[rad-green] Defeat or Impeach? The (Il)Logic of Impeachment

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/27/defeat-or-impeach-the-illogic-of-impeachment/

*COUNTERPUNCH          NOVEMBER 27, 2019*Defeat or Impeach? The (Il)Logic
of Impeachment
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/27/defeat-or-impeach-the-illogic-of-impeachment/>by
Jim Kavanagh

Photograph Source: Kathy Drasky – CC BY 2.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/>

I’ve had the displeasure to watch some hours of the House Intelligence
Committee’s impeachment inquiry. It’s an excruciating spectacle,
alternately boring, confusing, and infuriating.

Where have the Democrats set the high-crime-and-misdemeanor goalpost today?
Is it the “Russian collusion” for which Adam Schiff had “direct evidence
<https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/432371-schiff-cites-2016-trump-tower-meeting-as-direct-evidence-of>”
even before the Mueller investigation? How about the “10 different episodes
of presidential obstruction of justice” for which Jamie Raskin told us
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/impeach-trump-pelosi-nadler.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage>
“the
evidence is overwhelming”? No, really, they got him on “quid pro quo”!  Or
is it “abuse of power
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/15/politics/donald-trump-marie-yovanovitch-friday-impeachment/index.html>”?
Wait, it’s “bribery.” Final answer. (They focussed-grouped
<https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2019/11/15/confirmed-dems-switched-quid-pro-quo-bribery-focus-group-told-better/>
it!)
Bombshells all.

I have no interest in parsing the minutiae of the purported case Schiff is
now making against Trump. (I’ll leave that to Aaron Maté
<https://www.thenation.com/article/impeachment-sondland-democrats/>, who
does it so well.) I’ve said before
<https://www.thepolemicist.net/2019/08/dead-mans-hand-impeachment-gambit.html>
that
I think it’s political folly. Here, I would like those who are enthralled
by the ongoing impeachment frenzy to focus for a moment on one glaring
contradiction in the logic of the Democrats’ position—a contradiction that
reveals that the Democrats are speaking with forked tongue about what they
are actually trying to do.

To wit:

Prime Directive A: The Absolute Most Important Thing Ever In The History Of
The Universe (or at least The American Republic) Is To Defeat Trump in 2020.

We’ve heard this incessantly from Democrats since election day 2016. For
establishment Democrats, this injunction governs all political discourse
and behavior in the party. It has been the bedrock mandate for Democrats
going into election 2020, the basis of a hoped-for party discipline in the
primary debates. It requires that any “left” candidate (only Bernie and
Tulsi could be so characterized, and only Bernie is a real electoral
threat) must temper his or her promotion of system-changing social policies
like Medicare-for-All or an end to regime-change wars, and refrain from
sharply calling out reactionary “nothing will fundamentally change
<https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/>”
opponents. The most consequential questions and debates about social
policies that affect all Americans must be subordinated to the imperative
to win the 2020 presidential election. Don’t be divisive. Don’t criticize
“centrist”—i.e., reactionary and imperialist—Democrats. Vote Blue No Matter
Who.

In May, Nancy Pelosi herself defined
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/us/politics/nancy-pelosi.html> Democratic
strategy—and, it’s important to note, her refusal at the time to pursue
impeachment—in terms of this injunction, as “focused on pursuing
center-left policies she thinks will help her party out in 2020 — a focus
on pragmatic improvements … that emphasizes beating Mr. Trump.” And she and
her colleagues have continued to enforce that injunction on the Party since.

Now, there’s Prime Directive B: We Must Impeach Trump*, *even if doing so
helps to re-elect him!

It’s that stark of a contradiction. Aware that
<https://www.theblaze.com/news/poll-reveals-how-democrats-impeachment-inquiry-could-actually-help-president-trump>
“more
voters believe [impeachment] will strengthen Trump’s re-election chances
than hurt them and … will [even] hurt Democrats’ chances at retaining a
majority in the House,” Pelosi’s response is
<https://thehill.com/homenews/house/463527-pelosi-impeachment-worth-losing-house-in-2020>:
“It doesn’t matter. Our first responsibility is to protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States.” It’s a huge “political risk,” but “That
doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. Because we cannot have a president of
the United States … undermining our national security, and undermining the
integrity of our elections.”

It “doesn’t matter”—three times.

New Party discipline, not just from Pelosi, Schiff, and establishment but
from progressive Dems, too: Must vote to impeach Trump, “political risk” be
damned! It’s our constitutional duty.

It’s inspiring to hear that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff have risen above
politics to constitutional duty, but there’s still an absolute
contradiction in these positions that has to be recognized. There cannot be
two “most important” things. Either the most important thing is to defeat
Trump or it’s to impeach him.

