Impeaching Trump Would Be Right in Principle, But Disastrous Politically

“No collusion. No obstruction. And now — get this! — no impeachment! I tell ya, those Democrats are such losers.”

This is the nightmare script Donald Trump would use, gleefully and very likely successfully, in his 2020 re-election campaign for president — if the Democrats move to impeach him, as increasing numbers of Congressional Democrats and voices in the media are increasingly pressing. How so?

Because: If the Democrats move to impeach Trump and they lose — and they most certainly would lose, since the Republican-controlled Senate would never ever ratify House-generated articles of impeachment from the Democrats — then Trump, when he takes his lounge act out on the campaign trail, could effectively claim total victory (“I won the trifecta!”): no collusion with the Russians, no obstruction of justice, and — ta-da — no case proved for impeachment.

And, winning the trifecta, Trump goes on to win re-election.

If you feel, as I do, that absolutely the most important thing for America at this perilous moment in her history is to deny Donald Trump a second term — after all, this moment is so perilous precisely because of D.J. Trump — then the above script is not a winner. We are talking strategy and politics here, not principle.

Of late Trump seems actually to be asking for impeachment, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has astutely figured out. Why would he do so, one wonders? Because Trump…