A Time magazine piece this week titled "Why impeachment makes for bad Thanksgiving dinner conversation" argues that the nation is simply too polarized to safely take on the subject of impeachment this season. "If you want to avoid indigestion this week, skimp on politics," correspondent Philip Elliott advises.
If indigestion is really your chief worry at this moment in history, you may just want to skip this friendly post altogether, because I'm hoping no one reading this thinks that is of primary importance. And while I understand the inclination to keep the peace (not to mention one’s sanity) during the holiday season, I also believe every one of us has the power to find ways to help save the republic from Donald Trump and his morally corrupt band of Republican enablers.
At the time of this writing on Monday, we still don't have any conclusive evidence of how the impeachment hearings moved or didn't move public opinion regarding Trump's removal from office. We do know, however, that when Democrats simply took the bold step of initiating the proceedings in September, support spiked immediately in favor of the inquiry (and even Trump's impeachment) in most polls. Since then, support for Trump's impeachment and removal has plateaued, with the public roughly evenly split on the issue. But this week, several high-quality polls will likely drop that suggest the hearings moved the needle either further in favor of Trump's removal or away from it, or perhaps had little effect one way or the other. And as much I love polls, I recommend not getting too overly focused on this next wave of information. We may like what these polls say or we may not, but these immediate results will likely tell us little about the most consequential question at hand—whether Trump will ultimately be removed from office.
Like it or not, Republican lawmakers appear to have made the cowardly but unsurprising choice to put their own electoral viability over country and fall in line behind Trump. So while the spectacle of a Senate trial is still a bit of a mystery, the outcome that Trump will be acquitted by the GOP-led chamber likely isn't. It's maddening but okay. The acquittal, just like this week’s fresh round of polling, is only one small piece of whether Trump actually gets reelected in 2020. Sure, it's possible that voters will be temporarily miffed at Democrats over impeachment. It's also possible that voters will find the GOP's exoneration of Trump distasteful and even unforgivable. But what's most important is that people find a way to stay engaged with the issues over the coming year until they cast what will arguably be the most consequential vote of their lifetimes.
The simple fact is, Trump and his presidency are such a totally chaotic shit show that a million things will happen between his likely impeachment/acquittal and next year's election. For now, what is maybe most important about this entire impeachment inquiry is that the vast majority of people in multiple polls have said that asking a foreign leader to investigate a political rival is wrong/unacceptable (70% in two recent polls) and that in multiple polls a solid majority (mid- to high-50s and 60s) also believe Trump did something wrong, regardless of whether they support his removal from office. If those two salient points generally hold steady between now and next November, they will most likely work against Trump in 2020, and impeachment will have been worth its weight in gold, no matter what voters’ attitudes about it specifically are.
What concerns me more than any single poll or even Trump's probable acquittal is the avalanche of news that's going to flow between now and November 2020, and the ability of voters to make sense of it all. What's clear is that Trump and his minions are going to continue pushing Vladimir Putin's baseless propaganda regarding supposed “Ukraine interference” in 2016. Republicans will also—without a shred of conscience—continue to accuse Democrats of doing absolutely everything they are doing: mounting a deceptive and unpatriotic disinformation campaign designed to confuse and manipulate the public. In actuality, only one party will be executing that scheme, but the more Republicans charge Democrats with the same infraction, the more impossible it will become for casual news watchers to figure out who is telling the truth. And that's exactly the point—Republicans hope to create enough static and confusion that voters simply throw up their hands and surrender. Discouraging engagement could potentially serve as an antidote to the basic conclusion that most voters have already reached: Trump did something bad and he did it to benefit himself.
But keeping people interested on some level is the key. So while I don't exactly recommend starting a food fight over the facts of impeachment while people are trying to enjoy some gobble gobble, I do encourage more precise appeals to smaller groups or even individuals not to tune out completely—to find a way to stay informed, because the future of our republic depends on it.
This Thanksgiving weekend and throughout the holidays, we will all encounter very different experiences. Some of us will walk into what feels like enemy territory, while others face a mixed bag of opinions, and still others end up debating which Democratic nominee is most likely to prevail against Trump. I fully encourage everyone to stay safe and preserve their sanity. That said, a well-placed conversation here or there may actually yield big dividends down the road collectively. We don't have to convince family members that we're right on the facts or the politics or whatever at one table sitting; simply persuading them that the future of this country depends on their willingness to pay attention at this critical juncture in history may be enough.