If the House impeaches Donald Trump before he leaves office, will the Gain be Worth the Pain for our country?

If the House does impeach Donald Trump before he leaves office, there is no way he will be removed by the Senate prior to Biden’s inauguration.  Two months ago, Trump received the second highest number of votes in history of any presidential candidate.  If the Democrat led House does this, will this not just further exacerbate the partisan divide?  It will make Trump appear as a victim of the vengeful hateful Democrats.  Since losing the election, he has raised nearly $250 million from his loyal supporters that has gone into his political slush fund.  Another impeachment could double Trump’s loot and make him even more of a troublemaker when he is out of office.   Joe Biden says he wants to pull the country together.  Won’t the impeachment make this goal that much harder to achieve?  Also, considering all the problems America is facing right now, are there not more productive things Congress could be doing than this? So, what possible gain could there be that would justify the pain of a second impeachment?

It now appears that the US Senate can ratify the House’s articles of impeachment on a president AFTER he/she leaves office.  So, what possible good could come from that potential outcome?

Point.  I am going to make the point that it will be in the best interests of our country for the US House of Representatives to impeach President Trump for a second time between now and Jan 20.

Counterpoint.  I am looking to supporters of President Trump to make the case that the House should not impeach President Trump a second time. damage done by such an impeachment will be much greater than any gain.

Current Discussion: Points and Counterpoints

Point 1: The House should impeach President Trump again even though the Senate will not ratify the impeachment prior to Trump leaving office.

In 2016, I created a blog entitled WHRHRC.wordpress.com.  I did a series of 8 discourses explaining why, after heretofore voting for a Republican in every presidential election, I was now going to vote for Hillary Clinton. I did two versions of the final discourse.  The one I posted said that I expected Clinton would win and I explained why overall it would be best for our country.  This is a link to the other version I wrote 50 months ago:  https://wordpress.com/page/dtreppendahlexcerpts.wordpress.com/102

The heading of the last section in that discourse was:  Who to choose for President Now? Donald Trump.  I said “I fully expect Donald Trump will prove to be the worst president in the history of The Republic.  But in the end, I think we will be better off for having suffered through him.” 

I expected to be at exactly the point we are at now – where he has done so many outrageous things that Congress would need to impeach him.  The main reason I wanted this to happen was to reduce the possibility of America being taken over by a Strongman.  I had once thought John Adams was right when he said “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” I once believed Christians in America would be the ones to most ensure that we elected moral leaders and held them accountable.  Trump’s success, particularly with “The Moral Majority”, disabused me of that perspective.  I was astounded at how gullible and willing to overlook Trump’s total lack of a moral compass so many of my fellow Christian were.  Trump had tapped into their fears and anger by “tickling their ears”. Paul rightly warned Timothy that religious people sometimes succumb to such leaders: “For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires.”

In this final discourse, I said I did not think that Trump had the political moxie nor the desire to become the strongman himself.  My fear was that he was blazing a trail for someone who did have the ambition and ability to become America’s first dictator a la Julius Caesar or Vladimir Putin.  I may have underestimated Trump in this regard – without question, he has the desire. 

Donald Trump has committed many misdeeds while in office.  He was impeached once for trying to shakedown a foreign leader to help him with his campaign.  Trump’s national security advisor witnessed Trump begging the premier of China to buy grain from US farmers so as to help him win the election.  The message to a future dictator is that he/she can do such things and get away with it.  Not good. More recently, we have all heard the recording of Donald Trump demanding that the Secretary of State of Georgia fabricate enough votes so that he could win the state’s electoral votes.  Do we want that to be acceptable?  And now, the incitement of the insurrection on the US Capitol.  As Bush ’41 said about Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait:  “This must not stand.”  Here and Now, a precedent will be set that will determine what is and is not permissible for a president of the US to do.  If Congress gives Donald Trump a pass, if it does not convict him for his “crimes and misdemeanors”, then it will leave the door wide open for a future dictator.   That is the main reason I believe the House should impeach Trump now and the US Senate must ratify those articles of impeachment later.

The second main reason that the House should immediately impeach Donald Trump is to check him between now and when he leaves office.  As president, Trump has vast powers, and he has a week or so left to use them.   We now know how unhinged he is. He is a malignant narcissist. He has no concern for his legacy nor for our country.  He only cares about slaking his personal desires. He wants to run again in 2024.  If he is convicted by the Senate, he will be done.  Any additional misdeeds he does between now and Jan 20 will increase the likelihood of a full impeachment. That threat should check him.

