If House Democrats do not begin immediate, televised impeachment hearings and begin jailing immediately any administration figure who refuses to comply with a duly issued subpoena, we could be mere weeks from one-party GOP rule.
A lot of people fail to understand two things: how close we are to effective one-party GOP rule and how electoral politics works.
Look, I supported Nancy Pelosi for speaker for three reasons:
- Her superior record, relative to the other candidates, of being able to wrangle the notoriously fractious House Dem caucus, move legislation, and raise money.
- The fact that her most viable opponents were WAY too cozy with a Republican Party that long ago demonstrated that it doesn’t give a damn about the Constitution.
- The likelihood that, when Trump’s obfuscation over the Mueller report and his and his administration’s inevitable contempt of Congress against the inevitable House subpoenas finally manifested, she would have a logical and effective plan for responding.
I voted for her despite serious misgivings about her spine. She unilaterally took impeachment of George W. Bush off the table despite the fact that Bush and his inner circle had ordered torture in violation of both U.S. and international law. My father, an Army infantry officer in the Korean War who won a Bronze Star and who had been a lifelong Republican voter, cast the last ballot of his life in 2004 against Bush specifically because of the torture. As an amateur student of the Holocaust for decades, I thought then that Bush had crossed the one line besides first-strike nuclear war that could never be crossed. And I was horrified to watch how Democrats under Pelosi threw away their opportunity to bring about justice. Still, you vote for one of the candidates you’ve got, and she was head and shoulders above the rest.
Problem is, I turned out to be badly wrong on item No. 3 above. She had and has no plan to deal with a president intent on becoming a dictator and a major party that is all in with him on this effort. Indeed, in this New York Times article, she makes clear in her own words that she is drawing exactly the wrong conclusions given the facts before us:
In recent weeks Ms. Pelosi has told associates that she does not automatically trust the president to respect the results of any election short of an overwhelming defeat. That view, fed by Mr. Trump’s
repeated and unsubstantiated claims of Democratic voter fraud, is one of the reasons she says it is imperative to put roadblocks in the way of Mr. Trump’s efforts, with the full support of the Republican party, to become a dictator.
See, that makes sense. Unfortunately, that’s not what she actually said. What the article actually reports her as saying is:
In recent weeks Ms. Pelosi has told associates that she does not automatically trust the president to respect the results of any election short of an overwhelming defeat. That view, fed by Mr. Trump’s
repeated and unsubstantiated claims of Democratic voter fraud, is one of the reasons she says it is imperative not to play into the president’s hands, especially on impeachment.
Opposing a would-be dictator’s efforts to become dictator is “playing into the president’s hands, especially on impeachment”? With all due respect, Madam Speaker — and in my case, that’s a lot of respect — that’s 180 degrees wrong.
Pelosi insists we have plenty of time. And a lot of people, noting that she is an expert in American politics, agree with her. But here’s the thing: We’re not faced with a conventional political opponent. We’re faced with a would-be dictator, and Pelosi is IN NO WAY an expert on dealing with that because America has never had one before. And the people who ARE experts in authoritarianism and dictators — historians, diplomats, war-crimes investigators, some members of the intelligence community, even Holocaust survivors? Almost all of them are waving red flags. A number are saying that if Dems don’t respond forcefully to the GOP’s concerted effort to ignore the subpoenas of a co-equal branch of government, then we will effectively become a one-party GOP government within weeks.
Now, what if they’re wrong? No harm, no foul, and we may yet see the impeachments we want with strong public backing and a clean and fair 2020 election. And I sincerely hope they, and I, are wrong.
But what if they’re right? No, serious question. I want you to stop and think for a minute about what that would mean — and not just for the country as a whole, although a stolen election is just about guaranteed, and not just for comfortable, privileged WASPS, but also for Jews, for poor people, for women (particularly women’s health care), for children, for racial and ethnic and religious minorities, for LGBTQIA people.
