I don’t mean, should he be impeached by the House. Of course he should.
The thing is, as we’ve seen recently at sporting events and in elections, people are fired up — about getting rid of Trump. If that’s done surgically, tidily, by impeachment and removal, lots and lots of those sometimes-voters are going to assume the battle is won; they’ll dust their hands and go back to leading their unengaged lives, leaving Pence and McConnell sitting pretty.
Pence probably wouldn’t win in the fall — most people would sooner vote for a G.I. Joe — but our chances of retaking the Senate would plummet. No Democrat — not even Biden, let alone Warren or Buttigieg, would get anything done with Mitch McConnell still in charge.
To avoid that, I say we want first to prove that Trump is unambiguously guilty, then have the Senate acquit him anyway. That accomplishes two things. First, for the next twenty years, all Democrats will have to do is say the name “Donald Trump” and they’ll automatically have a tailwind of forty percent of the voters, like the names “Jefferson Davis” or “Herbert Hoover” were in bygone days.
Second, if we want a Democratic agenda actually enacted, we must have a Democratic senate. This year and in 2022 and maybe even 2024, all those senators who voted to acquit should be forced to defend that decision. They should be forcibly aligned with Trump. Even Susan Collins, who will almost certainly vote to remove as soon as she’s sure he won’t be removed, must be tied to him, hand and foot. (As for 2022 and 2024, don’t forget that for the next five years, as soon as Trump is powerless, books and investigations detailing the full extent of his depravity will be coming out almost weekly.)