Eric Swalwell yesterday:

Here’s the deal: don’t fall for the “if there was quid pro quo” trap. If @realDonaldTrump
told a foreign government to investigate his opponent that’s it. Game. Set. Match. He has committed a crime. If he’s innocent, he’ll release the tapes. #ReleaseTheTapes

But is it though? Is it Game. Set. Match? How? When, by what process, how? What new mechanism will come into play now that hasn’t before? Republicans will vote to impeach? Of course not. So, what then?

It should be, of course, but then so should a long list of other outrages (which is not to say this isn’t the worst outrage). Should be but never was, because oh what do you know, it turns out we don’t have any effective mechanisms at all for getting rid of a wholly evil and uncontrollable president if the president’s party also controls the Senate.

Oops.

Tom Nichols

The president of the United States reportedly sought the help of a foreign government against an American citizen who might challenge him for his office. This is the single most important revelation in a scoop by The Wall Street Journal, and if it is true, then President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office immediately.

Until now, there was room for reasonable disagreement over impeachment as both a matter of politics and a matter of tactics. The Mueller report revealed despicably unpatriotic behavior by Trump and his minions, but it did not trigger a political judgment with a majority of Americans that it warranted impeachment. The Democrats, for their part, remained unwilling to risk their new majority in Congress on a move destined to fail in a Republican-controlled Senate.

But what difference would it have made if it had triggered a political judgment with a majority of Americans that it warranted impeachment? The Senate would still be free to ignore it.

Now, however, we face an entirely new situation. In a call to the new president of Ukraine, Trump reportedly attempted to pressure the leader of a sovereign state into conducting an investigation—a witch hunt, one might call it—of a U.S. citizen, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden.

Yes, it’s gruesome, but the Republicans will just wrap themselves in Fox robes and say it’s all the Democrats’ fault and Trump will carry on regardless, doing even worse things.

If this in itself is not impeachable, then the concept has no meaning. Trump’s grubby commandeering of the presidency’s fearsome and nearly uncheckable powers in foreign policy for his own ends is a gross abuse of power and an affront both to our constitutional order and to the integrity of our elections.

Yes indeed, but we’ve been learning that the concept does in fact have no meaning if the president’s party is in control.

The story may even be worse than we know. If Trump tried to use military aid to Ukraine as leverage, as reporters are now investigating, then he held Ukrainian and American security hostage to his political vendettas.

No, it’s worse than that. It’s not about vendettas. (Nichols quoted a Ukrainian official saying Trump did it in revenge for his friend Manafort, which I think is ludicrous – Trump doesn’t care about Manafort, he doesn’t care about anyone but Trump.) It’s about breaking the knees of the guy he perceives to be his biggest threat in the next election. It’s about Trump holding Ukrainian and American security hostage to his determination to stay president whatever it takes.

Let us try, as we always find ourselves doing in the age of Trump, to think about how Americans might react if this happened in any other administration. Imagine, for example, if Bill Clinton had called his friend, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in 1996, and asked him to investigate Bob Dole. Or if George W. Bush had called, say, President Vicente Fox of Mexico in 2004 and asked him—indeed, asked him eight times, according to TheWall Street Journal—to open a case against John Kerry. Clinton, of course, was eventually impeached for far less than that. Is there any doubt that either man would have been put on trial in the Senate, and likely chased from office?

Yes. The doubt all hinges on which party was in the majority in the Senate.

I am speaking only for myself as an American citizen. I believe in our Constitution, and therefore I must accept that Donald Trump is the president and the commander in chief until the Congress or the people of the United States say otherwise. But if this kind of dangerous, unhinged hijacking of the powers of the presidency is not enough for either the citizens or their elected leaders to demand Trump’s removal, then we no longer have an accountable executive branch, and we might as well just admit that we have chosen to elect a monarch and be done with the illusion of constitutional order in the United States.

I admitted that long ago – with rage, without a trace of resignation, but the fact of it, yes.