These are the two main reasons that I think the House should impeach him now.  I look forward to receiving additional points and also counterpoints as they relate to this issue.

Counterpoint 1: The House should not impeach President Trump again.

by No one submitted a good justification for not holding the impeachment hearings. If anyone has a reasonable justification for not impeaching him, please send me and email and I will post it here.

Point 2: A third justification for impeaching Donald Trump is to dispel his lies about election fraud and thereby help heal the divide. 

A democracy is a very fragile governing arrangement.  Critical to its success is the perception by the electorate that the election was fair, and the person elected was the legitimate winner.  If that confidence is removed, the whole thing collapses.  For that reason, successful democracies go to great lengths to ensure that the vote counts accurately reflect the will of the electorate.  There have been four contested elections in US history.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/rigged-vote-four-us-presidential-elections-contested-results-180961033/.  The first two were in 1876 and 1888.  They were rife with shenanigans and changes were subsequently made to improve the validity of the future elections.  The election in 1960 was the closest in US history.  There was a difference of 112,000 popular votes nationwide.  In five states the margins were less than 1% and in Texas, less than 2%.      https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-president-kennedys-1960-election-win/   And yet, “On Wednesday afternoon, November 9, 1960, Nixon officially conceded the election to Kennedy. He told his friend, journalist Earl Mazo, that “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.” (Mazo had written a series of articles about voter fraud after the 1960 election, which he stopped at Nixon’s request.)”.  No doubt there had been election fraud in IL, which Nixon lost by 9,000 votes.  Richard Nixon understood how critical it was to our democracy to not contest a presidential election and have a peaceful transfer of power.

In 2000, a single state determined the winner – Florida.  The difference in the popular vote was 537 votes out of 6 million cast.  There were clearly problems with Florida’s voting machines. The FL state supreme court ruled there should be a hand recount of all votes.  Without precedent, this ruling was overturned by the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision and Bush declared the winner. Gore, who had won the nationwide popular vote, conceded the next day. 

And then we come to the election of 2020 where Donald Trump lost by 7 million popular votes. The two closest states were Georgia and Arizona.  The differences were just under 12,000 votes. They did hand recounts in both states and the Republican controlled state legislatures confirmed the results in favor of Biden. Had elections been reversed in both states, Biden would still have won the election.  

And yet, Donald Trump has refused to concede and has claimed without any evidence that he won the election by a landslide and that he and his base were robbed.  The upshot of such false and incendiary statements resulted in the invasion of the US Capitol.  Worse than that, though, is this has undermined faith in the election process. Half of Republicans believe Trump is right, the election was rigged, and Biden is not the legitimate winner.   

The focus of the Senate impeachment trial should be to validate that there was clearly not enough fraud to affect the outcome of the election, that Trump knew this to be true, and yet he repeatedly lied about this and did great damage to the American people’s confidence in the election and the democratic process.  If this is found to be true, then this would be among the greatest “crimes and misdemeanors” a president could commit and he should suffer the full consequences that would come from the conviction by the US Senate.

This is a chance for Democrats and civic minded Republicans to come together and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the election.  In the process, those Republicans who knowingly cooperated with Trump in promoting his false claims should be called out for the great damage they have helped cause to our nation.  This, more than anything else I can think of, will begin the process of healing our country.  

A democracy is a very fragile governing arrangement.  Critical to its success is the perception by the electorate that the election was fair, and the person elected was the legitimate winner.  If that confidence is removed, the whole thing collapses.  For that reason, successful democracies go to great lengths to ensure that the vote counts accurately reflect the will of the electorate. There have been four contested elections in US history. The first two were in 1876 and 1888.  They were rife with shenanigans and changes were subsequently made to improve the validity of the future elections.  The election in 1960 was the closest in US history.  There was a difference of 112,000 popular votes nationwide.  In five states the margins were less than 1% and in Texas, less than 2%.      https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-president-kennedys-1960-election-win/   And yet, “On Wednesday afternoon, November 9, 1960, Nixon officially conceded the election to Kennedy. He told his friend, journalist Earl Mazo, that “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.” (Mazo had written a series of articles about voter fraud after the 1960 election, which he stopped at Nixon’s request.)”.  No doubt there had been election fraud in IL, which Nixon lost by 9,000 votes.  Richard Nixon understood how critical it was to our democracy to not contest a presidential election and have a peaceful transfer of power.