vested interest in making all of the President's abuses of power seem like nothing more than triggered liberals getting the vapors over the actions of a True American Hero. That being said, that there are those making the criticism with corrupt motives, doesn't mean there's no substance to the criticism at all.
The thing to realize about impeachment investigations is that the point isn't really to find out what's happened; by the time impeachment hearings start in the House, the broad strokes of the president's transgressions are already known and undeniable, the point of impeachment hearings is to generate and drive home the idea that the president is unfit for office and must be removed for his actions. Removing a duly elected sitting president is inherently a moment of high drama, if you want the effort to succeed, you have to lean into that, you have to give people a good show to keep their attention and passions high.
Instead of that, Schiff and the Intelligence Committee decided that the better approach was to let the hearings be a somber, stolid affair, where sensible, responsible government imposed itself over the chaos of the administration.
I can't emphasize enough how fatal of a mistake this is. In normal times, a government with unnecessary drama or grandstanding is fantastic. But if we're at the point where impeachment is not only possible but necessary, an ethos against making a fuss or causing a ruckus is going to get you absolutely nowhere.
This strategy makes even less sense when you consider the environment the inquiry would be taking place in. In the world of Fox News, the Republican base is going to be blasted literally every minute of every day that the proceedings are baseless, vindictive, or, hilariously, unconstitutional. Every thing that needs to be done to reinforce the idea that the Left is viciously attacking their dear president for no reason will be done, no matter how ridiculous.
Are they going to trout out an absolutely preposterous idea that impeachment hearings are a violation of the 6th amendments due process protections? Sure, why not. How about championing the conspiracy theory that it was really Ukraine who hacked the DNC server and interfered in the 2016 election? Fine, fuck it, whatever we need to do.
In this environment, the chances of swinging enough Republican voters- and, by extension, Republican Congressmen, is close to nil. So, instead of beating your head against the wall trying to achieve bipartisan support, you use that to make the noose tighter, to paint the picture that a failure
to condemn Trump both in the House and the Senate isn't an act of exoneration, but complicity.
Now, I get the idea that calling something like impeachment hearings "boring" and expecting to be taken seriously is stupid, a sign of our hollowed out attention spans ruining our ethics of citizenship. What's at stake here are the foundational principles of our democracy, but we're too busy griping about not being entertained.
There seems to be this idea that there's a divide with politics on the one side, and principles like Duty, Honor, etc. etc. on the other. The politics side is seen as dirty, as the mire which we must overcome to reach the lofty principles of better, more refined civilizations. Thing is, if you want people to do those things, you gotta bring them there, you have to give them reasons, something to believe in, and to do that, it takes doing the dirty work of politics to convince people that there's something more to them, and the world they live in.
A few weeks of staid testimony followed by a day of constitutional law professors lecturing the public on the finer points of impeachment does not a compelling case make, so all this will just die on the vine in the face of a Senate with no incentive to side against Trump.
Which, isn't a surprise, since the Democrats came into this on their back foot.
It's been clear since the beginning of the year that Nancy Pelosi had no intention of doing any impeachment inquiries no matter what happened. Even when Robert Mueller handed Congress a report detailing ten times Trump used the power of his office to commit literal crimes, she passed. The only reason this is happening is that she was facing a revolt in the ranks because of her refusal to do literally anything to hold Trump to account. Which, just as a sidebar, think about that, faced with one of the most corrupt, unpopular presidents in the history of the country, supposedly master politician Nancy Pelosi was on the verge of losing the support of at least half her caucus. That's talent.
Anyway, they don't mean to fuck up, they just do. Democrats from Pelosi's generation operate under a philosophy of politics that shuns public passions as rule, so it makes sense that they'd fail so abysmally in marshaling them effectively. Deeper than that, though, is something else, I think, that impeachment is a fight Pelosi is afraid to lose but absolutely terrified of winning.
The losing part makes sense; Pelosi's power comes from her ability as fundraiser, securing money from people with more power than her by convincing them she'll be the best person to carry out their interests. She was in Congress for Clinton's impeachment, she saw the fallout of how that fight went both for the Republicans as a whole and for Newt Gingrich personally. She saw how Gingrich went from being one of the most influential and powerful men in politics to having to scrape by as a talking shill on Fox News, forever blacklisted from any strata of real power. I imagine Pelosi sees her nightmare version of that being a special guest on MSNBC, eternally trading quips with Joe Scarborough in the morning and tut-tutting Russia with Rachel Maddow for the evening crowd.
Still, even that pales next to the Boschian hellscape she would face if Trump was successfully impeached. Part of how the mainstream Democratic political strategy works is by reinforcing the idea that powerful political figures operate behind a protective veil of influence and power that can't be penetrated by regular ol' public pressure, it's just too hard. The idea is to make it feel like there's a barrier between those in power and the electorate that puts them there. This is done to make sure that any populist policies like Medicare for All or Debt Free college are both dead on arrival, and that Democrats have sufficient cover after killing them.
Most importantly, for this philosophy to work, no one must be held to account, for anything, ever. Think of literally everyone from the Bush administration who still appear on TV, work in the Trump administration, or do whatever the hell they want not living in prison where they belong. I mean, sure, you can lambaste Trump for giving John Bolton and Gina Haspel jobs, but he wasn't the one who let them walk away from their atrocities with no consequences.
That's why all the talk about holding Trump accountable, that no one is above the law blah blah blah falls so flat. The Democrats were happy to let Trump get away with literally everything he's done so far, including helping pass a $4 billion border security bill with no oversight
after the concentration camp conditions the Border Patrol were holding asylum seekers in became common knowledge. People who behave or operate with the kind of incentives that Pelosi and her ilk operate cannot successfully hold Trump to account because, at heart, they don't really believe they should or are even capable of doing so.
It's honestly amazing that Trump has found himself in this position. He's a petty, real estate grifter operating as chief executive of a political system that almost explicitly encourages his kind of grift. Even with that handicap, he still manages to get himself in trouble by sheer repulsive force, backing a inept, submissive Congress into a shambolic display of what it should be doing as a co-equal branch of government.
If Trump fell, it'd prove that presidents are touchable, that with enough public pressure and action, they can fall just like anyone else. And what would happen then? Well, people might get the idea in their head that they can, and should, hold everyone to account, to make sure all those who put us in this position are banished for their failures.
For Pelosi and her ilk, that cannot, must not be allowed to happen. And for that, she will almost instinctively sell all of us out, even protect Trump as president, to keep whatever strands of power she can grasp.
In the end, this will go much the same way as Trump's bankruptcies- anyone who could bring him to heel will let him walk away clean as he passes the ruin onto everybody else.
