I hosted a Substack Live today where I spent a fair amount of time talking about impeachment. In the wake of reports that Democrats have very little interest in impeaching Trump, it is a fair question to ask: Is there any value left in impeaching Trump again if Democrats win back the House?
Some of the reactions to my story for PoliticusUSA suggest that there might be a misunderstanding about the limits of impeachment.
Impeachment only has one function, and that is to charge the president with high crimes and misdemeanors. If the president is impeached by the full House, a trial is held in the Senate, where it takes a two/thirds vote (67 votes) to convict and remove a president from office.
An impeachment will not stop Trump from doing what he is doing. It will not limit his power or take power away from him in any way.
All impeachment does is set the stage for the president to be tried, and the penalty for conviction is removal from office.
The problem is that Democrats will never have enough votes in the Senate to convict and remove Trump.
The American people have already demonstrated that they don’t care about impeachment.
Is it worth impeaching a president who has no shame and can’t be publicly shamed?
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Would impeachment only serve to distract from what Trump has done in office by creating a process that would derail potential investigations by House Democrats into other areas?
The cold reality is that if Democrats win back the House, Trump will be a lame duck. The same collection of evidence against Trump could be done with high-level committee hearings.
Democrats say that Republicans won’t do their jobs, so impeachment is pointless.
Even if a future Democratic House majority convicted Trump, since Republicans control the Senate, there is no guarantee that there would be an impeachment trial.
The Constitution only requires that a trial be held. It doesn’t say how long the trial has to be or specify what the trial must include. Senate Republicans could hold Trump’s trial for an hour on a Saturday, then vote to dismiss the charges.
The way to hold Trump accountable and strip him of power is for Democrats to win elections.
There is no magic remedy outside of the ballot box to fix this, and impeaching Trump again won’t accomplish anything.
Sarah and I will be hosting another Substack Live on Tuesday at 11 AM, so please join us.
What do you think? Is it worth impeaching Trump again? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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