No one whom I've heard, speaking on this subject, including Chomsky, agrees.
They all think an impeachment attempt would help Trump in 2020.
Miriam
The Left Should Direct the Impeachment Effort
Rep. Rashida Tlaib speaks into a microphone behind a sign reading "TRUMP
MUST GO"
Rep. Rashida Tlaib speaks on Thursday, May 9, 2019, during an event for a
coalition of advocacy groups delivering over 10 million petition signatures
to Congress urging the U.S. House of Representatives to start impeachment
proceedings against President Trump.
Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call
By Sam Lewis& Abi Hassen, TruthoutPublished May 31, 2019
When, hours after being sworn in, democratic socialist Congresswoman Rashida
Tlaib told an audience, "We're going to impeach the motherfucker," she put
herself at the center of a heated strategic debate that is currently
fracturing alliances among liberals and the left.
"The Resistance" - the self-described coalition of moderate (mostly
Democrat) voters that coalesced as formation in the frantic weeks following
Hillary Clinton's loss - is made up of the most activated people in the
Democratic and progressive base. They hate President Trump, see that he has
committed impeachable offenses, and want to see politicians take him to
task, including through impeachment. But many in the Democratic Party
leadership are hitting the brakes, and the left - socialists and long-term
progressive activists - should see this as an opportunity. It is the job of
socialists and progressives to change what is politically possible by
directing existing political currents, rather than accepting them as a
given.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is forcefully making the case that Democrats
should tamp down impeachment expectations and focus on elections. By pitting
electoral success against impeachment hearings, Pelosi is creating an
artificial binary that limits the political possibilities of impeachment
while sidelining, and potentially demobilizing, a highly activated power
base of Democratic voters. Inherent within this "pragmatic" style of
politics is the notion that it is better to not fight than to take on a
fight you might lose (regardless of merit). This approach to politics has a
dismal track record and represents an all-too-familiar dynamic of Democrats
in power abandoning, undercutting and disempowering their activist base.
A left-wing impeachment plan can sever the base from the party leadership.
It can allow the left to take initiative both in mobilizing the Democratic
base to defeat Trump, and helping to shape the political character of that
base. We can use impeachment to turn the animosity of regular Democratic
voters against the oligarchs, demonstrate that socialists and our structural
critiques are the strongest bulwark against the far right, and begin to
realign the balance of power away from the imperial presidency while
building a constituency for radical democratic reform.
The Resistance
As Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin famously noted, "Politics begin
where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are
millions, that is where serious politics begin." To understand the current
moment, we need a sound analysis of the biggest political development since
Trump's election - the outpouring of protest and grassroots organizing known
as "The Resistance."
The women's marches of 2017 and 2018 were the two largest protest
mobilizations - ever - in U.S. history. That outpouring of opposition was
not a flash in the pan. It has translated into independent organizing
through more than 6,000 resistance groups, vastly outstripping the Tea
Party, even at its peak. Despite the size of The Resistance, the socialist
left has paid too little attention, and had no strategic orientation for
this organizing at all - other than to occasionally dismiss its grassroots
membership as nothing more than dupes of the Russia conspiracists on Twitter
and MSNBC. But with impeachment as a live issue right now, the left has an
opportunity to help cleave this core, mobilized segment of the Democratic
base from the party leadership.
It's not shocking that the left has yet to take advantage of this
opportunity. The Resistance is made up largely of college-educated, suburban
women ranging in age from 30 to 70.This means The Resistance is
geographically and demographically isolated from the growing left,
particularly the organizing of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
and Sen. Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. The latter two have been
largely defined by millennial and increasingly Gen Z organizers and
activists in cities.
But even if we could overcome this geographic and demographic barrier, many
socialists see little reason to attempt to appeal to organizers of The
Resistance. The Resistance is not made up of strategically key industrial
workers or the U.S.'s urban racial underclass - the two historic targets of
left-wing organizing.
It is the job of socialists and progressives to change what is politically
possible by directing existing political currents, rather than accepting
them as a given.
The Resistance is also overwhelmingly partisan, which means its organizers
are responsive to leadership from many quarters. While the Women's March has
prominent leaders who are socialists and radical activists, shameless
hucksters and conspiracistsdo also hold substantial sway. Unlike
"Berniecrats," activists in The Resistance are not primed to assume that the
Democratic Party leadership is corrupt or dishonest. Many of them may have
deep reservations about Sanders for not being a member of the Democratic
Party, and for the perception that he weakened Clinton's campaign in the
2016 election. Although they are largely people who would benefit enormously
from Sanders's proposals for single-payer health care, free public education
and an expanded social safety net, they are currently motivated by revulsion
at Trump, not an ambitious working-class policy agenda. They certainly
aren't prime recruits to become a socialist cadre any time soon, and we
shouldn't pretend that they are.
But in the immortal words of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "You
go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to
have at a later time." The participants in The Resistance may not be the
ideal working-class subject that socialists wish to call into existence, but
their movement played a decisive role in the 2018 midterms and will be
essential to ousting the far right from power in 2020. This could easily be
the base of mobilized party activists who crush the "political revolution"
in the name of party unity, or, if they are polarized against the Democratic
political elites, they could be a major well of support for democratic
socialist candidates in the future.
