As early as March 9, 2017, former US Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich has been making a consistent case for impeachment, laying out five different legal grounds to impeach DT.

Andrew Johnson impeachment trial, 1860s (via Wikipedia)
Andrew Johnson impeachment trial, 1860s (via Wikipedia)

I’ve got a few to add to his list.

  1. Let’s not forget that the GOP considered lying an impeachable offense and stated proceedings against Bill Clinton on those grounds. DT lies constantly. It’s one thing he’s consistent about. The Washington Post documented more than 2000 in his first year in office.
  2. Then there’s slander and libel, other things he’s consistent about. Every time he called one of his opponents adjectives like “Lyin'” or “Crooked,” that is actionable—slander if spoken, libel if written. Every time he smears entire classes of people, from those with disabilities to Mexicans to Muslims to, most recently, people from Haiti and Africa, he commits defamation anew.
  3. There’s his own admission that he’s a serial sexual predator, an admission that corroborates the accounts of at least 20 accusers (having multiple accusers of sexual assault is something he has in common with Mr. Clinton, of whom I’m not a great fan). And his subsequent behavior: first apology, then, despite a tape and a previous acknowledgement, denial that he even said it.
  4. There’s his open racism and discrimination against many protected groups, which is a violation of the oath he took to uphold laws that include the Americans with Disabilities Act and the various civil rights and free association laws. This has been a hallmark of his entire public career, and even earlier when he first went to work for his father—a man so known for his discriminatory renting policies that Fred T.’s tenant Woody Guthrie wrote songs condemning his landlord’s racism.

And then there’s the general question of DT competence, and whether we need to work a removal under the 25th Amendment (probably a good deal easier than impeachment). I consider him a sociopath and I worry that he and North Korea’s equally sociopathic Kim will get into a nuclear pissing contest. Oh yes, and the irregularities around voter disenfranchisement and ballot counting probably contain the seeds of impeachable offenses too.

Of course, I recognize the near-impossibility of winning a vote to impeach when both houses are controlled by people willing to accept the devil if the devil is a Republican. And I agree the prospect of a Pence presidency is scary. He’s smarter, far more stable, and well to the right of DT, plus he understands the game of politics.

But these are NOT reasons not to go forward. There comes a time when you have to say, “this behavior is unacceptable.” Otherwise we are a 3rd-rate banana republic with a strongman dictator—and the laughingstock/”scaringstock” of the world.

We said it to Nixon, who was far less appalling (and we got him out). We should have said it to George W. when he started a war against people who were not our enemy and destabilized the entire Middle East while also waging war on the freedom of Americans at home. We said it to Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica, which had no impact on policy and just reinforced that he’s not a great human being.

I also believe that if DT is impeached, Pence will have limited ability to do harm. Among several possible scenarios:

  1. Pence will go down with DT because DT takes him down
  2. Pence will be implicated by others and not take power
  3. He will assume the presidency but be seen as “damaged goods” and a lightweight, a short-term straw man like Gerald Ford, not worth giving much attention to
  4. Pence will be much more circumspect, recognizing that his power has limits. A far worse scenario would be Pence becoming president after DT dies in office, and then he would not be in any way limited by the fate of his predecessor.

Finally, impeachment allows the Dems to differentiate themselves, which they’re not very good at outside the Northeast and Left Coast. By moving impeachment forward, quixotic though that is while the GOP has their majority, they take a stand in favor of decency, in favor of inclusivity, in favor of good government, and against corruption, “otherism,” crony politics, and all the rest—all of which can become campaign issues both this year and in 2020.

In other words, though it will fail in 2018, the impeachment attempt is an opportunity for the Democrats to show themselves as a party of principle, as a party willing to take risks, and as something considerably different from today’s Republican Party (a party that Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and even Reagan would not be welcome in today).