If you try to wriggle out of that by saying: “The best way to defeat Trump
is to impeach him,” don’t, because you have to recognize that Pelosi is
emphatically not saying that. Pelosi recognizes that an impeachment process
is virtually certain to fall short of removing Trump from office, and may
very well help him retain the Presidency and the Republicans regain control
of the Congress. She, Schiff, and the Democrats are saying “We are not
impeaching
Trump because we think it’s the best way to defeat him. We know it’s not,
and indeed that it carries a great risk of strengthening his rule. We are
doing it because it’s our constitutional duty as patriotic Americans.”

You can believe in the sincerity, rather than the moralizing hypocrisy, of
that proclamation—and I’m sure there are some Democratic congresspersons
who at least believe it when they say it. But you cannot ignore the evident
contradiction between the conflicting Prime Directives, or the strange fact
that Democrats are ignoring it, simply pretending it’s not there. (It’s
what Althusserian theory would see as a classic ideological construct: a
contradiction that’s produced [even obvious] but not recognized.) Once you
do recognize this contradiction, as a sentient creature in the American
political universe you’d have to be extremely naïve not to suspect that
something else besides “constitutional duty” explains what is going on here.

After all, wasn’t the point of the Democrats’ first Prime Directive
precisely that re-electing Trump would itself fatally harm the Constitution
and the Republic? Does not pursuing “politically risky” impeachment instead
of concentrating on winning the election effect that very harm?

It might clarify what else is going on to notice that the Democratic
leadership wants us to accept that Prime Directive B requires us to have a
divisive debate about a whole bunch of things; while Prime Directive A
still forbids us from having a divisive debate about social policy.

Democrats say we now must take the “political risk” of Trump being
re-elected and the Republicans controlling the legislature, via a prolonged
and divisive debate over such things as Adam Schiff’s interpretation of the
oath of office, the emoluments and bribery clauses, the need to arm Kiev
without any delay, the need to recognize and confront “Russian aggression”
in Ukraine and Georgia and to expand NATO, the dismissal of Ukrainian
interference in the 2016 election, the parsing of overheard telephone
calls, and the meaning of the word “though.” All that matters.

But we still cannot and must not tolerate a sharp debate about whether
Americans should have healthcare, education, jobs, housing, and forgo
regime-change war. That doesn’t matter.

One set of things matters, and merits risking division and electoral
failure. One doesn’t.

Seeing what actually matters to the Democratic Party and what doesn’t
discloses the governing principle and the actual logic underlying the
seemingly contradictory Directives. Though he is presented as the main
focus in both cases, what matters is not Donald Trump. He is the most
garish puppet in their Punch and Judy show, but it is not about him. What
matters is maintaining neo-liberal capitalist (“centrist”) domestic
socio-economic policies and neocon, imperialist foreign and military
policies. Both Prime Directives are based on that.

The real point of Prime Directive A is, exactly as Nancy Pelosi said, to
“focus” the Party “on pursuing center-left policies”—i.e., to channel all
discussion, and our undivided attention, away from insurgent social
democratic and antiwar demands. For that purpose, the nomination of a
candidate like Bernie Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard is the fundamental threat,
and the frightening specter of a re-elected Donald Trump is held out to
prevent it.

In light of that main objective, the real point of Prime Directive B is not
contradictory, but complementary, to Directive A: To use attacking Trump as
a means to ensure that the US continue “pursuing center-left policies.” In
the realm of foreign policy that means reactionary “Washington consensus”
exceptionalism and interventionism, and an insistence on the dangerous
anti-Russia campaign that Democrats and Republicans have been pursuing at
least since Bill Clinton decided to bring virtually every post-Soviet state
into NATO. For that purpose, the scary, absolutely delusional
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/19/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerously-hawkish-on-russia/>,
specter of “all roads lead to Putin
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/pelosi-recalls-clash-with-trump-says-she-was-probably-telling-him-that-all-roads-lead-to-putin/2019/10/17/fdbde8d2-f0f2-11e9-8693-f487e46784aa_story.html>”
Trump that the Democrats have spent three years concocting via Russiagate
and its extension, Ukrainegate, is held out again as the villain that has
to be stopped—this time by an “undivided” coterie of Congressional
constitutionalists.

Trump in this is a foil for reinforcing the imperialist paradigm. Behind
all the blather about “constitutional duty” addressed to its gullible
constituency, the Democratic leadership, which knows very well the enormous
political risk that impeachment hearings will help Trump, is building a
case for its other real audience—Republican senators. It is publicly—and I
guarantee, privately—pounding on the theme of Trump as not a reliable
steward of US imperialism.