But by taking up the mantle of impeachment (asShahid Buttar,Pelosi's
socialist primary challenger has), socialists have the opportunity to seize
the initiative from the Democratic leadership, and contribute to the further
mobilization, politicization and self-organization of a large portion of the
Democratic Party base.
The Left's Approach to Impeachment
The best argument against impeachment - that voters are more concerned with
bread-and-butter issues than with the potential political theater of an
impeachment proceeding - assumes that the process of impeachment cannot be
framed around socialist or progressive issues. This perspective made sense
in the pre-Robert Mueller report era, when the investigation of Trump was in
the hands of the Department of Justice rather than Congress. Now that the
Mueller report is complete, however, the left flank of Congress has an
opportunity to re-frame Mueller's narrow prosecutorial focus, and to look at
Trump's crimes from a class-based perspective that not only lays a
foundation to impeach, but also lays out how, by committing the very same
crimes (i.e. foreign corrupt practices, wage theft, money laundering, tax
evasion) his economic class is responsible for the broad immiseration of the
poor and working class.
A left-wing impeachment plan can sever the base from the party leadership.
There are certainly bad arguments for impeachment. Sen. Elizabeth Warren
argues that we should "set aside political considerations" and impeach Trump
for "disloyal behavior." This approach is not only an anachronistic and
moralistic appeal to the utterly discredited notion of bipartisanship, but
also has no prospects for providing material benefit to everyday Americans.
Other liberals are trying to rehabilitate the Mueller report with further
appeals to some imagined, heroic intervention of law enforcement, clinging
to a recent open letter from more than 500 former federal prosecutorswho
believe Trump committed felonies.
If Pelosi were conducting an impeachment drive based on xenophobic,
anti-Russia conspiracy theories, it would indeed be a challenging dynamic
for the left. We would be forced to distance ourselves from illogical and,
in many cases, offensive arguments, as we have for the last two years,
without allowing the party leadership to characterize us as Trump defenders.
But, since Pelosi has chosen to wholly abrogate her duty (just as she did
with the Bush administrationfrom 2006-2008), we face no such dilemma.
There should be no question that, if the left was in power, we would use
every tool at our disposal to oust the far right and push our agenda up to
and including impeachment. Trump is the CEO, real estate developer, oligarch
president; impeaching him should be seen as a mechanism for impeaching the
economic class he represents because his crimes are those his class has long
been able to commit with impunity. Impeaching Trump on these bases would
achieve the dual purpose of holding him accountable while building toward
broader structural change.
Representative Tlaib herself has laid out an even broader set of issuesto
investigate and impeach Trump over, including the pardoning of former
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Muslim ban and his failure to produce tax returns.
A confident, organized left can seize the initiative, put aside the Russia
investigation, and make a wide-ranging push for impeachment based on
investigations of Trump and the oligarchs and war criminalswho have captured
the government and brought Trump to power. The groups that laid the
groundwork for a Sanders run in 2015, from the Working Families Party to the
DSA to Democracy for America, should launch such a campaign now. We should
demand that every Democrat in Congress sign on and mobilize with organizers
of The Resistance to primary challenge any Democrats who stand in the way.
Impeachment Is Part of Broader Systemic Change
Socialists should also be unambiguous that impeachment is about building and
realigning power away from the executive branch. Exerting pressure on
popular issues from the seats of Congress is how we structurally shift the
balance of powers between the branches of government. The House of
Representatives is known as "the People's House" for good reason; it is by
design the most democratically accountable body within the federal
government. As such, it is tasked with some of the most significant checks
on executive power: the ability to declare war and the power of impeachment.
The war power has been all but abandoned until very recently (due to bold
action by progressive Rep. Ro Khanna and Senator Sanders) and the
impeachment power, since Watergate, has been the sole purview of the right
due to congressional Democrats' "pragmatic" aversion to conflict. The GOP
was willing to impeach former President Bill Clinton for politically
inconsequential personal behavior while Democrats were unwilling or unable
to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for world historical crimes
against humanity.
Activists in The Resistance are currently motivated by revulsion at Trump,
not an ambitious working-class policy agenda.
Impeachment gives us the opportunity to show we have the courage of our
convictions and make the case that we would use every lever at our disposal
to bring a modicum of accountability to Washington. Impeachment should stand
alongside such issues as expanding the Supreme Court, D.C. statehood, ending
the filibuster and mass (re)enfranchisement as a key part of a democracy
agenda. There is a movement of millions of activists clamoring for just this
type of assault on the Trump administration.
A left-led national campaign for impeachment can contribute to mobilizing
the Democratic base, which is essential to defeating Trump and the
Republican Party. It can provide a powerful wedge to split that base from
the 1-percenter leadership of the Democratic Party on exactly the lines -
partisanship - that have most powerfully shaped the development of The
Resistance. Lastly, it can popularize a critique of the reactionary right
that goes far beyond horror at Trump, and instead gets to the heart of the
deeply racist, plutocratic and dysfunctional institutions that allowed for
Trump's ascendance.
If we are looking for a slogan, we can do worse than the one provided by
Representative Tlaib: "We're going to impeach the motherfucker."
