No Trump Impeachment

There's a major disagreement among Democrats as to whether Donald Trump should be impeached. I say no. Prosecutors make judgments all the time about which cases to prosecute based on whether they think they can get a conviction. It's not just their legal judgement that someone did something illegal that matters, but whether they can convince the jury. In the case of Donald Trump, we know that the jury (the Senate) is not going to convict. The number of votes required to block removal from office is 34. There are 53 Republicans, most of whom are very anxious not to upset the supporters of Donald Trump. And the key fact here is that those supporters have not turned against him in significant numbers. The basic shape of his wrongdoing was apparent when they voted for him. Lying, obstruction of justice, and colluding with a foreign power to the detriment of the US do not seem to worry them -- a fact which worries many of the rest of us a great deal.

In contrast, regarding Richard Nixon, his wrongdoing included things the voters did not know about in 1972 when they re-elected him. He did not command the sort of passionate devotion that Trump does, and Gerald Ford was expected to continue Nixon policies. In polls, 47% favored his removal from office and only 34% were opposed. When it became apparent that the Senate would remove him, Nixon resigned instead of facing trial.

As for Bill Clinton, his lying under oath was not known to voters who re-elected him, but there were grave doubts as to whether lying about an affair was an offense that called for removal from office. Wikipedia says, "57% approved of the Senate's decision to keep him in office and two thirds of those polled said the impeachment was harmful to the country." Republican strategists had figured that the impeachment would result in political gains, but it instead resulted in losses.

Occasionally prosecutors will prosecute cases that are highly charged politically even if they strongly suspect they will not succeed. It passes the burden of the decision off of their shoulders onto someone else's. This is the sort of pressure Democrats face with Trump from some of their supporters. But it is plain to everyone that the jury will not convict, so it should be fairly easy to resist that pressure. It is far from certain that a trial by the Senate that is doomed to fail would be viewed favorably by swing voters.

I freely admit that I have not followed this issue in detail, but have the hunch that the details are not all that important. Perhaps my readers will set me straight.

A somewhat related question is whether Twitter should ban Trump since he has clearly violated their terms of service repeatedly. Much as I would like to muzzle him, I think it would backfire. We might suggest that Twitter has an implicit exception to its terms of service: We will not ban someone who enjoys broad political support among those who knew about his Twitter behavior and voted for him anyway. Fundamentally, I think that's right. The political process is bigger than things like terms of service.