07.04.19
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PW OPINION PW NEWS PW LIFE PW ARTS<br />
•GUEST OPINION•<br />
BY EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON<br />
WEAPONS OF CHOICE<br />
WOULD IMPEACHMENT HELP RE-ELECT PRESIDENT TRUMP?<br />
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to be of two<br />
minds.<br />
Pelosi has repeatedly said no to the idea<br />
of impeaching President Trump. She gravely<br />
warns that Trump is goading the opposition into<br />
impeaching him because he sees this as his ticket<br />
back to the White House in 2020. Impeachment,<br />
he believes, will fire up his base by allowing him<br />
to go into full-blown victim mode.<br />
But Pelosi then pivots and says that Trump<br />
must be held accountable. That seems to imply<br />
that impeachment is still on her agenda.<br />
The question that Pelosi correctly zeroes<br />
in on as other Democrats hound her to get the<br />
Nancy Pelosi<br />
impeachment show on the road is this: Will a<br />
House impeachment gambit help or hurt Trump<br />
more than it helps or hurts the Democrats?<br />
Polls show that, much like the House of Representatives itself, there are a lot<br />
of people who believe impeachment is a bad idea for Democrats. Polls also show<br />
that independents, who will be a big factor in the presidential election, also don’t<br />
really like the idea, even though a lot of them don’t like Trump.<br />
Trump can take his cues from what happened with President Bill Clinton.<br />
Clinton was impeached by the then-GOP-controlled House, but the then-<br />
Democrat-controlled Senate didn’t convict, and Clinton’s popularity numbers<br />
soared. If Clinton could have run for a third term in 2000 he almost certainly<br />
would have been re-elected.<br />
The issue must be framed this way for two practical reasons. One,<br />
impeachment will be almost exclusively a Democratic show in the House, since<br />
almost no House Republicans would ever back the effort. The other reason is<br />
that the GOP-controlled Senate would never vote to convict. So, if it’s a strictly<br />
partisan effort, it comes off as nothing more than a political stunt, or at best an<br />
empty gesture done purely to satisfy progressive Democrats.<br />
But what about the Democrats who hail from districts populated by anything<br />
but progressives? More than a handful of new House Democrats come from those<br />
districts, which are full of Republicans, independents, and centrist Democrats<br />
who want nothing to do with an impeachment move by their representatives.<br />
Such a battle would cause undue strain and give the GOP an opening to take<br />
back some of the seats they lost in 2018.<br />
However, here’s the reason why Pelosi is walking a tightrope on impeachment.<br />
A compelling case can be made that going after Trump with impeachment will<br />
energize Democrats. But would it actually do that? This is not a small concern,<br />
given that the Democratic presidential candidate field is way overloaded, with<br />
all of them struggling to find a unifying message that will stir enough Democrats<br />
to storm the polls in 2020. Is impeachment, with Democrats showing they aren’t<br />
afraid to fight for a principle despite the risks, that message?<br />
Pro-impeachment Democrats got a big boost when Special Counsel Robert<br />
Mueller implied that Trump had committed crimes, and that if not for the legal<br />
constraints of going after a sitting president he could have been indicted. Mueller<br />
punted but in the process practically invited Congress to go after Trump through<br />
the only means at its disposal, and that’s impeachment. At least, that’s the way<br />
a lot of Democrats are reading Mueller’s report, Pelosi among them. This is<br />
what’s behind her saying that he must be held accountable. But does being held<br />
accountable mean impeachment?<br />
The best bet for Democrats is booting Trump out of the White House at the<br />
polls. It won’t be easy. He will have a united GOP behind him, a king’s ransom<br />
in campaign cash, the fawning attention of mainstream media, his Twitter bully<br />
pulpit, and the appearance of a bustling economy to crow about. The worst thing<br />
to do now is to give him yet another weapon. Clearly Trump sees impeachment<br />
as that weapon. Many Democrats don’t. But if they’re wrong, it will help re-elect<br />
him. ■<br />
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and author of “The Impeachment of President<br />
Trump?” (Amazon Kindle). He is a weekly co-host of “The Al Sharpton Show” on Radio One<br />
and host of the weekly “Hutchinson Report” on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifi ca<br />
Network.<br />
6 PASADENA WEEKLY | <strong>07.04.19</strong>
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