At 9 pm tonight, seven freshman Democrats who flipped GOP seats published a joint op-ed in the Washington Post calling for impeachment proceedings to begin against President Trump. They include representatives who, up until now, were some of the loudest and prickliest voices inside the Democratic caucus against impeachment: Reps. Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. Of those seven, only Crow had previously called for impeachment proceedings to begin.
The new supporters of impeachment bring the number to roughly 150, and these have been among the most recalcitrant Democrats on the question. Scores of Democrats have been holding back support for impeachment at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has said that she is trying to protect her “frontline” members in vulnerable districts. With those frontliners themselves getting on board, the rationale for protecting them has vanished, which is why I suspect we’ll see the dam break in the next 24 hours. The House comes back in session Tuesday evening at 6:30, and Democrats will be mobbed by reporters as they head to the House floor to vote. By this tomorrow tomorrow night, you could easily see dozens more supporting impeachment.
A major theme driving this is the nature of Trump’s high crime/misdemeanor: He used his power as the head of a global empire to try to pressure a small foreign country into the service of his own re-election. That’s legitimately frightening to politicians up for election in 2020, and demands a response.
All last week, progressive veterans with the group Common Defense were meeting with Democratic members of Congress and their staffs on the question of impeachment. They met with six of those seven -- all except Cisneros -- and the framing and language they’ve been using publicly is the same that these members of Congress deployed in their Post op-ed. Stuff like this: “We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over...To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.”
Missing from the list of veterans and national security types, interestingly, is Rep. Jared Golden of Maine. There’s speculation in the caucus that he doesn’t want his former boss, GOP Sen. Susan Collins, to face a tough vote in the Senate on impeachment. He has declared that he’ll be neutral in her coming re-election.
Here’s the backdrop: For much of the ongoing congressional session, there has been a fairly clear consensus inside the House Democratic caucus as to where their most nettlesome political problems were likely to spring from. The radicals in the so-called Squad, with their millions of twitter followers and their magazine cover shoots, were going to become the face of the party, and swing voters across the country would recoil, sending the House, and perhaps the White House, back into GOP hands. For the first half of the year, Democratic leaders engaged in public battles with the Squad, played out via official condemnations on the House floor or in interviews with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
But as Democrats in Congress worried about the Squad, Democrats around the country worried about the passivity of Democrats in Washington. And they made their feelings known this summer. “We spent all summer getting the shit kicked out of us back home,” said one Democratic member of Congress who experienced the shit-kicking firsthand. More than 110 incumbent Democrats are facing primary challenges, and Democrats in Congress aren’t blaming the Squad anymore, they’re blaming Pelosi and her strategy of doing nothing for the jam they’re in.
Trump, meanwhile, has said that he plans to make the Squad the face of the Democratic Party, and that Rep. Ilhan Omar will become so toxic that he’ll win Minnesota, which he barely lost in 2016. Anything’s possible, but Democrats who flipped GOP seats don’t seem afraid of him anymore. Rep. Angie Craig and Dean Phillips, both frontline freshman from Minnesota, both just came out for impeachment.
For background on this Ukraine thing, check out Rob Mackey’s thorough story on it at The Intercept. Fun trivia: it was originally broken by our very own Jim Risen, back when he was at the New York Times.
My own sense is that this actually hurts Joe Biden, because his entire thing is that he’s electable and can beat Trump, but we’ve now seen how Trump will run against him: relentlessly highlighting his son Hunter’s corrupt relationships with foreign governments while Biden was vice president. We saw a version of this moving in 2016, and it didn’t end well for Democrats, so I suspect primary voters will go a different direction this time. They’re already starting: a major new poll in Iowa has Elizabeth Warren in the lead for the first time, and another new poll has her up in California.
There should be a donation site for these 7, so that we can reward them directly for this courageous action. These candidates should know we support them tangibly just for doing this. Ryan, please let your readers know if something like that is set up.