From the UK: "Don't impeach Donald Trump. Vote him out of office"

[Vidal]

This is an editorial in a London newspaper. And I agree with it.

If there is one thing you can say about U.S. President Donald Trump, it’s that his record in office is not exactly unimpeachable.

He is a serial liar, a tawdry name-caller, a consorter with white supremacists and a self-dealer who blatantly uses his elected position to benefit his business interests and to hire unqualified family members in key government positions.

He has turned on his traditional trading partners and military allies, and has damaged the international bonds and economic ties that have preserved peace in the West for decades; he often shows more allegiance to the heads of authoritarian regimes than he does to those in liberal democracies.

The world also knows, thanks to investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and others, that Russian state actors actively worked to get him elected in 2016, and to harm the campaign of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. When members of his campaign team found out about this foreign interference, some of them – his son Donald Jr. included – eagerly sought the Russians’ help.

Mr. Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference and alleged collusion by the Trump campaign found no concrete evidence Mr. Trump was directly involved, but it did conclude that the President said and did things that could be construed as attempts to obstruct the investigation, which would be a criminal offense.

“If we had had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mr. Mueller said last week.

Mr. Mueller explained that U.S. Department of Justice policy prevented him from laying charges against a sitting president, but he suggested that Congress had an option for holding Mr. Trump accountable, which everyone understood to be impeachment.

And that is where the United States stands today: led by a President who might have been charged with a federal crime were he not protected by the fact he is in office, and who has made a mockery of the expectations associated with the position to which he was elected.

In a country where impeachment has been used in the past to attempt to remove judges and presidents from office on the grounds of drunkenness and lying about having sex with an intern, the allegations and facts surrounding Mr. Trump are enough for the House of Representatives to vote to impeach him a few times over.

An increasing number of Democrats in the House are now calling for just for that. But while there is a need to hold Mr. Trump accountable, and to restrict his term of office to no more than four years, the nuclear option of impeachment isn’t the way to do it.

If the Democrats used their majority in the House to pass articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump, it would mean that he faced formal allegations of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors," which is never a good look for a president.

But those charges would then go to the Republican-controlled Senate, where a hearing presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court would take place, and a two-thirds vote by the senators would be required for conviction.

There is not even a small chance the Senate would convict Mr. Trump. So what would the process accomplish?

Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi wisely argues that Mr. Trump actually relishes the idea of being impeached. The process would quickly descend into the kind of political circus the former reality-TV star excels at exploiting.

He would use it to portray himself as the victim of gross injustice at the hands of a corrupt system. And once the Senate acquitted him, he could claim complete exoneration. That acquittal could also make it harder for the Justice Department to lay charges against him once he is out of office.

The Democrats should focus on what really matters – winning the 2020 election – and make it clear they won’t seek impeachment. That would strip the President of a potent weapon, while still leaving his opponents with more than enough ammunition to fire at him.

His terrible record is the best argument against his re-election. Better yet, by forgoing the distraction of impeachment, the Democrats would leave it to voters to decide who should be president. The roughest justice the narcissistic Mr. Trump could ever face would be his rejection at the hands of the American people.

We know what we have to do folks! Vote him out of office! #BlueWave2020

link:https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-dont-impeach-donald-trump-vote-him-out-of-office/

[berni_mccoy]

1. Being able to vote him out of office requires that the election isn't hacked...

you know, by Russians. Like it was in 2016.

[shraby]

3. Also by voting him out, he will get a pension he doesn't deserve.

[Hoyt]

2. Agree too, but only because Mueller said 21 times in his report that "we did not identify evidence

of" collusion, conspiracy, or whatever you want to call it. That's hard to overcome.

Had Mueller taken the energy to rephrase that in a manner that didn't give trump cover, Impeachment would have been easy in the Democratic controlled House, and Senate GOPers would have had a tougher time denying conviction.

[spanone]

4. Let's do both.

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. It is not one or the other. It is both

The Senate will not remove Trump but he deserves to be impeached. Then he will be voted out of office. Anyone who thinks Trump won't make the 2020 election into a total circus even if he is not impeached is not paying close enough attention. There will be at least 5 Trump rallies a week where he will make outrageous claims about Democrats. He already says there is was a coup attempt against him. He will be over the top over the top. Trump is the best argument against reelecting Trump. That is why his popularity ratings have remained underwater from day one of his presidency even though the unemployment rate keeps dropping. Impeachment hearings focus attention onto all of his worst qualities as a President. Republican failure to remove Trump from office will focus public attention onto all of their worst qualities as a political party. Democrats WILL continue to pass constructive legislation and our candidates can continue to run on the issues. Their campaign literature can stress issues. Half of every local debate at the minimum will focus on issues. But to pretend that Trump himself is not an issue to the American public is to bury one's head in the sand.

[kacekwl]

7. EXACTLY !!

No reason we can't do both.

[Dennis Donovan]

6. The Globe and Mail is Canadian...