Democrats Weigh Whether Promising Another Trump Impeachment Will Hurt More Than Help

Democrats are weighing whether promising to impeach President Trump a third time will help or hurt them in the midterms. The GOP is highlighting the issue, and successes by socialists — running on “affordability” — signals an electorate that wants candidates who focus on economic issues over trying long-shot bids to remove the president.A Texas Democrat, Congressman Alexander “Al” Green, introduced an article of impeachment against Mr. Trump on Wednesday, the eighth time he’s done so. The measure went down to defeat 344 to 79 when the congressman forced a vote, and it was telling that the entire House Democratic leadership joined Republicans in opposition.The day after Mr. Green introduced his article, the House minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, was asked on CNN if he was “open to pursuing impeachment.” He replied that Democrats “haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,” neutrality that gave the issue new life.If Republicans lose the House, Mr. Trump said on August 21 at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, “I’m going to be impeached. They’re going to impeach me. They have no idea why. I saw it today, a congressman said on one of the shows, ‘We’re going to impeach President Trump. We’re going to impeach.’”The Senate in session in 1999 during the impeachment trial of President Clinton. CSPAN Via Wikimedia CommonsMr. Trump made the same warning as far back as January, saying Democrats would “find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.” He said he’d been impeached before “on nothing.” Framing the process as a frivolous exercise while so-called kitchen table issues loom could blunt Democratic momentum.Thursday on MS NOW, a former advisor to Presidents Clinton and Biden, Adrienne Elrod, called impeachment “a bad idea.” People who vote Democratic “this cycle because they’re concerned about affordability” might switch in two years if they think “Democrats don’t care … because they’re so focused on impeaching Trump.”Speaking at Laredo, Texas, on Thursday, Speaker Michael Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, foreshadowed a “nightmare scenario.” Democrats, he said, “would impeach the president on the first day” and “convert every committee of Congress into an investigative body.”Mr. Johnson warned that “this lawfare” would “roil the markets” and “undermine” confidence in America and its economy, which would “empower our enemies across the globe.” The warning echoed what a Democratic speaker, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, told the Washington Post Magazine in 2019 of early pushes to impeach Mr. Trump.Detail of Matthew Brady’s photograph of Lincoln’s second vice president, and successor, Andrew Johnson. Via Wikimedia Commons“Impeachment,” Ms. Pelosi said, “is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path.” It’s a lesson Washington learned in 1998 when the House impeached President Clinton.Some in Congress suggested censuring Mr. Clinton instead, a penalty Whigs — a party built around opposition to President Jackson — imposed on him in 1834. Yet Democrats had expunged the censure when they flipped the Senate three years later and could have done the same for Mr. Clinton. Those backing impeachment as the ultimate censure prevailed.Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, shares this view. On August 10, he told San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club that Democrats knew “the burden” of getting two-thirds of the Senate “to convict” Mr. Trump was “very, very high” but “there was great value in those impeachments.”Mr. Clinton’s impeachment also faced long odds and voters responded to a process they saw as politicized by breaking the “Midterm Curse.” Democrats gained five House members in 1998, and Mr. Clinton became the first president in 64 years whose party didn’t lose a single seat in either chamber.President Nixon resigned in 1974 as impeachment and removal loomed. Yet the Senate, as it had done in the only previous presidential impeachment — of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 — didn’t convict Mr. Clinton or Mr. Trump. The latter two emerged stronger, much to the frustration of their opponents.Impeachment would grind the work Americans want from Congress to a halt with little chance of removing Mr. Trump. Highlighting that fact is a solid play for Republicans. Democrats, meanwhile, are well served by sticking to the economic script and avoiding the fate of the Whigs who, once the president they opposed left the scene, struggled to find winning issues.

Democrats Weigh Whether Promising Another Trump Impeachment Will Hurt More Than Help

Democrats Weigh Whether Promising Another Trump Impeachment Will Hurt More Than Help

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