Okay, fellow liberals, time to cut it out. If I had a quarter for every time some smart
person online has declared the imminent end of the Trump administration, I’d
have enough cash to get my family out of this country until such time as it
regains its senses. Every day some
revelation, some embarrassment, is heralded as the straw that will break the
back of the man with the camel-colored hair.
But here’s the ugly truth—unless the man resigns, we’re stuck with him
in the Oval Office until at least January 20, 2021. This is an opportunity.
Forget about impeachment.
In order to impeach the President, 218 House members have to vote on
articles, essentially indicting the President.
The trial is then conducted by the Senate, where 67 members have to
agree on his removal. The House is currently split 239-193 (with 3 vacancies)
in favor of Republicans; the Senate contains 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats
(including two independents who caucus with Democrats). So 25 GOP representatives and 19 GOP senators
would have to cross lines.
On top of this is that the criteria for impeachment are
vague. The Constitution says the
president can be removed upon conviction for “Treason, Bribery, or other High
crimes and Misdemeanors.” Those seem
solid enough, and I’d bet all those quarters I earned in the first paragraph
that Trump has taken more than one each from columns A, B and C. But of course, the decision in this case of
what bribery, treason, or high crimes and misdemeanors actually mean is left to the political
class.
Politicians are, of course, subject to public pressure, but
given that only 13 out of 382 House incumbents were defeated in 2016, it seems
safe to say that most Republicans won’t have a whole lot of impetus to turn on their
own. 2018 isn’t looking much better. On
top of the incumbency advantage in the House, there are only eight Republican
Senate seats up for re-election, meaning that if Democrats held every one of
their seats and swept Republican seats, they still end up eleven votes short of
the 67 needed to convict, even assuming they do the unlikely and flip the
House.
The so-called “25th Amendment option,” whereby
the Vice President and Cabinet join to remove a president who is deemed
incapacitated crashes on the same partisan shoals. Republicans at this time seem unwilling to
police themselves and since they control the government entire there are no
watchers for the watchmen. Unless Donald
Trump is filmed wearing a hijab made of cat skins, fellating Vladimir Putin while kneeling
on a Bible and urinating on an American flag, he’s not going anywhere.
Or, less likely, if he resigns, of course.
That’s the bad news—time for the good.
For decades, Republicans have been playing a very long
political game. They have captured 33
governorships, control both legislative houses in 26, and control the lower
legislative House in 29 and the Senate in 29.
This has given them control of redistricting, which they have used for
partisan purpose, though the results of this are debated. It has also given them control of state
voting regulations, which they have used to purge hundreds of thousands from
voter rolls.
Democrats need to counteract this, and they need to do it
fast—I am intentionally referring to Democrats here, since as long as we decide
the highest election through the Electoral College, third parties are viable
only as spoilers—to make up for the unfortunate fact that Democrats have
focused on federal elections. Control of
state houses in 2018 and 2020 means control of redistricting after the 2020
census and a chance to roll back Republican-led voter suppression efforts.
It won’t be easy. The
Republican message is easier to sell because it doesn’t ask anything directly
of us. Yes, the poor and the vulnerable
will suffer under their policies, but what is sold is lower taxes, family
values, standing up for the common man, patriotism, freedom. They speak of rights without
responsibility. Playing to aggrieved
whites fearful of losing unearned privilege they demonize racial, ethnic, and
religious minorities. That Republican
policies, whenever they are enacted, restrict the freedoms of people who aren’t
white, Christian, or male isn’t a bug, but a feature. So, too, is the upward distribution of wealth
that inevitable ensues, a theft then justified by the ideology that the wealthy
are somehow more deserving than the rest of us.
We also have another opportunity. In the wake of our withdrawal from the Paris
Agreement on climate change, a remarkable alliance of governors and mayors has
emerged to say that they will stick to their commitments under the
agreement. We need more groups like
this that allow us to circumvent or mitigate some of the damage this administration is doing. Perhaps a shadow government as is often seen in parliamentary systems,
where the opposition party appoints “cabinet secretaries” to counter the
message coming from government, is called for. We need
mechanisms to hold media to account, so that following the folly of the moment
doesn’t continue to obscure the larger stories.
Only by coming together to present a unified message and to
counter the rank dishonesty coming from the administration, can we hope to
break the Republican stranglehold at all levels of government and get the
United States moving forward. Trump has
given us the challenge, and the opportunity.
It’s on us to take up both.
