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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSlate "The 2020 Election's Approach Is No Reason to Avoid Impeachment"
Democrats are repeating a mistake they should have learned in 2016.
By DAHLIA LITHWICK
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/2020-election-approach-shouldnt-end-impeachment.html
Americans seem to largely agree that President Donald Trump is a criminal. Recent polling supports that claim: 54 percent of American voters say Trump attempted to derail or obstruct the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election, while 72 percent say Robert Mueller conducted a fair investigation. Despite the presidents bluster about how the Russia hoax has stollen two years from his presidency, for which he thinks he ought to seek reparations, most Americans understand that the president threatened his staffers who sought to cooperate with the Mueller probe. They understand that he tasked others with limiting the scope of the probe and with firing Mueller, and that he instructed his legal counsel to falsify documents to clear him of obstruction. None of this is even disputed. The only question is whether he can be charged for it while he remains in office.
In an astounding letter released Monday, 400 former prosecutors contend that, were he not president, Trump would have been charged with obstruction. Virtually nobody other than Attorney General William Barr accepts Barrs analysis that obstruction was never even on the table. Instead, the public is intuitively reaching a similar conclusion to Muellers: The president committed crimes, but as a sitting president, he cannot be indicted while in office. Which means that, again, the remaining question is what to do about the fact that the president committed crimes. (One can also ask why criminality is the only bar we have set for ourselves, but thats perhaps beside the point.)
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On Saturday, the New York Times published an article indicating that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi doesnt want to seek impeachment because shed rather focus on winning the 2020 elections by huge margins. Somehow, even as she conceded that Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin next year, Pelosi placed her confidence in massive margins being the one thing the president would respect. On some level, Pelosi is correct to fear the spectacle of a protracted public impeachment battle, but the notion that Democrats should somehow circumvent a president who evinces no respect for the law by persuading him that this time he lost for realz strikes me as demented.
Donald Trump wont accept a 2020 presidential election loss, whether its by a large margin or a small one, for the same reason he never accepted his 2016 popular vote losshe doesnt like it, and so he wont let it be true. He will convince a third of the country that it wasnt true, because he doesnt like it. Indeed, that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 is, by means of his perfectly circular reasoning, the very reason he will not countenance the idea of Russian involvement in the theft of the 2016 election. Its also the reason he created a fraudulent voter fraud commission. His psychological fragility on this matter has meant that he has done less than nothing to deter more meddling in the 2020 election. He wouldnt even broach the topic with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, because if you live in Donald Trumps head, no election loss is legitimate. Its funny to think that a big election loss would make the difference.
None of this is news to Nancy Pelosi, but unfortunately, putting ones faith in the elections system makes even less sense today than it did in 2016. As Jamelle Bouie observes, we are now in the epicenter of an all-out vote suppression crisis that has become an all-out democracy crisis.
Its easy to forget this, but it bears repeating: The reason former FBI Director James Comey didnt take the Russian threat against the elections system seriously enough in 2016 is because he believed Hillary Clinton would win by large margins. The reason President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder and others who knew about the threats before we did failed to respond with utmost urgency and seriousness is because they too believed that Hillary Clinton would win. By large margins. Time and time again, people who had access to both information and power opted to take the less draconian path because they believed that there would still be a free and fair election and that Trump would not win it. We know how that turned out.
snip - read it all.
Fiendish Thingy
(15,368 posts)Only cowardly defeatists insist on certain victory and shrink from this most important fight.
NRaleighLiberal
(59,940 posts)Response to NRaleighLiberal (Original post)
standingtall This message was self-deleted by its author.