The people who are complaining about Democrats not showing up for the impeachment votes are either complete idiots or folks who should know better. Massie’s indictment was all about Massie; it was not designed to succeed, and the bill of charges under a Democratic majority will probably be quite a bit different. Marcy is quite right that the useful story here is that Johnson still has sufficient command over the GOP caucus to prevent any defections, rather than Democratic perfidy.
As an apparent “complete idiot”, perhaps I have no place to respond to political savants like Robert Farley or Marcy Wheeler, but I can try to string together some words of explanation, as difficult as it is for someone apparently suffering from the curse of idiocy.
The complaint about not showing up for impeachment votes is not about whether it could succeed. It’s about attitude and commitment. Most of the members who were absent were at an event for a PAC that takes a lot of AIPAC money. This shows the wrong priority, especially after a barnburner of an election that was in part about disgust about corruption. A lot of non-idiots think that missing a floor vote to attend a PAC fundraiser is a symptom of a form of corruption — of paying more attention to donors than to the duties of a legislator. In short, it’s a “bad look”.
It’s also bad politics: one of the best journalists in the country, Kyle Clark, absolutely roasted Brittany Pettersen, CO-7 for her initial response that she was “prevented” from attending the vote. After being badgered by Clark’s colleague Marshall Zelinger, Pettersen finally issued this statement:
That Kyle Clark / Marshal Zelinger piece also pointed out that Electing Democratic Women takes millions in AIPAC money. Perhaps the sophisticated politics-knowers like Professor Farley and Ms Wheeler have a fancy name for this, but this idiot calls what Rep. Pettersen went through “eating shit”, and a good rule of thumb is that a politician shouldn’t do it very much if they want to be re-elected.
The impulse to call people “idiots” because they don’t understand that the Hegseth impeachment would never succeed is similar to what I wrote about the other day with regard to Senate time. You’re an “idiot” if you don’t accept “that’s how things work” and instead expect things to change since we’re trying to combat fascist authoritarians.
Farley says, and this really concerns me, that “the bill of charges under a Democratic majority will probably be quite a bit different.” I read Massie’s Articles of Impeachment [pdf], even though I had to sound out the big words. They were serviceable and perhaps a few more articles could be added, but they hit the high points. There’s no need for Democrats to work for months to produce the absolutely perfect Articles of Impeachment that will get them a gold star and a smile from the teacher as they sit in their seats at the front of the room. We have a lot to do. Better, in this case, is the enemy of good enough. If Republicans in the Senate aren’t going to vote to convict, it won’t be because the Articles of Impeachment weren’t written correctly or missed one of the dozens of other illegal things Hegseth has done.
Moving on, but related, Scott sent this in:
Since I’m an idiot, I probably don’t understand that it’s perfectly legal for Congress to trade stocks, and that until Congress passes legislation to stop it, there’s just nothing we can do. Oh, wait, let’s hear from Adam Bonica, the guy who wrote about how Democratic text messaging was exploiting elders and angering everyone else:
[…] The party’s coming in with an approval rating that is 10 to 20 points lower than their approval rating was in 2010 when they lost in a landslide. People do not see the Democratic Party as a popular party. They are the alternative, and that is what this election was about, but they need to be more than that.
Now, dealing with affordability is going to be very difficult through policy, as we described. But the thing they do have complete control over is adopting anti-corruption policies. They don’t need to pass legislation to do it. They just need to say, “As rules for our Democratic Party.”
If you recall, after 2006, when they ran on that culture of corruption platform, they came in and did a bunch of rules that changed how lobbyists could engage with politicians. All these things they talk about wanting to do, banning congressional stocks, getting money out of politics, removing mega donors, or even, stop exploiting seniors to fundraise and draining their retirement accounts through exploitative fundraising, the revolving door.
All of that can be resolved within the Democratic Party with a leader that says, “These are the new rules. If you do not follow the rules, I will use the powers as speaker to say that you no longer get the committee you want. You no longer have free privilege to bring bills to the floor. You lose a whole bunch, you get the worst office.”
All of these tools that majority leaders have been able to use and speakers have famously used to reform Congress, that’s what a leader needs to be doing right now. And you know what? You don’t need to worry about the Supreme Court. You don’t need to worry about Republicans.
In fact, you want to create that contrast. Let the Republicans be corrupt for two years so you can show that, Look, we cleaned up. We took it into our own hands and said, All these things we don’t like about politics, we actually rooted out in our own party, and we held our own accountable.
Again, if we’re willing to really change, we can change a lot. If we want to chide people who don’t understand the status quo (or don’t accept it), then I guess that might be personally satisfying, but it’s politically stupid. Perhaps, one might even say, idiotic. But I wouldn’t say that. I’m not smart enough.