The safest bet — which also has the advantage of being the House’s constitutional duty — is for House Dems to: 1) Stop asking and start subpoenaing. Asking just leads to needing to subpoena anyway with this administration, and time is of the essence. 2) Begin jailing for contempt immediately any member of the administration who refuses to testify and/or produce records pursuant to a subpoena. 3) Begin holding televised impeachment hearings immediately. The hearings can begin with the multiple instances of Trump’s obstruction of justice documented in Vol. 2 of the Mueller report and expand from there, or they can begin with other high crimes and misdemeanors already in public view such as Trump’s serial violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, and expand from there. The important thing to remember is that we already have evidence in the public record that Trump has obstructed justice, abused his office, and behaved in legal contempt of Congress. Those were the three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon that led him to resign, and Trump’s violations have been even more egregious.
And why are the televised hearings so important? As with Watergate, given what we already know about this administration, they are likely to reveal the kind of information to the public that will build public support for impeachment. Moreover, they are essential to counteracting the gaslighting of the American public now being carried on by this administration, particularly Attorney General William Barr, and its henchmen at Fox News, Breitbart, and some of the darker media neighborhoods such as 8chan and VDare. Believe it or not, a large number of Americans still aren’t paying very close attention to this, so Dems need to give them a reason to. And even the mainstream media have largely treated this issue as a conventional Democrats-vs.-Republicans partisan political issue rather than the constitutional crisis that it is. The Times article linked above contained information that should have been the lede headline for every mainstream news outlet in the country: House Speaker Doubts President Will Leave Office If Defeated. And yet it was not.
Now some of you have expressed concerns about how robust opposition to, and even attacks on, Trump’s people and policies might affect the 2020 elections. A couple of thoughts on that:
1) In constitutional terms, that shouldn’t even be a consideration. A president is carrying out high crimes and misdemeanors in full public view; as the Framers’ contemporaneous writings make clear, impeachment in such circumstances is not just option but duty.
2) But let’s say it is a consideration. A lot of people with elementary math skills but no political understanding have pointed out that the GOP-controlled Senate won’t convict. I cannot say this too many times or strongly enough: So what? Dems must make Republicans run in 2020 on defending this criminal (as well as on such other issues as trying to kill people’s health insurance and supporting environmental despoliation). Dems made Republicans run in 2018 on their desire to destroy insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and the party generated the biggest blue wave since Watergate. Moreover, if Dems don’t act strongly and soon, the biggest political risk is not that more Republicans will turn out — Republicans already are going to turn out. The biggest political risk is that a big chunk of the Democratic base is likely to stay home in 2020, as it did in 2010 and 2014 when Dem caution also prevailed over the need for action. And without that base, not only will Trump win re-election, the Republicans also will regain the House.
3) For the folks, including Pelosi, who have expressed concern that Trump might not leave office if he doesn’t win in 2020, I’ve got news: That’s Trump’s plan no matter how large or narrow the Dems’ margin of victory. Guaranteed. And it is far from sure that the Secret Service would do its duty at noon on Jan. 20, 2021: arrest him for trespassing and drag him from the White House. I mean, I think they will? But given Trump, assuming the worst generally is the most accurate method of forecasting.
Folks, we’re in very dire straits here; the attempted coup against FDR in the 1930s is the only thing that comes close and this is way worse than that. House Dems need to act now, and not only is there no good reason to wait, there are some chilling reasons why we cannot afford to. Whether we do or not will determine whether this country is still a democratic republic come sunset on Jan. 20, 2021. So if your rep is a Democrat, call him/her and demand: 1) That House Dems stop asking nicely and start issuing subpoenas from the git-go. 2) That administration officials who refuse to immediately comply with subpoenas be jailed the FIRST time. 3) That the House immediately begin televised impeachment hearings on Trump and AG Barr, who lied to Congress about the contents of the Mueller report and Mueller’s dissatisfaction with Barr’s summary of it. Those hearings MUST include the subject of election security and the Russians’ election-theft efforts in 2016 and 2020, and should hear from former President Obama and some of his officials as well as current administration officials if need be to get the full picture.
The next year and a half are going to be ugly politically no matter what choices Dems make. And the ugliness might extend beyond the halls of Congress and the White House and into the streets. But rest assured that 1) the most vulnerable will suffer the most, and 2) Republicans couldn’t give less of a damn about the most vulnerable.
Citizenship is not a spectator sport. History has pointed down the bench at us, swatted us on the asses and ordered us into the game. We need to play hard and play to win, because the cost of defeat would be too great for any of us to bear.