The video above is the conversation I had with Marquette political scientist Julia Azari last week about her recent book Backlash Presidents: From Transformative to Reactionary Leaders in American History. It was a really enjoyable conversation about a great new book. But I want to focus on one of the aspects of impeachment we discussed.
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There’s a pretty high probability Democrats will control the House of Representatives next year (with even to slightly-better-than-even odds of controlling the Senate). And there’s a pretty high probability that a Democratic House would take on a third impeachment of Donald Trump as one of its early priorities. What might such an impeachment effort look like? More specifically, what impeachment articles should Democrats draw up?
Explainer: In an impeachment, it’s the U.S. House that draws up articles of impeachment, and if any of those articles reach a simple majority of the House, the president goes on trial in the Senate. It requires two-thirds of the Senate (67 votes) to actually convict and remove the president from office.
It’s hard to know what approach Democrats should use because impeachment has never “worked,” in the sense that it’s never actually removed a president from office. It’s reasonable to assume that the Senate would have voted to remove Richard Nixon if an impeachment trial had happened in 1974; Nixon certainly believed so, which is why he resigned. But that was also one of the weakest party eras in U.S. history; significant numbers of Republicans were willing to work with Democrats to remove him. At most other times in U.S. history, it’s almost impossible to gather support from the president’s party to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for removal in the Senate. Mitt Romney’s vote to convict Donald Trump in 2020 was the first time in U.S. history that any senator from the president’s party had voted for removal.
In the conversation with Azari above, we discussed Republicans’ attempt to remove President Andrew Johnson from office in 1868. Since this was the first time an impeachment had been attempted (and since Johnson was in such an unusually bad political position, perceived as a sellout by his fellow Democrats for serving as the late Abraham Lincoln’s running mate in 1864 and as traitor by Republicans for his work to thwart Lincoln’s Reconstruction agenda), Republicans were just kind of making things up. They passed 11 articles of impeachment, all ostensibly related to Johnson’s violations of the Tenure of Office Act (by which he was constrained from firing Lincoln’s cabinet appointees). But those covered a long laundry list of Johnson’s actions, including his “improper rhetoric” in de-legitimizing the Congress. The trial went to the Senate; Johnson was acquitted by a single vote.
Democrats in 2020 and 2021 went with a different approach. Upon becoming Speaker in 2019, Nancy Pelosi signaled her discomfort with moving forward with a vague impeachment on a range of issues, even though that was the clear preference of many new members of her caucus elected in 2018. Yet that changed with the release of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which Trump was heard asking Zelenskyy to say that his government was investigating Joe Biden for corruption, and saying that ongoing U.S. aid to Ukraine was contingent on this. The Democratic leadership found this blackmailing of an ally to interfere with the next election to be an overt and easily-understood transgression that could keep their coalition together and win public support. There were just two articles of impeachment: one on abuse of power, and one on obstruction of Congress. They both passed the House on party-line votes. The Senate acquittal was also party-line, save Romney’s yes vote on just the first article.
The 2021 impeachment was even simpler, coming just a week after the January 6th riot and containing just one article: that Trump had incited insurrection. This passed quickly, with all Democrats and 10 Republicans voting to send it to the Senate. In the Senate, 7 members of the president’s party voted to convict, along with all 50 Democrats and independents. This still fell 10 votes short of conviction, and Trump was acquitted.
Should there be an impeachment in 2026, there’s an argument for keeping it focused on just one or two key issues that are very obvious and on which public opinion is strongly against Trump: his overt corruption in demanding payments from businesses and foreign powers or investments in his digital currency, or his violations of the separation of powers in launching a war on Iran without any prior or ongoing approval from Congress. Yet there’s certainly an argument for throwing in a bunch of other issues — his abuse of the pardon power (especially in freeing those who attempted an insurrection), his overtly racist rhetoric, his threats to undermine the constitutional system by running for a third term, his sending federal relief efforts just to states that voted for him, his deployment of ICE and U.S. Armed Forces into American cities, his violations of people’s habeas corpus rights in immigration enforcement, his efforts to undermine U.S. alliances and treaties, his unauthorized demolition and defacement of several federal structures in DC, etc., and just see what sticks. There’s a lot.
Democrats certainly have some concerns about appearing as a party obsessed with impeaching Trump. And the kitchen sink approach might make them more vulnerable to such a news frame. But the party also contains a lot of passionate voters and activists who see impeaching Trump as the only remedy available for his range of abuses.
Again, though, it’s hard to say which approach would be better, since none is likely to come close to actually removing Trump from power. And which would be better in terms of Democrats’ public perceptions heading into the 2028 election cycle? One could argue that Pelosi’s limited-impeachment approach to 2020 was about as successful a model as possible; it didn’t remove Trump, but it likely hurt him, and he lost reelection that year. This might well be the approach they pursue next year.
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