T Bone highlighted this yesterday in the comments:
When asked if impeachment was a top priority, Jeffries said “of course not” during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I’ve made clear from the very beginning that our top priority is going to be to drive down the high cost of living,” the House minority leader added.
“We believe in this country, you work hard, you play by the rules. You should be able to live an affordable life, a comfortable life, in fact, to live the good life, and that means a good paying job and good housing, good health care, good education for your children, and when it’s all said and done, a good retirement,” he added.
Here’s my counterpoint:
When 88% of your base wants something, “of course not” isn’t the right answer. But here’s why I think Jeffries says that, and why he’s wrong.
Jeffries, as Pelosi’s protege, inherits her mentality about impeachment which is, I believe, that it’s a waste of legislative time and effort to do something that is doomed to fail. Pelosi was famously reticent about the first Trump impeachment and had to be pushed into it. The second Trump impeachment wasn’t the top priority that in hindsight it should have been. I’ll label this as a belief, but I think the reason that she didn’t take either effort seriously enough was because she’s a vote counter and didn’t see the votes.
Anyway, I’ll be the first to admit that a Trump 2027 impeachment will probably not result in a conviction in the Senate. Still, there are plenty of reasons to do it, and to do it seriously, with lots of wood behind the impeachment arrow.
Here’s how I think it should be done: The focus should be on corruption, “emoluments” if you want to get fancy. Drag in as many of the Trump family and their hangers-on and grill them about the money that’s lining their pockets. When I said “seriously” above, I mean that when they drag these folks in, they should be subject to some smart questioning, not a bunch of grandstanding, that is based in facts. This means staff work. This means Democrats getting their shit together in the way they did for the Jan 6 committee, where for once they coordinated their questioning.
Also, I’m not an expert on the ins-and-outs of House, but the way that the Jan 6 committee worked — an ad hoc committee basically inviting Republicans to be part of it in a way that they’d be pretty certain not to participate — is a good thing and a model for how to run an impeachment inquiry. There’s no need to have Gym Jordan or some other mouthy idiot on the committee distracting it from important business. And if AOC, Ilhan Omar and some other “loud and proud” Democrats aren’t on the committee, then we’ll know it’s not serious.
The Trumpers like to avoid subpoenas, so the Democrats also need to do something else they’re not good at: demonstrate some imagination and flexibility about how to get the facts out. This is probably a combination of tactics, starting with finding low-level witnesses who are inclined to help to get facts on the table, then also by using the power of Inherent Contempt to get the higher-level Trumpers to cooperate.
Congress is long overdue for a reclamation project, one that reclaims their authority as the appropriating body. A long, public, and interesting impeachment would help to at least reclaim a little bit of Congressional authority. By “long and interesting”, I mean that there shouldn’t be a big rush to get the impeachment resolution to the floor until after every corrupt piece of shit from the Trump administration has at least had a chance to be confronted with facts. Everything happens so quickly with the Trump Administration that all of the corruption comes and goes without much notice. The point of the Impeachment exercise is to keep putting the real and major corruption of the Trump Administration in front of citizens who, as polls are showing, are already sick of Trump.
Impeachment will also steal the spotlight and drive Trump nuts, both of which are good things.
If we do squeak out a tiny Senate majority and a little big bigger House majority, it’s going to be a two-year fight with Trump no matter what. There will be shutdowns, there will be efforts to intimidate Democrats by Trump doing bad, terrible things. Having a tiny Congressional majority, a raging nutcase in the White House, and a totally corrupt Supreme Court isn’t really the greatest political position. A serious impeachment effort at least shows the voters that we get it. And, who knows, there might be enough Republican Senators sick of whatever horrible shit Trump will be doing by late 2027 that they might even vote to convict.