And they need this cloak of respectability. The Democrats’ hands were not clean in the 2016 election. There is clear evidence that the party actively sabotaged the Bernie Sanders campaign and the progressive movement throughout the 2016 campaign, as well as pay-to-play shenanigans that sure sound like corruption to me. Note that the above link predates the late-in-the-campaign reports that made national news.

Needless to say, these kinds of behavior cause a great deal of skepticism about the virtue of supporting Democrats. Thus, mainstream Dems have to do something to win back the youth vote, the progressive vote, and those who just plain don’t like corruption and were left with no candidate they could support in November, 2016.

When Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer say impeachment is not an option to pursue, the implicit messages to these folks include “Democrats are like Republicans but with but a nice veneer of soft fur so it won’t hurt quite so much”, “Blatant corruption and lawbreaking are OK with me”, and “the Democratic Party doesn’t really stand for the ideals on which this country was founded and will do nothing to protect them.” And the youth, the progressives, and those who believe in good government will once again stay home, and this vile creature will (perhaps honestly this time) win a second term.

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Donald Trump and the late Muhammad Ali had at least three things in common: personal wealth, a love of bragging and a willingness to speak their mind even if others were offended. But there’s a big difference: Ali actually had something to brag about. He really was the greatest at what he did, racking up an amazing 55 victories over 61 fights in his career, and going undefeated in his first 30 bouts.

Muhammad Ai probably wore gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.
Muhammad Ai probably wore boxing gloves like these. Photo by Wojciech Ner.

He was also a man of deep principle, foregoing his career for three years after refusing to fight in Vietnam.

This is what he said about that choice:

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

Agree or disagree with him , you knew where he stood.

Ali was also a humanitarian and philanthropist, using his fortune—a fortune amassed not through inherited wealth and speculative business ventures, but by coming up out of poverty and putting himself in the ring to be slugged again and again by some of the strongest people in the world—for social good.

By contrast, Trump brags about screwing people over, is very quick to unleash insults on others, and yet is very thin-skinned when anyone criticizes him. He even revoked the Washington Post’s media credentials to cover the Trump campaign because he didn’t like the things he said about them.

Let’s listen to Trump in his own words:

“The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.” –Donald Trump

Of course, it helps that he inherited a fortune from his father, a large-scale NYC landlord whose racist policies were so bad that Woody Guthrie (his tenant, briefly) wrote scathing songs about him. Trump’s own record includes lots of failure—including four bankruptcies. It’s hard to imagine him getting rich if he hadn’t had the springboard of his father’s wealth. And he brags about using bankruptcy as a tool to screw the public to further his personal fortune. This quote is on the same 2011 ABC news report on the bankruptcies:

I’ve used the laws of this country to pare debt. … We’ll have the company. We’ll throw it into a chapter. We’ll negotiate with the banks. We’ll make a fantastic deal. You know, it’s like on ‘The Apprentice.’ It’s not personal. It’s just business.

Two more very telling quotes from The Donald:

“If you can’t get rich dealing with politicians, there’s something wrong with you.

“I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn’t let him use the land. That’s what we should be doing. I don’t want to use the word ‘screwed’, but I screwed him.”–Donald Trump

Has he reformed? No. Just look at the recent flurry of news stories quoting everyone from the conservative National Review to the New York State Attorney General calling his Trump University “a scam.”

Results for search for "trump university scam" from Washington Post, CNN, Wikipedia, and National Review
Results for search for “trump university scam” from Washington Post, CNN, Wikipedia, and National Review

This is the continuation of a long history of unethical business dealings, as this story in US News and World Report notes.

As it happens, I’ve heard both Muhammad Ali and Donald Trump speak in person—Ali at an Aretha Franklin concert in Harlem, in 1971, and Trump delivering the keynote for a conference where I was also speaking, in 2004. Ali’s speech left me feeling empowered. Trump’s left me feeling I’d been slimed by an exhibitionist in a public place.

This bullying, thin-skinned, name-calling racist and sexist who brags about how he gets rich on the backs of others has no grasp of the issues, and apparently no ethics. He  doesn’t belong in the White House.

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