Preface:
The battle, as always, is for public opinion. Or at least for that segment of public opinion that can be swayed.
The problem, as always, is that the Republicans tell lies with abandon and get away with it. Or, to put the same thing another way, that the Democrats’ manner of combatting the Republican lies has been inadequate to make the Republicans pay the appropriate political price for their continual peddling in falsehoods.
(Which is why, in an earlier piece, I expressed such appreciation of the way that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) -- as shown in a bit of video chosen by Rachel Maddow to highlight what was good about the hearings in the Judiciary Committee — did such a powerful take-down of the bogus Republican “defenses” of Trump.)
In the immediate aftermath of the Articles of Impeachment passing the House, the Republicans — led by Trump and McConnell — began spewing forth their completely dishonest alternate reality. Those lies were countered by some Democrats, but not nearly so powerfully and effectively as they could have been.
Doubtless there are many ways this can be done, but I will present here the one I found myself calling out loudly to my TV while watching the Democrats’ responses.
The Best Testimony Americans Can Get
A great many Americans don’t know what to believe – and whom to believe – about impeachment.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has declared the impeachment of Donald Trump the act of a “faction” driven by “partisan rage.” Trump declares “I DID NOTHING WRONG!” The Democrats declare the opposite, and represent themselves as fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities.
To anyone with much understanding of this whole Trump episode in our history, the answer is crystal clear. It could hardly be clearer who is telling the truth and who are the lying hypocrites.
But two main factors prevent those “great many Americans” from recognizing the clear truth: first, the sparseness of their knowledge of what’s going on (so they have little basis for judging what’s what), and second, the powerful propagandistic messaging from the right (like Fox News), whose influence reaches a wide swath of the American public.
The question, “Who is being partisan?” is a great point to focus on, because it brings into focus the two main realities that Americans need to see: 1) the reality of what Donald Trump’s conduct calls for in terms of impeachment, and 2) the reality of what the Republicans’ way of dealing with this impeachment situation reveals about what that party has become.
Evidence right at hand provides an answer to that question of which side is being partisan, and which is defending America. That evidence consists of an absolutely remarkable set of letters, published in recent months, and signed by many hundreds of signatories from those several professions best able to judge the issues surrounding the impeachment.
These professions include American historians, legal scholars, former national security officials, and former officials who served in the U.S. Department of Justice.
The signatories have included both Democrats and Republicans, and they are doing all they can to speak to the nation not as partisans but as “the voice of their professions.”
Their testimony is the most credible available to America, for it is both best informed and least partisan.
Best informed because they understand the issues most deeply, and least partisan because it is the values of their professions they are expressing more than any partisan political interest.Such letters to the American people, from many hundreds of professionals, are unprecedented in our history. That so many respected professionals in relevant fields have been moved to do something so extraordinary indicates clearly how important these professional regard the truth they are telling the American people to be.
It should not be impossible to get a great many Americans to recognize the special nature of this testimony, i.e. that it can tell us what the non-partisan, patriotic position on impeachment must be.
So what do these letters say?
Vindicating the Democrats and Exposing the Republicans
Lo and behold, virtually all of what this extraordinary numbers of professionals have signed on to tell their fellow Americans is supportive of what the Democrats have been saying and doing. And virtually all of it puts the Republicans’ conduct and statements in the harshest of lights.
What all of them say – in one way or another – is that Trump has indeed committed impeachable offenses. (Quite the opposite from Trump’s declaration he did “NOTHING WRONG.”) And that action from Congress is called for. (Quite the opposite of the “sham” and “hoax” the Republicans falsely accuse it of being.)
More than 700 historians published a letter urging that President Trump be impeached for repeated actions that “manifest utter and deliberate scorn for the rule of law and ‘repeated injuries’ to constitutional democracy” – representing a “clear and present danger to the Constitution.” (Hardly “NOTHING WRONG.”) More than 500 legal scholars and professors of law published a letter declaring that Trump had engaged in impeachable conduct, and that “if the House of Representatives impeached the President …and the Senate removed him, they would be acting well within their constitutional powers.” More than 300 former national security officials published a letter to inform the American people that Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainian government – which showed his “effort to subordinate American national interest … to the President’s personal political interest” -- constituted “an unconscionable abuse of power.” And, in the first such “voice of the profession” letter published soon after the release of the Mueller Report, more than 1000 (!) former Justice Department officials declared to the nation that the Report shows that Trump so clearly committed “multiple felonies” of “obstruction of justice” that if he were any other American but the President (who can be “indicted” only by impeachment by the Congress), he would be in the dock.All point to Presidential wrong-doing that fully justifies – or even requires – the impeachment the Democrats have launched.
Furthermore, the very fact of all these people being fired up enough to do the unprecedented – i.e. being moved to create such extraordinary messages to the nation – is proof of how seriously they take the threat from Trump’s wrong-doing. They perceive a kind of national emergency, and they act as patriots, employing their special knowledge to help protect the nation from a considerable danger.
(The clear seriousness of the Trump crisis in the eyes of these professionals further highlights just how appalling the conduct of the Republicans has been throughout this process, as they consistently refuse to give even the barest acknowledgement that Trump has done anything wrong at all!)
The Democrats should draw upon this testimony of the professions. They should use these voices — expressing as they do the best judgments available to the nation. Non-partisan, fundamentally American, voices. Use them to move Americans to support the impeachment process. (And to help more Americans recognize the Republicans for the shameless partisan liars they are being.)
These letters should be quoted whenever the Republicans come forward with their lies and misrepresentations. And if it comes to pass that a trial is conducted in the Senate, the Democrats should work this valuable testimony into their summation, exposing as fully as possible the utter bankruptcy of the Republicans’ dishonest defenses of their lawless and wholly unfit President.
(It is a mystery to me why the Democrats have not more energetically amplified these letter of powerful testimony.)
Most Appalliing American Party Ever
Lies and partisanship in American politics is nothing new. But never have they been so craven – never have they exposed such moral bankruptcy – as now, when the Republicans have wholly given themselves over to the wrong side of the battle at this most crucial moment. They have put party ahead of nation at a most important juncture. To protect their own power, the Republicans
have placed themselves on the wrong side of the battle between lawlessness and the rule of law and are exerting themselves in the wrong direction in this fraught moment where America will decide, as Nadler put it months ago, “whether we can keep a republic, or whether this republic is destined to change into a different, more tyrannical form.”Make it clear who is to be believed.