The Impeachment List

There are so many  people posting these lists of ‘who becomes president if we impeach Trump’ that I suspect a  concerted effort, and since the beneficiary of any concerted  movement to NOT impeach Trump (whether it’s from just giving up or strategically deciding that it’s better to ride out a Trump presidency than  deal with president Pence) is Donald Trump, I suspect that’s where the effort is coming from.

Of course, Tulsi Gabbard, who I admire greatly and would vote for in a heartbeat, is one  of those warning  of a Pence presidency, and that’s the first issue I  disagree with  her on.  Ditto Dennis Kucinich.  That’s one of  the glorious things about being a liberal (or what used to be called a liberal anyway.  I guess now we are progressives, and ‘liberal’ had come to mean ‘not really liberal.’  Language evvelves.)  We don’t need to agree on  everything, we aren’t marching in lockstep, we are, on average, smarter than conservatives and therefore more likely to have original, unique opinions.  Besides, to impeach or not is a disagreement over strategy and tactics, and not principles or positions.

There are 3 reasons I think impeaching Trump is a good idea.

1. It’s the right thing to do.  When a president breaks the law, he should be impeached, simple  as that.  And Trump  has  not only broken laws, he’s shown  that he is completely oblivious to them.  Not only were the trips to Mar a Lago a blatant conflict of interest, and  a blatant abuse of his office for personal profit, but national security business was conducted in public.  Somewhere in there, I’m sure laws were broken.
2. Precedent.  If we don’t impeach Trump then, good grief, how bad does a president have to be before we do impeach?  Even in the short term, setting the precedent is good.   President Pence (or President Ryan if we can make it a double  impeachment, or president Hatch, if we can pull off a triple, will feel the threat  hanging over their head very acutely, and spend the rest of the term being very careful, which is something that should be encouraged.
3. The investigation.  We would not have known about presidential  cigar sex if they had not brought impeachment against Bill Clinton.  Maybe that’s a bad example, because it was a bad impeachment, but who knows what we’ll find if  we really, intensely investigate Trump.  His taxes, for one thing.