Have Democrats given up on impeachment?

A bid to launch impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump has been blocked by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, yet the issue continues to split the party ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Texas Democrat Al Green, who has twice brought impeachment proceedings against Trump, filed the resolution after the House voted to denounce the president’s attacks aimed at four US congresswomen as racist.

A simple majority in the House of Representatives is needed to begin impeachment proceedings, with the support of two-thirds of senators then required to formally remove the president from office.

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While Green’s resolution failed to win enough support to take it forward, with his fellow Democrats voting overwhelmingly against, it did garner significantly more support than previous efforts.

CNN says his decision to bring up his resolution “presented a dilemma for impeachment supporters and moderate Democrats alike, as they’re now on the record for their vote, even if Green’s resolution was only focused on one issue — what he says is the president’s ‘bigotry and racism’ — out of many Democrats are wrestling with on whether to move forward on impeachment”.

Speaking after the vote, the congressman said he did not view it as a failure. “We got 95 votes this time, 66 the last time. So that’s a plus. But whether we get 95 or five, the point is we have to make a statement”.

“The vote highlights the how the issue of impeachment has become a headache for the Democratic Party” says The Independent. “While many progressives want to press ahead, House speaker Nancy Pelosi believes it would harm the party’s 2020 election preparations, and she has sought to put off making any final decision on the matter”.

The BBC reports that “Pelosi has repeatedly said she does not want to act until an ‘ironclad case’ has been built against the president”.

“We have six committees that are working on following the facts in terms of any abuse of power, obstruction of justice and the rest that the president may have engaged in. That is the serious path that we are on,” she said this week.

CNBC reports that “support for opening a presidential impeachment inquiry has spread in recent weeks following the release of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his Russia investigation”.

The release of the Mueller report, which detailed 11 instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump or his associates, escalated calls for impeachment among progressive Democrats, “but Pelosi, aware that her majority in the House is less than a year old, has counseled a slower approach, in which investigations of the president by various subcommittees could produce grounds for impeachment,” says The Guardian.

There also fears moving to impeach Trump too soon would only serve to galvanise his base and make his re-election more likely.

The Guardian says Pelosi’s “slower approach could be obviated by a Democratic victory in the 2020 presidential election – or Trump’s re-election could fundamentally change the political calculus”.

This stands in stark contrast to the target of Trump’s ire, the four female congresswomen at the centre of the racism row have all urged impeachment.

“I have not made impeachment central to my election or my tenure,” said Congresswoman Ilhan Omar after Trump's Twitter outburst. “But since the day that I was elected, I’ve said to people it is not if he will be impeached, but when. It is time for us to stop allowing this president to make a mockery out of our Constitution. It is time for us to impeach this president.”

Another of the so-called “Squad”, Rashida Tlaib, who famously yelled, “we’re going to impeach this motherfucker” the night she was sworn in to Congress, said that if she is to fight against the corruption in the government as those who elected her last November intended, it “means supporting an impeachment inquiry of this president and his actions.”

Yet the strength of feeling prompted Ken Starr, who led the Monica Lewinsky investigation against Bill Clinton in the 1990s, to claim some Democrats are trying to make impeachment the first recourse to express disapproval with Trump.

“When you talk about impeachment, we are in a stage in our history when impeachment is becoming the tool of first resort instead of the tool of last resort,” he told Fox News.

“That is not what the founding generation wanted,” he added.

“We do not, however, live in an impeachment-or-bust world,” says NBC News, calling for Congress to instead censure the president.

“Censure is a process whereby Congress formally reprimands an officeholder for what it perceives as egregious behaviour. A censure is symbolic, in that it doesn’t remove an officeholder, but it does offer a strong, formal, public rebuke of his or her actions” says the news network, and “the action will still send a message to the voters and the rest of the world that Trump’s actions are beyond the pale”.

Acknowledging that “impeachment fever has gripped the United States since roughly the day after inauguration 2017,” Garrett Epps in The Atlantic suggests another alternative.

“If Pelosi won’t dare impeach Trump, perhaps she’ll deign to impeach his stooges,” he says.