“I, (name of Member), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God” (5 U.S.C. §3331).
You can choose your cliché — “politics ain’t beanbag”, “governing is where the rubber meets the road”, “we are the dog that has caught the car” — but the Democratic Party has for the second time in 50 years assumed the heavy responsibility of defending our Constitution and rule of law from an ongoing criminal presidency.
As was the case in 1973-74, this is an existential moment for our party. The Founders gave us the remedy of impeachment for a criminal president. Then, House Democrats diligently and solemnly uncovered ample evidence of a conspiracy to destroy political opposition by President Nixon through illegal means.
Today, Trump is, at minimum, a criminal president, perpetrating open graft and fraud. Very possibly, he is an ongoing subject of blackmail by at least one major international nuclear adversary. A Special Counsel is now determining whether an illegal theft of Democratic campaign material and infiltration of the electorate by Russian intelligence was actively conceived, designed, leveraged and covered up by this president and administration.
Democratic-led House committees must — and appear poised to — launch expeditious investigations into this president and administration on numerous fronts to defend rule of law and national security. When those investigations find high crimes and misdemeanors — which they will — and contend with further obstruction — which they will — the Democratic Party will fail the Founders’ vision of systemic self-defense if they do not seek the proscribed Constitutional remedy of impeachment for those crimes.
The politics of doing our duty as a party may be inconvenient, and may well grind to a halt in a Senate trial. But that trial, in which overwhelming evidence of executive criminality will be presented to the people, must play out. And then, the Republican Party should be made to defend the illegality, obstruction, conspiracy, fraud and subservience to external powers that drive this presidency.
All of our House winners last night will be taking, or retaking, an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, not the party’s tactical prospects in 2020. Our county’s grave crisis, threatening our very rule of law, continues this morning. We now have a co-equal opportunity to rescue our political system. Our obligation is to that rescue, and ultimately, this is what will defend our party from further attacks, our members from false imprisonment and worse, and our citizens from tyranny and corruption.