The risky gamble of the Democrats on the dismissal

The precedents abound in a country whose first presidential election took place 230 years ago, with 41 presidential clashes between two political parties founded 187 years and 165 years ago. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, three of our 44 presidents, were sentenced to impeachment. It seems now that Donald Trump is the fourth.

The Democrats have been in a hurry to overturn Trump from office since 21 hours. Eastern time of the evening elections, almost three years ago, when it became clear that he had been elected. Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials began trying to detain him from the White House a few months earlier and for three years supported the theory that his campaign was in collusion with Russia, even though they had little evidence apart from a complete record of this country. by hearsay, whose grim claims have never been verified.

Collusiongate finally collapsed, as New York Times editor Dean Baquet said, "the day Bob Mueller left the witness stand," when "our readers who want Donald Trump to move away "realized that this would not happen.

So, now, a few weeks before the promised release of the Inspector General's reports on law enforcement misconduct, we learned that one whistleblower had been informed that Trump had abused his powers during a telephone conversation with the President of Ukraine. On Tuesday afternoon, Trump announced that he would issue the transcript and President Nancy Pelosi announced that the Democratic majority House was officially considering dismissal.

The transcript published Wednesday does not read exactly as the announced whistleblower yet anonymous. Trump has asked the newly installed Ukrainian president to investigate the 2016 Trump efforts in this country. The Democrats claimed that Trump had offered a counterpart by suggesting that he had released American aid that he had blocked. But Trump did not say anything about it. Given the vast powers of the US president, any request for a foreign government by its president could be characterized as a threat.

Trump also mentioned Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who had a $ 50,000 contract a month with a Ukrainian company. And he told old Biden to publicly boast that as vice president, he was threatening to deny Ukraine a billion-dollar help if the government did not dismiss the prosecutor in charge. from the firm investigation.

On Collusiongate, Democrats followed Nixon's precedent, allowing a special prosecutor and Congressional committees to conduct lengthy investigations, with many leaks to sympathetic media. This produced evidence that made dismissal certain, and Nixon resigned. But Collusiongate did not follow the previous one.

Now the Democrats seem to follow the previous Andrew Johnson. Johnson's Republican critics hated him for obstructing equal rights for free blacks and for his vitriolic and scamillatory oratory. Work began on February 24, 1868. On March 3, the House voted for the impeachment, and on May 16 the Senate voted 35 to 35, one vote less than the two-thirds majority required to remove it. its functions.

So, as my colleague from the Washington examiners, Byron York, says, the Democrats' course is this: "Go fast, do not give up the judgment, and do not wait for the results of an election. long and heavy investigation. " Pelosi seems ready to press for a quick vote as soon as 218 votes are in sight. But in the Republican Senate 53-47, in the absence of new facts or a change in public opinion, the number of votes in favor of impeachment is much less important than in the United States. 1868.

Current polls show that voters oppose the indictment by a margin of 2-1, as was the case during the removal of Bill Clinton in 1998. Both parties thought the impeachment would help them politically . Clinton's job approval has risen sharply, but her personal notes have collapsed. The former helped keep him in office, while the latter prevented his chosen successor, Al Gore, two years later.

President Newt Gingrich foresaw big gains for the Republican party, but they actually lost four seats in November 1998. Gingrich also lost his presidential seat. But Republicans maintained their majority in the House that year and in the next three congressional elections.

These results, largely positive, reflect the satisfaction of the late 1990s and the fact that both parties had intellectually serious arguments that fit with their values. Republicans have argued that Clinton's lies in a federal court proceeding violated his constitutional obligation to faithfully enforce the laws. Democrats argued that his crime was only a personal matter unrelated to his official duties.

Donald Trump's support has remained insensitive to accusations of personal or professional misconduct, just as his detractors remain insensitive to claims that his policies have been successful. What could hurt the Democrats in times of discontent, when the dismissal is unpopular, is their opportunism to seize every excuse to let off steam. The Ukrainian phone call is a much smaller potato than would have been a collusion with Russia.

But Democrats "who want Donald Trump to go" were eager to let voters make that choice. They risk another four years of angry frustration.

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