2018-05-10 – Unfortunately, the US Constitution does not provide for a vote of no confidence. That would be entirely political: the leader drops below 50 percent approval and there’s a new election. We don’t do things that way.

We require an accusation and proof of crime. It’s called impeachment.

Yet, in spite of the quasi-legal framework, impeachment of a president is a political process. There are political costs to pay for the party seeking to remove an elected president if the crime is not clearly a crime. You can’t throw out a president for throwing out immigrant or for pursuing war for spurious causes or for taking away people’s healthcare or livelihood—even if those kinds of activities cause way more harm than any conventional crime!

Think about Richard Nixon. He promised to get us out of Vietnam but, for many years, he was doing just the opposite. Thousands of people died as a result. Nothing impeachable. Did he authorize or know about a “third-rate burglary”? That’s what forced his resignation under threat of impeachment. Even on the burglary, it took more than two years to get to the resignation. And you should know: the basic facts about the burglary were known by the public for virtually the entire two years. Nixon was re-elected with those facts in the public domain—by a huge margin!

So I’m not holding my breath for the impeachment of Donald Trump. I don’t even think it is a good strategy for Dems to seek his impeachment. (For Pete’s sake, Mike Pence would then become president!) The GOP knows that it would be stupid for Dems to pursue this, which is why the party is putting out the message that this is what Democrats want.

This Democrat does not.

Democrats should stick to public service issues. They should put forth programs to benefit voters. Improved healthcare. Fairer taxes. Public works. Jobs. Peace. Access to college and trade schools. Fixing the college loan problem. And so on. Oppose Trump’s programs. Yes. Impeachment. No.

Except . . .

Let the investigations continue. I don’t know if “collusion” is a winning idea by itself. But it’s beginning to look like collusion is a swamp. Trump vowed to drain the swamp. But it’s looking like he’s brought a whole new level of swampiness to Washington.

I’d replace the C of collusion with the C of corruption. And who knows where that is going to lead.

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