Dems need to focus on a singular Trump goal — or face 'political earthquake': analysis
28 June
President Donald Trump with Sen. John Thune and First Lady Melania Trump on January 8, 2025 (Office of Senator John Thune/Wikimedia Commons)
The president said this week that he told Iranthat it would be “fine” for that country to fire rockets at American troops stationed in Qatar in an effort to save face after the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites.
“They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine. And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners,” Donald Trump said at a NATO summit presser.
The rockets were shot down. No injuries or deaths were reported.
Kevin Baron, a veteran military affairs reporter, told MSNBC on Wednesday that Trump’s open-air admission “is unbelievable.”
“I think that’s something we can’t just like paper over and take as the normal course of events in this combat mission that happened.”
It was, on its face, an impeachable offense.
No president has ever given enemies permission to attack.
The day before Trump’s accidental confession, the House voted on whether to advance debate on impeaching him for launching that preemptive attack on Iran without an official declaration of war.
Last weekend, after news broke, the Democrats seemed united in saying war against Iran without congressional approval is illegal. However, they were not united on how to hold him accountable for that high crime. Just 79 Democrats voted to advance impeachment debate. The other 128 joined all the Republicans in tabling the measure.
A poll from April by Data for Progress suggests the public appetite for impeaching and removing Trump is growing, even among Republicans.
When asked to what extent they support “impeaching President Trump for violating Americans' constitutional rights and the law,” 20 percent of Republican respondents said they do. (The number was 84 percent among Democrats, 55 percent among independent voters.)
Republicans were less inclined to support impeachment when the question was put in partisan terms, but over half of independents (52 percent) said they agreed that “Democrats in Congress should attempt to impeach Trump because they have a duty to remove a president that has violated Americans' constitutional rights and the law.”
Texan Congressman Al Green forced the impeachment vote Tuesday. Unnamed colleagues complained to Axios, saying that, on the one hand, “it puts people in a difficult situation” and, on the other, that “there are a lot of other things we should be focused on right now.”
The temptation among most Democrats, if and when they retake power, will be to move on from Trump’s criming spree in order to take care of “the American people’s business.” The urge will be to focus on “what really matters,” perhaps even on fixing things Trump has broken.
But what these 128 Democrats in the House (and presumably the 47 in the Senate’s Democratic caucus) do not yet understand, but which is clear from polling like that from Data for Progress, is that there is no moving on from the current crisis without punishment for Trump.
Accountability always “puts people in a difficult situation.” It’s always easier to do “a lot of other things we should be focused on.” But accountability isn’t just a necessary way forward. It’s the only way.
Trump is destroying public trust. There are people in this country who will never again have faith in the government as a consequence of his crimes. And I’m not just talking about undocumented immigrants. That’s a problem if you are the party of government, if you are the party that believes that government can improve Americans’ lives.
This is why it’s entirely reasonable for people like Gabe Garbowit to say that the Democrats should be focused on one thing and one thing only: the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump. If they are not so focused, Gabe said, they can expect to face a “political earthquake.”
The founder of Citizens’ Impeachment, a volunteer advocacy, told me that if the Democrats continue to believe that all that’s necessary is more tinkering around the edges of politics, “it will be untenable.”
“We are clearly in the midst of a political earthquake on this front, as we saw with the mayoral primary results out of New York,” Gabe said, a reference to the victory by self-identified democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who won thanks to a groundswell among moderate voters.
Let's begin with Trump’s impeachable offenses. They are too numerous to count, but one stands apart. He appears to have given Iran permission to attack American troops. What's your reaction?
My reaction to that is it is an impeachable offense.
I wish more public officials would loudly say the same so that Americans can be validated in believing their eyes and ears.
There are some who are saying that loudly, but they tend to be marginal voices within the Democratic Party. Al Green and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez come to mind. Why are they so isolated?
The nice way to put: it is difficult, when you’ve succeeded in a way of doing things, to change. Most Democrats, especially their leadership, have by definition wildly succeeded in the old system, pre-Trump.
When the world dramatically changes, such that a president is committing impeachable offenses in the open, you have two options.
One, keep up your old routines and try to shove the old ways of decorum back into the new world, hoping it changes back.
Two, adapt to the changes and find a new path forward.
Democrats have overwhelmingly chosen the first path. They have tried to pretend that the president’s behavior requires only more tinkering around the edges, as opposed to outright unequivocal opposition.
To be blunt: people who try to pretend this isn’t exactly the crisis it obviously is for any reason should be nowhere near the halls of power.
The Democrats might be the regular order party, but they won't use the tools of the regular order when it's advantageous for them to use them. I'm thinking here of impeachment resolutions, which are privileged. Any one Democrat can force a vote yet only one has.
Fundamentally, Democrats are the party of the status quo. Regular order is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to Congress. It is not a static institution. It is also impossible to enforce anything resembling "regular order" when, say, the Republican Party has no interest in it.
Nothing about Congress resembled regular order even before Trump came to power. Giant mega bills passed once a year and negotiated by leadership are not regular order. Most of Congress's time being spent by members giving speeches to empty chambers is not regular order.
It all makes more sense when you view it through the prism of upholding the status quo. That involves accepting that the United States needs little change and that political currents by citizens should be directed towards incremental adjustments.
In this light, even during the current and worst governance crisis since the Civil War, the party is continuing along as it has been for decades: accepting the status quo and tinkering around the edges.
What can be done to change this way of thinking? You have been involved in something called Citizens’ Impeachment. Talk about that.
If citizens on a large scale do not tolerate that way of doing things, it will be untenable. We are clearly in the midst of a political earthquake on this front, as we saw with the mayoral primary results out of New York.
What will happen is that the politicians who are stuck in their ways of doing things will get forced out. The smarter ones who can adapt will pretend they were disrupters the entire time.
Citizens' Impeachment, an organization I founded, is less abstract than this by design. It focuses on directly connecting citizens with Congress to advocate for the impeachment of Donald Trump.
This, unlike whether politicians develop common sense, is a direct action lawmakers can take and be objectively judged on whether they try to achieve this goal or not.
I've stepped away from the organization, which is all-volunteer, after putting the building blocks in place. I couldn't be more proud of the work it’s done and can't wait to see what it does in the future.
Look into the future and tell me what you can reasonably expect to happen with impeachment. Then tell me what you think should.
In March, there was a single member that supported impeachment. As of this week, there are now 79 members who do and the issue is creeping further and further into the discourse.
This is both extreme progress from a legislative perspective and not nearly fast enough in real time. And it only happened because the grassroots was relentless in speaking out.
Remember, a majority of Americans, including 20 percent of Republicans, already support impeaching the president.
Only a tiny fraction of those Americans have let Congress know those opinions and that is what needs to change.
Short term, I would like for every single member of Congress who claims that Trump is a tyrant to back articles of impeachment.
I would also like to see a caucus formed in the House specifically dedicated to strategizing and planning on how to move forth articles of impeachment. That work is not being done now, other than quiet closed-door discussions, and it shows.
It does not require many GOP members to "break" in order to move articles to the Senate. If such an event were to happen, it needs to be made extremely clear that all congressional business will be dedicated to impeachment until Trump is removed from office.
The House can keep sending over impeachment articles until the Senate votes to convict. This shouldn't be much of a problem because this is the least productive Congress in modern history.
The time scale for the second part is anyone's guess. A year seems possible. Three years could be as well. Really depends on how rapidly Americans can be mobilized.
But Trump needs to be removed and his tyrannical reign of terror must end. Our constitution gives us a way to do this and our Congress must use it. It's not an option and it must happen as soon as possible.