If, for some reason, you declined to watch all 47 hours of Senate impeachment hearings on Tuesday, here's what you missed: Not much. Democrats introduced a bunch of amendments that would allow them to do things like subpoena witnesses, Republicans voted against those amendments, our duly elected senators yawned and wished they were anywhere else, and no one changed their mind about anything. It was exactly as expected, and the viewing experience was so dull it made PBS pledge drives seem like porn by comparison. I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it (you should; it's important) but I am recommending you take at least a few bong hits to dull the pain first.
Now, this could change. If Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans actually allow John Bolton to testify, some new information might come out of this whole dog and pony show. That, however, isn't likely to happen, so what we're left with is Democrats recapping everything we learned from the House investigation as Republicans doodle in their notebooks (there are no phones or laptops allowed during the trial) before they will eventually vote not to convict. And then, naturally, the President will spin this an exoneration, with the Fox News echo chamber there to support him.
The whole thing is such a foregone conclusion that, while watching on Tuesday, I began to wonder what's the point in the first place. The average American certainly isn't spending weekday afternoons plugged into CSPAN, and why would they? They're at work. You could argue that this is for the press, but media entities have already decided who's good and who's lying. If you're a Rachel Maddow fan, she will confirm your suspicions that Trump did it, but if you flip over to Sean Hannity, prepare to get the opposite. Or he'll say Trump did it, but really, what's the big deal?
Of course, if it were at all possible that senators could be swayed by evidence and not their own political ambition or party affiliation, this trial might have more value. Trump did, based on the evidence, both attempt to bribe a foreign leader into announcing an investigation of Joe Biden and obstruct Congress's ability to investigate. But the Democrats just don't have the votes required to convict. Maybe there's a Susan Collins or Mitt Romney who would deviate from the party line and vote to convict, but I will not be holding my breath.
Last year, Vox's Ezra Klein argued that even if this whole thing is a foregone conclusion (and it is) impeachment could accomplish three goals: The public shaming of Donald Trump; motivating anti-Trump voters to come out in 2020; and sending a message to foreign leaders that the US not actually corrupt—or at least not as corrupt as Trump would like.
But besides the fact that you cannot shame the shameless, is impeachment worth the potential cost? I'm not convinced that this thing won't backfire, as it did for Republicans during the Clinton impeachment. After he was impeached in the House and acquitted in the Senate, Clinton saw the highest approval ratings of his time in office and Republicans lost seats in Congress. The voters, it seems, were turned off. There is, of course, a massive difference between lying about a blow job and trying to bribe a foreign leader to manipulate an election, but Trump loyalists—which, unfortunately, include most of the Republican party—simply don't care. They don't believe he did anything wrong, and even if he did, so what?
According to the most recent CNN polling, only 8 percent of Republicans think Trump should be removed from office. At the same time, 89 percent of Democrats think he should be booted out. And yet, when it comes to elections, these people—the party loyalists on either side—don't really matter. The people who matter are the independents in swing states who, thanks to our insane electoral system, will likely decide the next president. And what do they say? They're evenly split. Forty-nine percent of independents in the battleground states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin think Trump should be removed. And forty-nine percent say he should not.
Plenty of people have argued and will argue that it doesn't matter if Trump is convicted in the end because what the impeachment shows is that Democrats will not stand for corruption in office. Our electeds have a moral imperative to hold Trump accountable. I get that, and under normal circumstances, would agree. But this is not normal circumstances. Is that asterisk by Trump's name in the history books really worth it if impeachment backfires into a second term in office? I, for one, think not.
