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Americans Want to Impeach Donald Trump

So why aren’t Democrats doing something about it?

From the fog of complacency that enshrouds Democratic congressional leaders, one refrain billows above even the antiregulatory mantra of abundance—the siren song of popularism (not to be confused with “populism”). That would be the doctrine strictly confining the party’s lead policy initiatives to things that are poll-tested within an inch of their life, on the rough calculus that the next election cycle—always the most important one of our lifetimes—mandates that Democratic candidates never frighten the horses with unfamiliar, bold, or original proposals to improve actual living conditions in our flailing republic. No, the directive is not only to think inside the box, but also to bury the entirety of the party’s social-democratic and New Deal legacy in it—and to pray that the electorate will rally against all odds to worship the dogmas of the moribund Third Way.

For citizens stubbornly adhering to the notion that politics should involve new ideas, moral leadership, and—gasp!—the prospect of actual social change, popularism is chloroform in slogan form. It yields manifest absurdities like the Democrats’ chronic incoherence on immigration, their failure to capitalize on basic political opportunities such as the consolidation of a MAGA-aligned tech oligarchy, the actually unpopular right-wing war on public education, and their flight from virtually any social-democratic policy that can’t be means-tested. It’s what fuels the content-free mantra from elected Democrats that any given issue that might stir them out of somnolence is a “distraction from kitchen-table issues”—a refrain that typically fails to specify just what those issues are, or how they might be productively resolved. It’s also a ludicrously off-base response to an electoral system that runs on negative partisanship, and pointedly ignores the public’s policy preferences as a matter of course. (Small wonder, then, that the would-be wizards of Capitol Hill popularism are actually the least-popular figures in American politics.)

Last week saw perhaps the most direct indictment of the timorous non-reasoning behind the popularist posture, with the release of a poll from Strength in Numbers/Verasight showing that a solid majority of 53 percent agree that Congress has grounds to impeach President Donald Trump. Just 39 percent of respondents said there were no such grounds (with 11 percent hedging that reply as “probably not”). Only 8 percent said they are unsure. (There is, as yet, no confirmation that that 8 percent included all the leaders of the Democratic congressional caucus.) These findings align with an earlier Strength in Numbers/Verasight survey, which found an even higher ratio of respondents—55 percent—affirming that Congress should plunge ahead with a third Trump impeachment.

These findings are especially striking since there’s no serious impeachment measure before Congress now—this spring, Democratic Representative John Larson of Connecticut has floated 13 resolutions in the most recent symbolic bid to draw attention to the president’s manifold unfitness for the office he holds, and, like fellow House impeachment champion Shri Thanedar of Michigan, he’s doing so largely to fend off a primary challenge from the left. In other words, without any concrete push from Congress behind it, public support for Trump’s impeachment is already nearing the peak level of 56........

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