The Real Democratic Agenda
Column: It's impeaching Donald Trump
Matthew Continetti May 10, 2019
Nancy Pelosi / Getty Images
And you thought Democrats won the House out of fear Republicans
would drop coverage of preexisting conditions. That they wanted to
spend this Congress addressing the cost of prescription drugs,
building roads and bridges, resolving the legal status of DACA
recipients, expanding gun background checks. Don't be silly!
Rashida Tlaib let spill the real Democratic agenda back in January,
when she said they were going to "impeach the motherf—er."
Democrats have a problem. The base wants to impeach President
Trump, ASAP, but the public does not. Indeed, Trump's approval 4
rating is the highest it’s been in the Gallup survey, right around
Obama's at this point in his term. The brute facts of public opinion
suggest that the impeachment of Trump would look more like Bill
Clinton's trial than Richard Nixon's. Not only would Trump remain in
office; the backlash might deprive the Democrats of their 17-seat
House majority.
For months, Nancy Pelosi's solution has been to walk right up to the
line of impeachment without actually crossing it. Unleash committee
chairmen to fire their subpoena cannons in every direction. Make
unrealistic demands of Attorney General Barr. Have Swalwell and
Lieu and the rest of the cable gang keep alive the conspiracy theory
that the Trump campaign was in criminal cahoots with Russia. Drag
out the process into next year, when a weakened and bedraggled
Trump faces the eventual Democratic nominee. That way Pelosi gets
the political benefits of impeachment without the costs.
It's not working. Pelosi's rhetoric has moved in the direction of
Rashida's (minus the profanity). She's gone from saying Trump isn't
worth impeachment, to saying Trump is goading the Democrats into
impeachment, to saying Trump is "self-impeaching," if that's even a
thing. She jokes about the jail cell in the basement of Congress, her
Judiciary Committee has found Barr in contempt, and she shares
Jerry Nadler's hysterical opinion that the United States is in the midst
of a constitutional crisis because he can't read the grand jury
information of a report you can download for free. On the other side
of the building, Chuck Schumer is accusing Mitch McConnell of
aiding and abetting a crime that Robert Mueller could not bring
himself to say actually happened.
What changed? President Trump's preference for confrontation over
consensus is part of the reason, but only a part. Congress and the
president fight all the time. The reality is that impeachment talk is the
only thing holding the Democrats together. Pelosi's heralded agenda
is a flop. Her party is divided on health care, on immigration, on
abortion. Whatever legislation she does pass is destined to meet
the Grim Reaper in the Senate. The two-dozen 2020 candidates are
uninspiring. There's no war to defund. And the economic headlines
are dynamite.
Legal warfare against Trump obscures these weaknesses. Doesn't
matter if no voter brings up Mueller outside the Beltway. Without
teasing impeachment, no one would care about Democrats inside
the Beltway. Two of three cable news channels are desperate for
Trump scandals, real or imagined. The Democrats might as well
give it to them. Or at least pretend to.
In recent weeks the Democrats have turned into a bizarre version of
the caricature of Trump they regularly denounce. They lambaste
Trump for indulging in conspiracy theories, but the Russia
investigation has become their Benghazi, a scandal too complicated
and not quite substantive enough to inflame the public imagination.
They went after Trump for the "lock her up" chants at his rallies, but
flirt with jailing both the attorney general and secretary of the Treasury,
passed a New York state law directed at a single individual (forbidden
in the Constitution as a bill of attainder), and speculate endlessly
about how the president might one day end up behind bars. Pelosi
says she worries Trump might not accept a loss in 2020 as Hillary
Clinton says the election was stolen from her and the entire
Democratic party indulges in the ludicrous fantasy that Stacey Abrams
is the legitimate governor of a state she lost by more than 50,000
votes amidst record minority turnout.
their Waterloo.
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