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But Donald Trump has so subverted Washington's logic with his raging presidency that there is now a serious debate – at least among the Democrats – on whether he sees the ultimate constitutional crisis as a weapon in his re-election campaign .
Opportunity shapes the strategies of Democratic leaders, who weigh on the political risks of impeachment and their duty to defend the principles of American governance.
Many Democrats are concerned that Trump is throwing a trap of impeachment that could consume a majority in the House, distract him from key issues such as health care and alienate persuasive voters.
But it is also possible that their leaders express the idea that Trump wants to be removed in order to dispel the discontent among some grassroots activists, namely that the Washington Democrats are not doing more to coerce the president.
The question will not go away, given Trump's incredibly broad efforts to subvert investigations into his presidency, campaign, personal finances, and career in the business world.
"The President is self-attacking almost every day because he is showing more obstruction to justice and disrespect for Congress's legitimate role in summoning." to appear, "said Friday House Democratic President Nancy Pelosi.
"Part of our misgivings is that we are already a deeply divided country and an impeachment process will further divide us," Schiff told ABC News on "This Week" on Sunday. "He certainly seems to be trying and it 's perhaps his perverse way of dividing us further … He thinks it' s to his political advantage, but it 's certainly not at all. advantage of the country. "
Trump dodged a question in an interview with Politico last week about whether he wanted to be dismissed. And he argues that if anyone committed crimes during the 2016 campaign, it's the Democrats, not him.
On other occasions, however, he appeared to be testing arguments that he could use for his defense during a confrontation with a view to dismissal.
"It's hard to dismiss someone who has done nothing wrong and who has created the largest economy in the history of our country," Trump told Reuters in December.
"I'm not worried, no, I think people would revolt if it happened," he said.
It is possible that the wider political divisions are widening, the more important Trump's benefits are. This show would help him build the political base he needs to present himself en masse in 2020, claiming that their 2016 votes were stolen by political elites.
Trump would also hope to return more moderate voters against the Democrats by describing their efforts as a highly partisan political drift.
The corrosive account of Trump's coup d'etat
A democratic effort to oust Trump would reinforce his speech on the fact that his opponents have long been resolved to want a blow to oust him.
This idea seemed to enliven the president over a weekend of epic tweet and retweet.
"Well before I take office, I am under a sick and illegal investigation about what has become the Russian hoax," Trump wrote Sunday.
"The intelligence agencies and the democrats were seriously spying on my campaign, which never happened in American history, and it was a real scam, a witch hunt, that did not result in collusion or an obstacle. allowed to reproduce! "
Although special advocate Robert Mueller has not established a plot between the Trump campaign and Russia, he has shown repeated contacts between the Moscow interference operation and the government. GOP candidate team.
There is also ample evidence of obstruction of justice – according to which more than 800 former federal prosecutors would now have sufficed to sue Trump if he was a simple citizen.
The suspicions that Trump might perversely perceive a benefit to the indictment are corroborated by a simple fact: he is very unlikely to force him to leave office.
He proved that there was virtually no circumstance in which a two-thirds majority of the Senate, swollen by the Republicans in distress, would vote to convict him on indictment.
The Republican majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, based on a political narrative prepared by Attorney General William Barr, describes the end of the special council's investigation as a "classified case".
Much of the democratic reluctance towards dismissal rests on some reading of the history of the Bill Clinton era.
In the mid-term elections held in 1998 after the Republicans began the impeachment process, the Democrats actually won seats in the House, contrary to historical trends. The result has since been read as a judgment of voters to reprimand Republicans who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow a twice-elected president.
Some Democrats fear that an impeachment process may now play in the hands of the incumbent president and allow him to rally the country against them.
However, it is not often remembered that Republicans won the presidency less than two years after Clinton survived his trial in the Senate – after a campaign in which George W. Bush had promised to restore "the honor and dignity "at the White House in an oblique reference to indictment.
The White House insists that it is the Democrats who are going too far
Despite the mistrust of the majority of the Democratic House on the impeachment, this possibility seems more likely than ever.
The White House insists that its resistance to democratic power is legitimate.
"There are rules and standards governing the control of the executive power by the Congress, and the Democrats simply refuse to respect them," White House spokesman Steve Groves said Sunday in a statement.
"Democrats demand documents that they know not to have the right to see, including confidential communications between the president and foreign leaders and information on the grand jury that can not be disclosed under the law . "
Trump orders current and former officials to ignore subpoenas. He refuses to provide documents and personal files such as his tax returns.
And he even filed a lawsuit against a congressional committee to keep his financial records confidential.
The President also does what appears to be extreme claims of executive privilege.
The crisis may not be far
Despite this obstruction, the country is not yet in constitutional crisis. But the moment may not be so far.
Many disputes between the White House and Congress are now at risk of overflowing the justice system and could even be brought to the Supreme Court.
If the White House refused an order from the court to subpoena, the majority of the Democratic House, after exhausting the power to hold the president to account, would have nothing else to say. choice to proceed to an indictment in order to preserve the integrity of the Congress itself.
This possibility was perhaps in Pelosi's mind when she spoke of self-impeachment.
The Democrats hope that after methodically proceeding with the process of limiting the president, the public will then be less likely to react negatively to the opening of an impeachment procedure.
The party is already trying to set up a file of embezzlement and obstruction on the part of the administration likely to shape public perception about the Trump presidency.
There is now talk of "bundling" several contempt citations emanating from senior cabinet officials during a vote in the House to maximize political spinoffs for the administration.
Given the entrenched polarization of the United States, it seems unlikely that the President's views will be radically altered enough to alter the political calculation of impeachment.
But historians have sometimes pointed out that public opinion had become more favorable to the possibility of deposing President Richard Nixon when the misdeeds of his government had been revealed at Senate hearings in Watergate presided over by the senator Sam Ervin from North Carolina. In the end, Nixon resigned before being dismissed, a step impossible to imagine for Trump.
Some Democrats seem to believe that a concentrated public release of Trump's behavior, with the testimony of central players such as Mueller and former White House lawyer, Don McGahn, could be detrimental to the presidency of Trump to weaken it in 2020.
A potential Democratic candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, is ready to assume the risks of indictment.
"Congress simply can not look away.There is no exception of political convenience to the United States Constitution of America," said Warren in a momentum that has crossed Ohio on Saturday.
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