...and that the issue of impeachment will dominate the 2018 elections, especially in the House. There is already enough on the public record, beginning with Trump's obstruction of justice in his firing of FBI Director James Comey, to justify impeachment, and you can be sure that Robert Mueller's report will provide a lot more details.
And the ever-helpful Steve Bannon is quoted in a just-published book calling a meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians “treasonous,” and adding, “They’re going to crack Junior like an egg on national TV.” Treasonous of course describes Trump Senior, too.
On December 6, a third of the Democratic Caucus, 58 House Democrats, voted for Representative Al Green's resolution to open an impeachment proceeding. And on December 20, the Democratic Caucus voted to make Representative Jerry Nadler of New York the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, setting him up to become chairman.
Nadler, a strong progressive, defeated the more moderate Zoe Lofgren. Nadler did not vote for Green's impeachment resolution, but only because he was keeping his powder dry. He will be a strong leader of an impeachment investigation that seems increasingly inevitable.
But is a fast track to impeachment a good idea? Skeptics led by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi argue that it might deflect focus from the monumental unpopularity of congressional Republicans, just as the Republican effort to impeach Clinton backfired in 1998. Worse, it could mobilize the Trump base, and increase Republican turnout.
On the other hand, given what's likely to come out on Mueller's report—not to mention the possibility of Trump's firing of Mueller (which would be impeachable all by itself)—impeachment one way or another will be a dominant issue in the 2018 elections. If the Democrats do take back the House, which seems increasingly likely, it's hard to imagine that impeachment will not proceed.
That's a good thing—it's the necessary way to get Trump out of office. But in the fall campaign, impeachment should not crowd out all other issues; the Republicans have plenty of other sins to answer for.
