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Democrats’ Impeachment Obsession Is a Danger to Democracy

Sad to say, but Tom Steyer, out-of-touch and unlikable billionaire though he may be, is probably the most representative face of the Democratic Party right now. Almost since the day President Trump won the 2016 election, Steyer has been bawling like a toddler and insisting that Trump’s prompt removal from office, via impeachment, is a moral and political imperative. He was ahead of his time.

Steyer and his “Need to Impeach” movement offer a laundry list of reasons why Trump should be impeached and removed from office, from alleged obstruction of justice to violations of the Emoluments Clause, Russian collusion, racism and bigotry, recklessness, “persecution” of political opponents and the free press, mistreatment of “immigrants,” and paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Or, to put it another way, Steyer’s rationale for impeachment is so diffuse that it’s utterly incoherent. Steyer presumably is bargaining that, if he throws everything but the kitchen sink at Trump, one of these charges—it doesn’t much matter which one—will stick, and Trump will go down like a ton of bricks.

Brett Kavanaugh in the Crosshairs—Again

Tom Steyer, for all his malevolent fury, is just a private citizen, albeit one who has plowed millions of dollars of his own money into a campaign to subvert American democracy. What’s more worrying is that Steyer’s no-stone-left-unturned approach to impeaching President Trump now seems to be the official strategy of the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).

Nadler has made it clear that any anti-Trump narrative, no matter how obscure, laughable, or deficient in terms of evidence, is potentially acceptable as a pretext for impeachment. Again, he doesn’t much care why Trump is impeached, just so long as he is.

Now, though, Democrats are taking their impeachment obsession to the next level. Keen to remove Trump from the White House, they are beginning to apply their convoluted impeachment “logic” to other political enemies. Their latest target is Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Even before Kavanaugh was confirmed last year, there were whispers among Democrats that, if this alleged abuser of women should reach the nation’s highest court, Congress would be entirely justified in impeaching and removing him. Never mind that the charges made against Kavanaugh were unsubstantiated—in fact, they were specifically rejected as untrue by many of the people who were present at the time of the alleged offense.

Democrats’ Fact-Free Dogpile

No matter. The new standard of proof—for Republicans and conservatives only—is that, if someone claims you did something wrong, you most assuredly did. Moreover, if you deny it, or if you defend your honor publicly, you are merely compounding your sins with lies (the definition of “lies” being “facts that Democrats and liberals do not wish to hear”).

The suggestion last year that Kavanaugh should be impeached because of Christine Blasey Ford’s politically motivated and uncorroborated accusations was outrageous, given the hallowed principle of American justice that we are all innocent until proven guilty. Now, though, prominent Democrats are escalating.

Why stop with Trump and Kavanaugh?

Why not cut to the chase and impeach Republican voters, too?

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), among others, are calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment anew because a biased news story appeared in the New York Times alleging another incident in which Kavanaugh is supposed to have mistreated another young woman. The Times neglected to mention that the woman in question has no recollection of her own mistreatment.

The truth or falsehood of the latest accusations against Kavanaugh is, of course, irrelevant to his tormentors. They know only two things about Kavanaugh for certain: that he is a bad man in the eyes of feminists, who have made him a poster boy for sexual assault, despite the fact that he has never been charged with or convicted of any crime, including crimes against women; and that he is a bad Supreme Court Justice in the eyes of progressives, who believe that the real function of the court is to mandate nationwide obedience to the agenda of the Left, whenever that agenda cannot be, for practical reasons, advanced through legislation or executive action instead.

The moral of the story seems to be this: in the banana republic or pseudo-democracy that leftists are trying to establish, impeachment, like every other legal and constitutional tradition, exists only to help them crush their enemies and consolidate power. In other words, leftists want to transform impeachment from a tool to punish abuses of power into a tool to facilitate such abuses—and in effect to criminalize dissent.

The miracle, then, is that no one has yet called for the impeachment of Neil Gorsuch, or hundreds of other Republican and conservative judges and officeholders. For they, too, are guilty of the only real crime that the modern Left recognizes: standing in its way.

Heck, from the left-liberal perspective, why stop there? Why not cut to the chase and impeach GOP voters, too? After all, are not the 63 million Americans who put Trump in office ultimately responsible for the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that he commits on an hourly basis? Surely the voters should share in his condemnation and his punishment.

Mark my words: it is only a matter of time before the impeachment dragnet widens. The knives are already out for President Trump and Justice Kavanaugh, but liberals won’t be satisfied until all of their enemies have been driven from the halls of power, and ultimately from politics itself.

Then, one assumes, the leftists will turn on each other, at which point some of them will rediscover the beauty of the phrase “innocent until proven guilty.”

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About Nicholas L. Waddy

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.

Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

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