Opinion | The Incredible Shrinking Impeachment
Americans will decide in 11 months whether Trump deserves to remain in office. But they should also keep the impeachment vote very much in mind when they decide whether Democrats deserve to keep the House.
Whatever happened to bribery and extortion? Democrats spent weeks talking them up as the crimes of Trump’s Ukraine interventions.
Democrats changed their narrative to “abuse of power,” a phrase general enough for anything Congress wants to stuff into it. They don’t even pretend any more to prove a quid pro quo. Instead they assert that Trump, in his phone call with Ukraine’s president, “solicited the interference of a foreign government” in the 2020 election “in pursuit of personal political benefit.” They also assert that this “compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process.”
Their problem is that Mr. Trump didn’t withhold military aid to Ukraine, and even if he had he would have merely been returning to Barack Obama’s policy of denying lethal aid. How would that have jeopardized national security? Every President also solicits actions from foreign leaders that he hopes will help him politically at home.
As for corrupting the 2020 election, even if Ukraine had announced an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, Trump couldn’t know how effective it would be, how long it would take, or whether it might even exonerate them. The election is still a year away. If the mere announcement of a foreign government’s investigation into corruption can poison a U.S. election, then American democracy must be weaker than even its enemies think.
It is not going to work. Voters agree with Democrats on most issues. Democrats won 2 out of 3 Governor's races in red states. They won by talking about healthcare and education. Nationally Democrats have a wealth of issues to run on. In addition to these issues, Democrats have the environment, immigration and abortion to run against Republicans on.
Abuse of power is appropriate in this case. Trump attempted to use taxpayer dollars to force Ukraine to open a investigation into a political rival. That is not a legitimate use of Presidential power. It was more than just a phone call. It was a campaign executed by Giuliani to pressure Ukraine into opening a phony investigation. All Trump wanted was a investigation. Trump clearly knows that Biden is his biggest problem as he runs best against Trump.