How Winning The Senate Comfortably Could Remove Trump From Office [View all]

[VBNMW_Realist]

In this document, I will be talking about how Trump could be removed in theory. The first thing I want you to know is that in order to remove a president or any other federal official, it takes 2 out of 3 votes in the Senate. It is effectively impossible for Democrats to have those seats on their own, but there is a workaround.

Even though it may feel like the Senate is capped at around 52 seats for Democrats, there are extra seats that Democrats could win. Iowa, Ohio and Florida would be seats 52 to 54. These are the Obama era swing states which have since turned into likely or even solid red states. Having even something like 53 Senate seats is potentially enough to spook Republicans into voting for conviction. What I mean by that is even if that is going to play well in a primary election and they would be able to easily hold a general election too, there is a code of ethics that is largely ignored on the Republican side, but facing what might be considered the maximum electorally possible loss or close to it might make them buckle because of not wanting to be on the wrong side of history if nothing else.

We have seen crossover votes on certain matters, including votes to confirm people on the Democratic side in both of Trump’s terms or even Republicans voting for some Biden appointees. The most important example was the January 6 case, where nearly 60 Senators voted yes for the impeachment despite there only being 50 Democrats in the Senate counting the independents who always caucus and work with the Democrats (Sanders and King). That was the code of ethics in action that I mentioned. Mitch McConnell chose not to follow it on this vote, and if he did, Trump might be in prison right now given how other Senate votes have gone down.

Is this a pipe dream? Probably. But I think it is just realistic enough it deserves a shoutout as a reason that voting matters. Winning enough seats to oust Trump in the Senate with purely Democratic votes is utterly implausible as it would require winning all but two Republican held seats and 10 to 15 of those are not flipping under any circumstances. It would happen if the performances in primaries carry over.