edelsont | Oh no! Not impeachment again! (Reply)

I'm afraid so. I can't resist the compulsion to revisit the topic of impeaching Donald Trump.

I already have twelve journal entries with the tag "impeachment." That's more than for any other tag except (shudder) "Donald Trump" himself. The first one was posted on November 7, 2017, and the most recent on April 22, 2019.

But the most recent entry in which I expressed an actual opinion on impeachment itself was the one with subject line "The impeachment question is really two questions," which was posted on March 17 of this year. That's the one I shall now revisit.

Its first point, as its subject line suggests, is that it is worth separating two different questions about the impeachment of Trump. The first question is whether that would be justifiable (morally, legally, constitutionally). The second is whether it would be advisable: the best thing to do for the future of our nation.

Besides distinguishing the two questions, I also offered my own then-current answers to them. To the first (Is it justified?), question, I gave a simple "yes." But on the second (Is it advisable?) question, I was much less definite: the strongest statement I could muster was that I "leaned toward" considering it advisable.

A lot has happened since then. When I posted that, even Attorney General William Barr hadn't seen the Mueller report. Now, its release has prompted a lot more discussion of impeachment than there had been before March 17. From my perusal of those discussions, I have learned some things.

One thing I learned was that my own claim, that we should distinguish between two questions, was prescient. The more recent debates about impeachment have actually been two debates. One, which plays out, very roughly, between Republicans and Democrats, is about whether impeachment (and removal) would be justifiable. The other debate is between people (mostly Democrats) who agree with each other that it would be justifiable, but disagree about whether starting a formal impeachment proceeding now is, in some broader sense, a good idea. So, approximately the same two questions I was posing way back when.

Most of the rest of the important things I have learned have come from paying attention to the second debate. That question (We'd be perfectly justified in impeaching Trump, but should we actually do it?) hadn't been discussed much, in public, until recently. So it has been very instructive to me to see the sorts of things that have been raised as arguments for, and against, the "yes, let's do it" position.

I'm not going to rehearse those pros and cons -- not in this journal entry. But I am going to tell you that the process has changed my own mind on the second question. Where before I merely "leaned toward" the idea that a formal impeachment inquiry should begin, I now firmly believe that it should.

At the same time, I still believe that it is a question about which reasonable people can disagree. This is the remnant of the previous urge to hold back from stating a definite opinion. What's left of that urge no longer appears to me as doubt, but rather as epistemological modesty, that is, as the need to acknowledge that one cannot, in principle, be absolutely certain about anything.

If you'd rather not read any more rants from me on the subject of impeachment, you just might get your wish. I'm not saying that I won't write any, just that I am thinking of posting them somewhere else than here in my personal Dreamwidth journal.

But if you really want me to stop banging the drums for impeachment completely, in any forum, there's one sure-fire way of making that happen: just do it. Impeach the Orange Outrage, and get it over with.