What are Democratic lawmakers thinking?
Republicans are not going to vote to remove President Trump from office. The best-case scenario for Democrats is that this impeachment business motivates the general electorate to vote against the president in 2020. But for that to happen, Democrats need to speak to an audience beyond just politicos, journalists, and other obsessively-engaged resistance types who already agree that Trump needs to go.
After this latest round of televised impeachment hearings, I am not convinced Democrats see it this way.
The House Judiciary Committee hosted four legal scholars Wednesday to speak to the allegations against Trump. The three witnesses selected by Democrats were Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman, University of North Carolina School of Law professor Michael Gerha, and Stafford professor Pamela Karlan.
It was a golden opportunity for the pro-impeachment side of the debate to break through the partisan noise with impartial experts to speak plainly and clearly to the case against Trump. It was a perfect opportunity to present a no-nonsense impeachment argument to the middle, that is, the voting bloc Democrats need to make this entire exercise worthwhile. This did not happen. What happened instead was that the three professors used their time before Congress to engage in partisan, resistance-style histrionics – some worse than others.
Feldman, for example, claimed that if Congress cannot impeach Trump for his attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens, then “we no longer live in a democracy. … We live in a monarchy or we live under a dictatorship.”
Really? So is the next election canceled?
Gerhardt said separately that if “Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning, and, along with that, our Constitution’s carefully crafted safeguards against the establishment of a king on American soil.”
The two scholars did also make some reasonable arguments against Trump’s behavior, laying out the facts of the case against the president. But they could maintain the persona of the legal expert for only so long. They just could not resist undercutting the entire purpose of their appearance before Congress with hair-on-fire commentary. What functional difference was there between what Gerhardt and Feldman said about dictators and monarchs and what Democrats have been saying all along? I would argue there is not much difference at all, which makes Wednesday’s hearing seem like a major wasted opportunity for Democrats.
Then there is Karlan, who describes herself as “a scholar of the law of democracy.” Man, I don’t even know where to start with her. She created a small mess for herself at the hearing when she tried to make a clever pun involving the word “baron” and the name “Barron,” as in “Barron Trump,” the president’s 13-year-old son. It was not a clever pun.
“Kings could do no wrong because the king’s word was law. Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article Two does not give him the power to do anything he wants,” Karlan said.
She added, “I will give you one example that shows the difference between him and a king, which is, the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility. While the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.”
Karlan later offered a half-hearted apology for her stupid resistance-flavored dad joke.
“I want to apologize for what I said earlier about the president’s son. It was wrong of me to do,” she said.
Solid witness, fellas. Nothing broadcasts impartial professionalism quite like lame wisecracks that end in an apology and all of it on national television.
It is somewhat staggering that Democrats thought Wednesday’s hearing was a good idea. Republican lawmakers could not sell impeachment in the 1990s, and they had the benefit of perjury and a sleazy sex scandal to grab voters’ attention. Democrats cannot possibly believe they are going to have better luck with things like Karlan’s and Feldman’s testimony.
At this rate, and if this is the best that Democrats have to offer, the only thing the impeachment proceedings will accomplish is that they will fire up Trump’s base ahead of a presidential election, all while setting up the Left’s constituency for massive disappointment. The middle, meanwhile, will go on ignoring this entire episode because, to those who are not obsessively following the proceedings, it looks like a massive, partisan slap-fight.
But don’t take my word for it when I say Democrats are in trouble. Certain members of the press are starting to panic, including the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan (formerly the New York Times’s public editor), who authored an op-ed this week titled, “Wall-to-wall impeachment coverage is not changing any minds. Here’s how journalists can reach the undecided.”
Democrats do have a problem, as recent polls showing a decline in support for removing Trump would suggest. If the Democratic Party’s best response to those sagging numbers is MSNBC-style commentary from Ivy League professors, then we may as well all go home. It is over.
