To Impeach or Not to Impeach? And Is That Even the Question?

WOW! This is an excellent article! The president and his administration, the corporate media, and all the Big Money influences which have been overtaking our democracy for the past 3-4 decades completely deny, divert, and distract away from nuance and depth, complexity and larger pictures, truth and facts, and the destructive forces which imperil us all. I deeply appreciate and hunger for the courageous ones who bring us the truth, however dark it may be, because I absolutely do believe that the truth shall set us all free. May we be brave enough to passionately pursue the depths of what we do not know, lifting veil after veil of the fog that keeps us locked away from deeper consciousness, wisdom, love, stories which heal and transform, and action that is rooted in integrity, compassion, and a higher good for all. - Molly

Four writers debate whether Trump’s removal from 

office is a priority or a distraction.

By Doug Henwood, Steve Phillips, Christopher D. Cookand Medea Benjamin

Article II, Section 4, of the United States Constitution states that the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Just four months into Donald Trump’s presidency, we have rumors of the first, suspicions of the second, and pretty good evidence, furnished by the president himself, of the third.

A heated debate has broken out on the left as to whether and how hard Democrats should push for Trump’s impeachment. Would his removal from office be a cure worse than the disease, or is the incumbent president such an immediate threat to life on Earth that getting him out of the White House is worth any political cost? We asked four writers to address the question.

DOUG HENWOOD

Keep Trump!

In the wake of the latest torrent of leaks, a lot of Democrats are pushing for Trump’s impeachment. I don’t get the reasoning behind this urge. Leaving aside the unlikelihood of a Republican Congress actually doing the deed, it seems to me the best strategy is to keep this incompetent naïf in the White House as long as possible. His managerial ineptitude, unapologetic repulsiveness, and endless capacity to generate scandal are the best hope for those of us who seek to prevent the GOP from instituting its nefarious agenda.

Trump’s impeachment would bring us President Mike Pence—a profound horror. He’s a fiscal sadist, misogynist, homophobe, and lover of the carceral state. He’s a creationist who rejects climate change, thinks stem-cell research is “obsolete,” and once actually said that “smoking doesn’t kill.” His anti-abortion law in Indiana was the most extreme in the country. Like Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, Pence is a maximalist on drugs, including weed. He’s hot to privatize Social Security. He’s likened the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare to 9/11.

It’s quite likely that Trump’s removal would lead to the political equivalent of what Wall Street calls a “relief rally.” There would be an attempt, coming from “responsible” Democrats and sober pundits, at orchestrating a moment of national healing. Gerald Ford’s pronouncement on Richard Nixon’s resignation that “our long national nightmare is over” would be invoked as a precedent. Historian Douglas Brinkley has already gotten a jump on that, telling Politico, “[Ford was] much like Pence in temperament and personality. He doesn’t have that acerbic side that Nixon and Trump had…. [H]e has made so few enemies.”

If Pence became president, Republicans would find it much easier to take advantage of their dominance of Congress than they have so far. Unlike Trump, Pence has plenty of political experience—twelve years in Congress, four years as governor of Indiana. He knows how things work. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to assume that much of the Republican agenda would sail through Congress in a matter of weeks.

In the meantime, Trump is doing major damage to the right. Republican pundit Erick Erickson recently worried in the Washington Post that Trump is “deeply destructive to the national fabric and to the conservative ideas I support,” and that his presence in the Oval Office could lead to an electoral “bloodbath” in 2018. Those sound like appealing possibilities to me.

Then there’s the unseemly fact that much of the case against Trump appears to be coming from leaks from intelligence agencies to a press eager to report them as “scoops.” As awful as he is, do we really want to legitimate a precedent by which the likes of the CIA—an organization with seven decades of experience at thwarting democracy—can drive an elected president from office? 

What we urgently need now is for the Democrats to develop an appealing political alternative to the conservative agenda. Fantasies of Trump’s removal from office are a distraction from that task and an obstacle to the development of that alternative. 

STEVE PHILLIPS

Our Solemn Obligation

We need to impeach and remove this president. Now. It is not only the smart and strategic course of conduct for progressives, but I believe that it is our moral obligation to the other people on this planet.

The current vice-president is certainly more sinister, because he is more competent, but that reality is outweighed by the danger and destruction we face from the person presently occupying the Oval Office.

Donald Trump is a threat to civilization. Having someone as impulsive, childish, immature, insecure, and vain as he is in charge of the most powerful military force in the history of the world is terrifying. As conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote recently, Trump has the personality of a child, and “A child cannot be president. I love my children; they cannot have the nuclear codes.” To reduce the threat of a nuclear holocaust, it is our solemn duty to remove the man serving as president from office as quickly as possible.

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