The Ukrainian arms shipment may be the only thing in the public forum, but
the full message in the cloakrooms is that Trump is the guy who wanted
better relations with Russia, who said he might accept Crimea’s accession
to Russia, who called off a military strike on Iran, who tried to withdraw
troops from Syrian, etc. All these things defy the neocon “interagency
consensus” that the Democrats, their witnesses, and the Republicans hold so
dear, and they are being spun into a case that Trump must go, because, as
Pelosi said, he is “undermining our national security.” This is the only pitch
the Democrats want to make and are making, and that has a slight chance of
succeeding with enough Republican senators. As I’ve indicated before
<https://www.thepolemicist.net/2019/10/the-empire-steps-back-trump-withdraws.html>,
the timing suggests that Pelosi and/or Schiff may have indications, from
interactions we are not seeing (Watch out for Bolton
<https://www.rt.com/usa/469946-bolton-embraced-mainstream-media-impeachment/>!),
that it might work.

A very slight chance. From everything we have seen so far, this is moving
toward a political disaster for the Democrats—if defeating Donald Trump
were the measure of that.

Except, at the end of the day, the Democrats do not care if they fail
spectacularly, since their main objective is not to impeach or convict or
beat Trump electorally, but to protect the Washington consensus—to
undermine the rising social-democratic demands in the party and keep the US
on its interagency-assigned imperialist and Zionist trajectory.

That is the thing “above politics” to which they proclaim their ultimate
fealty, misspelling it “constitutional duty.”

Sure, they would like to replace Trump, who’s too crass and unreliable, but
only with someone who will be more reliable for those purposes. Otherwise,
they are quite willing to stomach another four years of an ignorant, weak,
and vacillating Trump, whom the neocons have been pretty successful at
pushing where they need him to go.

As Canadian columnist Rick Salutin asks
<https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2019/11/07/motivation-to-impeach-trump-is-about-control-of-democratic-party.html>,
and answers: “Does this mean party bosses would rather lose control of the
country and presidency than cede power in their party? Absolutely.”

It takes only a minute of thinking past CNN/MSNBC’s blaring insistence that
everything is going swimmingly for impeachment, which will be inevitable
after the next blockbuster witness, to see how utterly stupid this is. Once
this gets into the Senate, it is going to be child’s play for the
Republicans—who will now control the witnesses and evidence—not only to go
into the weeds of Biden-Burisma and Clinton Foundation corruption, but, as
the Washington Post (WaPo) reports
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/republicans-discuss-a-longer-senate-impeachment-trial-to-scramble-democratic-primaries/2019/11/13/d7e46d24-064c-11ea-b17d-8b867891d39d_story.html>
they
are considering, to “scramble the Democratic presidential race” with a
“lengthy impeachment trial” that would “[keep] six contenders in Washington
until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer.” Much longer. Why not? Gotta
be scrupulous in doing that “constitutional duty.”

Of course, two of those captured-in-Washington contenders would be, per WaPo,
“the leading progressive candidates, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren.” As Republican John Cornyn says: “Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden
might like that.” The Democratic “party bosses” know it too, so they may
not be unamenable to this Republican strategy.

As I feared
<https://www.thepolemicist.net/2019/08/dead-mans-hand-impeachment-gambit.html>,
and as anyone could have foreseen, the Democrats’ impeachment theater is
only making American politics worse. It has reinforced the worst elements
of neocon militarism while wrapping itself in hypocritical moralizing about
“constitutional duty.” There is nothing progressive that will come of it.
In fact, the biggest fools in all this have been and are the “progressive”
and #Resistance Democratic politicians and voters who pushed for
impeachment, and went along as the process was inevitably taken over by “
badass
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/28/politics/badass-women-impeachment-democrats-oped/index.html>”
CIA veterans and warmongering Russophobes.

It is likely to help Donald Trump get re-elected, and is certain to
“scramble” the Democratic primaries as well as the general election
campaign. Can anyone be dense enough to think that giving Trump the stage
for the next year, and locking away in Washington two of his strongest
(including the one left populist) potential opponents, is the smart
strategy to beat him? We can measure how helpful that will be by counting
how many speeches Democratic candidates have been giving about impeachment
when they are campaigning outside the Beltway bubble.

If progressive politicians had any political sense, they would urge Pelosi
not to pass articles of impeachment, go home for the holidays, and get on
with the business of trying to elect a president that isn’t going to kill
us all.

But they won’t, because, as Salutin says (in one of the best single
sentences about the Trump era): “Their monomania over Trump exactly
parallels his egomania about himself. Neither can get enough.”

This is Trump Derangement Syndrome, deliberately cultivated to distract.
It’s that thing where, instead of ameliorating your friend’s craziness, you
catch it.

So the logic of the two contradictory Prime Directives plays out: Defeat
Trump or impeach him? Neither.

*Jim Kavanagh* edits The Polemicist <http://www.thepolemicist.net/>. Follow
him on Twitter @ThePolemicist_. <https://twitter.com/ThePolemicist_>

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