America has a very strong Constitution, but the writers of the document assumed that the enforcers of our checks and balances would be acting in good faith. They are often not. Trump is a criminal and they are doing nothing about it.
We have impeached two presidents in our short history. Andrew Johnson was impeachment mostly because he was unpopular. After Lincoln's death, he became president and he was as a Southern. The Northerners disliked and distrusted him for that. He was loyal to the North during the war, so the Southerners despised him. He was a truly awful president. If Lincoln or Grant were in charge during the early Reconstruction, we'd be a very different country now. Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 for the sole purpose of preventing Edwin Stanton from becoming the Secretary of War. Johnson appointed him anyway and they used this as an excuse for getting rid of him. He was impeached in the House of Representative, but the Senate voted to not remove him from office. He beat it by one vote.He had no Vice President so the Presidency would have gone to the Speaker of the House.
Clinton is a lot more recent and I am assuming most people reading this, remember it. A lot of people don't realize that he was impeached because he wasn't removed from office. The House does the impeaching, the Senate does the removal. This was purely political. The era of hyper-partisanship in American politics was in its infancy and it has gotten much worse. Clinton was unpopular with Republicans, so impeaching him was popular with their base. Two thirds of American voters, throughout the ordeal and afterward, were against the impeachment. This didn't stop them. He was impeached in the House, and like Johnson, was not convicted in the Senate. He beat it by 17 votes. Clinton's popularity sky rocketed afterward. This is one of the reasons politicians like to steer clear of impeachment, but the voters disliked this impeachment because it was unjustified and purely political. They would respond differently to an impeachment that was justified like a Trump impeachment.
If Richard Nixon didn't resign, he probably would have been removed from office which is why he resigned. John Dean recently testified before Congress and he highlighted six parallels between Watergate and what we are going through now:
- attempts to shut down the investigations
- the firing of FBI Director James Comey and "the Saturday Night Massacre"
- Dean's and former White House counsel Don McGahn's refusals to carry out the president's orders
- efforts to exert control over the investigations
- attempts to limit the disclosure of evidence
- dangling pardons to influence witness testimony.
Any one of these is impeachment worthy ... certainly more impeachable than a blow job.
Cons:
The arguments against impeaching him are fairly simple. The first one listed has been my opinion up until recently. I have changed my mind. All of these are valid concerns, even though I pro-impeachment now.
Why impeach if you can't remove him from office? We can probably muster enough votes in the House to impeach but the Senate is nowhere close to impeaching. The Republicans control the Senate and they have their guy's back regardless of what he does. The argument against this is that their minds may be changed by the impeachment process. When the Watergate scandal broke, it took months for public opinion to change. In the era of stratified media coverage of Fox News and MS-NBC, it is difficult to tell how much of the bubble will be burst by impeachment hearings. People are living in their own private media silos ... this is not the late 60's media landscape.
Impeaching and failing to remove him from office could be catastrophic politically. Some may see the Democrats as petty and will retaliate at the polls in November 2020 if impeachment fails. That could mean four more years of this monstrous presidency. The retaliation could go further. If we succeed in removing him from office, the Republicans will probably do their best to do the same the next time the Democrats have a president in office. They tried hard to find something impeachable against squeaky-clean Obama. The next Dem president may not be so clean. We already know they will impeach for stupid reasons. The argument against this is that the Republicans are going act this way anyway so we might as well do the right thing and impeach.
Pence will become President. Mike Pence may be better than Trump, but not a lot. Him being sworn into the presidency means that he can run as an incumbent in 2020 and he would probably be more difficult to beat than Trump
Pence can pardon Trump of any Federal charges. Since Ford pardoned Nixon, we know this is always a possibility. Pence cannot pardon state charges. This is why the charges against Trump in New York State are so important. Once he is out of office, hopefully in 2021, the state can go after him without any fear that he will be pardoned.
Pros:
Lets stop the crime wave. This is the best reason to impeach this scum bag. He is committing a presidential crime wave. Lets leave the possible collusion with Russia out of this for simplicity sake. Here is a list of the crimes he has committed so far:
- the President’s debts and payments relating to efforts to influence the 2016 election
- the President’s lack of compliance with financial disclosure requirements and lying to the FCC
- the President’s lack of compliance with campaign finance laws
- the President’s lack of compliance with tax laws
- rampant conflicts of interest in the President’s business practices
- the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
- potentially fraudulent or inappropriate practices by the Trump Foundation
- public efforts by the President and his attorney to intimidate Michael Cohen or others not to testify
With him gone, these would stop and he could face prosecution on state and federal levels.
More people will get exposed to his crime wave. As stated earlier, most people live in a bubble these days. They get their news from a few sources, often with an ideological bent with which they are comfortable. The people who watch Fox News exclusively are not being exposed to the Trump crime wave. If you watch Fox News exclusive, it is quite possible that you think the Mueller Report exonerated him as opposed to the opposite. If impeachment hearings started, they may tune into C-SPAN and get exposed to life outside the bubble. Public opinion could change. This is wishful thinking but it is what happened with Nixon, but that was long before C-SPAN, social media and the 24 hour news cycle.
Not impeaching sets a precedent for the future. Not impeaching him sends a message to future presidents. You can do what you want and you won't get impeached. As long as you keep a base of vocal minions happy, then the rest of the elected officials will be afraid to confront you and hold you accountable. This is very dangerous. We all should be very concerned about this.
In the mid-term election, the Democrats were elected as a check on Trump. We all know why there was a blue wave in 2018 mid-term elections. The Democrats campaigned on holding Trump accountable. Well? When are you going to do that? Now would be nice.
I have changed my mind and I not only support impeachment, I think it is imperative that we impeach. Even if we don't remove him from office, we need to acknowledge that his behavior is unacceptable and that there are consequences of his actions.
I am about to call my Congressman and my two Senators. I suggested you do the same.
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