He delights in the abuse of his power
Quinta Jurecic on why Trump has to be impeached:
Here are the facts: The president is unsuited to his office. That should have been obvious well before the release of the special counsel’s report, but the text of the report, even with a smattering of redactions, makes his unfitness brutally clear. He shows no understanding of the responsibilities of the presidency. He delights in the abuse of his power. As Memorial Day approaches, he is reportedly planning to celebrate the holiday by pardoning, among other service members accused of war crimes, a Navy SEAL scheduled to stand trial for the murder of multiple unarmed Iraqi civilians.
Because hooray for murdering unarmed civilians in foreign countries; that’s what we stand for now. My Lai? Our finest hour.
Jurecic notes that Pelosi opposes impeachment for pragmatic reasons: because it will energize his base.
This is a very practical argument. But there is value to an impeachment inquiry—and to impeachment—as an act in itself, regardless of whether the Senate will convict or what the president’s supporters will think.
Pelosi and the more hardheaded Democratic strategists regard this position as overly idealistic. That’s the point.
Trump is absurd in the colloquial sense, she goes on, but also in the philosophical sense.
What better to emphasize the gap between the desire for the Constitution to mean something and the reality of the document as some words on paper than the scene of Donald J. Trump swearing an oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and … preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”?
The Constitution is what Camus would call a “closed universe”—a space of “coherence and unity” in an incoherent world, in which words carry weight and actions have consequences. Trump’s disrespect for the law is a reminder of how fragile that structure of meaning can be. For that reason, there is a real service in using impeachment proceedings to push back against the notion that, in the parlance of the internet, “lol nothing matters.”
Susan Hennessey and I have argued that the House of Representatives has a duty to begin an impeachment inquiry insofar as representatives swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution” and to “well and faithfully” execute the duties of their office. Another way of saying this is that an impeachment inquiry depends on an insistence that this oath really means something—and that the president’s oath means something as well. Keith Whittington, likewise, has written that impeachment is partially a matter of “norm creation and norm reinforcement.” And Yoni Appelbaum argued that the impeachment of Andrew Johnson “drew the United States closer to living up to its ideals.”
Let’s have a little norm reinforcement around here.
Well, nobody can say he hasn’t carried that part out in full. Any meaning that Office once had looks to be beyond resuscitation.
Oops, borked blockquote.
She is afraid it will energize his base, but the thing she, and everyone else, forgets is that it may also energize her base – the Democrats base – especially if it allows information to get into the minds of people that have managed to ignore it until now.
His base should not be her concern at this point, but instead, the entire country, which is supposed to be who he represents. He is failing to do his job. He is doing things that are not part of his job, and some things that are prohibited by his job. He is failing the American people. He is failing in every way possible.
At this point, the Trump base – well armed and violent – is seen as a threat. And rightly so. But we cannot let the fear of confrontation lead us into totalitarianism. Fear is one of the biggest tools used by totalitarians, and Trump is a master at stoking it. Pelosi needs to step back, breathe, and then think about the parts of the country that are not Trump’s base – which is most of us.
The Democratic base doesn’t want it though… Sure, some of them are pragmatists (myself included) but impeachment just doesn’t poll well at all. Not something that is likely to get the “moderates* scoff, on our side. It also might not really move the needle much at all, but it really isn’t a popular move.
Which sounds like mansplaining, so I’m sorry about that…
Well, that is true, but….every single person I talk to who claims to be a moderate Democrat says (1) They don’t want impeachment; and (2) They won’t vote for the Democrats unless they impeach Trump. Mind you, they don’t say these on the same day, and they seem to forget what they said the last time, but still…how can anyone wander through that morass and determine what the “base” wants?
And…maybe it should be the job of the Democratic Party leaders to explain to their base why this is important, why Trump is not just another Republican, why allowing fascism to creep into the country to avoid having to look partisan might not be a good idea.
If it doesn’t poll well…and I know it doesn’t, but I also know the apparent schizophrenia I keep hearing from especially the young Dems…then it is up to the leadership that has access to information we do not have to convince their base, and explain why this must be done. So few people really seem to understand the extreme times in which we live.