It’s cliche to say there is little daylight between the two ruling political parties in the United States. But it’s true.
The similarities feel particularly strong this week following the release of an Associated Press article detailing the ways in which Democratic lawmakers are pulling back from the idea of impeaching President Trump. The AP reports:
For several reasons, Democrats have been extremely cautious about the “I″ word. They know it could backfire politically, and many of them were in office during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment 20 years ago. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and the panel’s likely incoming chairman, has called impeachment a ‘trauma.’
That’s a funny thing for Nadler to say considering he sold himself in 2017 as the best person for that committee seat precisely because of his “demonstrated leadership on impeachment in the 90s.” Nadler also told CNN this weekend that if Trump did indeed order his former attorney Michel Cohen to break campaign finance laws, it would be an impeachable offense. However, the congressman added, “Whether [the alleged violations] are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question.”
The AP report marks an about-face for a key Democrat who talked a big impeachment game in the months leading up to the 2018 midterm elections. Back then, Nadler and others were especially keen on the idea, much to the chagrin of presumptive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was asked constantly about impeachment by members of the press. But now that Democrats have the House, Nadler is backing down from his earlier pro-impeachment position.
I’m getting real flashbacks over here.
Recall that Republican lawmakers spent the better part of eight years leveraging the promise of repealing Obamacare in return for votes. It worked, too, as the GOP reaped major gains in both the 2010 and the 2014 midterm elections. The Republican Party took the House, then the Senate, and then the White House in 2016 — and yet Obamacare is still alive. Republican repeal efforts imploded multiple times in 2017, brought down by members of their own party. Repeal was always just a carrot for voters, tantalizingly in view but never within reach. Similarly, the promise of impeaching Trump feels an awful lot like an empty promise to get voters to the polls.
I guess the biggest difference between the GOP’s empty repeal promise and the Democrats’ promise of impeachment is that Republican leadership went along with the ACA nonsense, whereas Pelosi has been consistent in her disinterest in impeachment.
Democrats are slowing the impeachment talk because they’re waiting for “other shoes to drop” in the Russia investigation, the AP suggests. The newswire also suggests that Democrats may be pulling back because they may have decided they want to check Trump “in other ways.”
To be clear, the party that has talked for nearly two years about impeachment is in a position now to do something about it — and it is still no closer to making good on that fantasy. That’s not to say fringe Democrats aren’t still keen on the idea (looking at you, Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.). But it’s certainly amusing that the No. 2 member on the House Judiciary, who sold himself as being tough on impeachment, is suddenly bearish about the entire matter.
What a difference a midterm election makes.
