Trumped Up Charges: Why the Democratic Impeachment Push Will Fail
Answering never-ending calls for impeachment, Speaker Pelosi has finally acquiesced and opened an impeachment inquiry for only the fourth time in our nation’s history. To devotees of the Democratic Party, the moral imperative of impeachment is an article of faith. However, to the beleaguered baseline voter outrage fatigue has begun to take hold.
The Left has tried to find the crime to fit the man rather than the man to fit the crime, and after the ignoble implosions of Russian Collusion and Stormy Daniels, it is difficult to imagine the new charges of foreign interference sticking, even if evidence of wrongdoing did emerge.
Democrats are right to note the political benefits Trump would receive should Joe Biden be found guilty of corruptly pressuring the Ukrainian Government. Biden is the Democratic frontrunner and may be Trump’s most dangerous general election opponent. However, regardless of political opportunities, the duty of the chief executive is to enforce the rule of law. That includes working with allies and other investigators. Consequently, if the crime involved Ukraine it would include the Ukrainian government.
In this case there might be a legitimate case against Biden: his son Hunter was employed at the energy company Burisma for $50,000 per month despite his lack of experience in that field and he was ejected from the US Navy for testing positive for cocaine use shortly before his hiring. Having a father who could block $1 billion in aid to get a prosecutor fired was his only conceivable qualification.
Biden should have been mindful of that conflict of interest. The US signed a treaty of Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with Ukraine in 1999 to handle such shared scandals. In this context, reading the transcript of the conversation between the Presidents seems less like a quid pro quo and more like Trump being Trump.
Even the most favorable polls put support for impeachment dead even with opposition along mostly partisan lines. No President has ever been convicted after impeachment, and attempts usually backfire. When Bill Clinton demonstrably committed perjury, Republicans were unable to impeach him and were subsequently walloped in the 1998 elections. Pelosi has long been aware of the political risks of such a maneuver, which is why she has held the line against the childish calls of her caucus.
Speaker Pelosi may believe the Ukrainian scandal is an elegant tool for impeachment. However, the transparency of the Trump administration regarding the transcripts, the hearsay nature of the whistleblower complaint and the fact that House Democrats were informed before said whistleblower went through official channels significantly dulls the scandal’s edge. Chairman Schiff’s falsification of the transcript text on the congressional record does not help matters. The Speaker abandons her past judgment at her own peril.
As a result of this uproar, the media now has to report on the Ukrainian phone transcript, which exposes Biden’s potential misdeeds, weakening the Democratic front runner and increasing the odds of a Far Left nominee. House Democrats and the Democratic brand are irrevocably tied to impeachment and the ever vocal Squad when their electoral ambitions rely on moderate voters.
In fact, based on how perfectly everything harmonizes with his political goals, I have to conclude that either Trump orchestrated this whole piece in advance or he is a master of improvisation. He’s playing everyone like a fiddle and I for one am enjoying the performance.