Impeachment

Impeachment is, legally & procedurally, inert. The Senate won't convict, therefore it won't concretely do anything to impede Trump. I hope at least everyone clearly understands that.

So, you might say, "it's an opportunity to draw attention, to educate voters & diminish Trump's popularity."

If Dems or the left had any control over media -- if media were not heavily structurally biased to shit on Dems & everything Dems do -- that might work. If they had any ability to control or manage narratives, it might work.

But folks: they don't. Look around. Look at the election. They don't.

That's the problem everyone's flailing around, that no one knows how to solve: Dems have very few avenues to reach voters with their preferred messages. RW media utterly dominates rural & exurban areas & in urban areas you get the MSM, which is nearly as bad, nearly as obsessed with Dem bashing.

No one knows how to solve that, so the idea of in impeachment is, explicitly or implicitly, a hail-mary attempt to go around it, to construct some circumstance wherein media has to convey things accurately, to tell the American people what's happening.

But it will not serve that purpose, any more than it did last time. There is no getting around the problem, no cheat code that will make [waves hands] this media environment functional & effective. They'll just tell the story as "Dems flail at Trump rather than working on egg prices."

It's maddening. It's difficult to imagine solutions of any sufficient scale, at least any time soon. It's difficult to know what to do! But just closing our eyes & jumping back in the impeachment pool, hoping it will go differently this time, that they'll tell the story right this time, is futile.

The proximate effect will not be to focus American voters on the details of Trump's crimes, it will be to give commentators an excuse to go back to focusing on (and shitting on) Dems, which is what they desperately want to do anyway. This is not speculation. It has happened! It is happening!

Obviously laws and budgets are moot with an executive who ignores both, and overriding a veto is even harder than impeachment anyway. Oversight? For what? You can't even enforce subpoenas for one thing. But also who cares about holding hearings to talk to the cameras and otherwise do nothing.

The Jan 6 cmte. was able to do its thing in no small part because it was able to enforce subpoenas with a friendly DOJ. People went to prison over it! Others complied because they otherwise would have. They were also able to stage manage it uniquely w/ no opposition members.

For now, there's nothing "oversight" hearings could do in the next Congress with Dem majorities that they couldn't already do right now w/ unofficial hearings. Flipping back the House and/or Senate doesn't actually get them anything on that, their subpoena power would still be toothless then.

There's this incoherent notion impeachment has to prove its worthiness and efficaciousness over other things they could be doing instead, but it never grapples with how there is nothing else to do. You can't tell a coherent story about why doing something else instead will accomplish anything.

This is why when Schumer tries to pivot to something other than impeachment he has nothing else to pivot to that's compelling or for which he can offer a reality-based account of why it would matter. Every other power Congress once had has already been nullified!

And sure, maybe you don't get the votes, don't flip any or enough Republicans, etc. But at least then you have something consequential to hammer them on, the only thing that'd end the insanity you want to pin on them, not empty whining that they won't play along with your do-nothing kabuki theater.

"Oh but that'd give Republicans a talking point..."

FFS, yes! Let them run around saying "Dems want to impeach Trump!" It's not unpopular! It is in fact more popular, by a lot, than congressional Democrats otherwise are on their own.

If you really want to go A/B testing this, try "Do you want to see Trump impeached?" vs. "Do you want Chuck Schumer to be Senate majority leader?" and see which one fares better. It ain't gonna be the sparkling charismatic popularity of Chuck.