The constitutional crisis has officially arrived. To the surprise of nobody with a cognitive intellect, Donald Trump has hauled us to this treacherous precipice. The good news is that the House Democrats, empowered by the midterm voters to hold Trump accountable, are eager to prevail in the historic showdown to come. And their strategy is a win-win.<\/p>\n
Have you read the letter, authored by Trump\u2019s legal eagles, which decrees that the White House will refuse to cooperate with the impeachment probe? As government documents go, it\u2019s a doozy. The lawyers\u2019 Trump armbands are wrapped so tight their brains have been starved of oxygen. The result is a smorgasbord of recycled MAGA catechisms.<\/p>\n
My favorite claim is that the current impeachment inquiry is \u201cconstitutionally illegitimate,\u201d despite the Constitution\u2019s Article II provision that grants the House sole power to hold our highest officials accountable \u2014 a provision that traces its origins to 14th-century Britain.<\/p>\n
The letter also claims that a House impeachment probe can\u2019t be launched unless the full House votes to launch it, but the Constitution says no such thing, not one word. Remember when Republicans prided themselves on being \u201cstrict constructionists\u201d who took the Founders\u2019 words literally?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also some whining in the letter that the impeachment inquiry seeks to \u201coverturn\u201d Trump\u2019s election, when in truth the whole point of an impeachment inquiry is to examine presidential abuses of power after an election. If Trump\u2019s lawyers (and Trump) were to enroll in a remedial history course, they\u2019d learn that Richard Nixon was targeted for impeachment in 1974 despite the fact that he\u2019d won the 1972 election in a 49-state landslide.<\/p>\n
House Democratic leaders, having digested and spat out the letter\u2019s various Orwellian tidbits (the impeachment probe \u201cthreatens grave and lasting damage to our democratic institutions\u201d), are actually fine with the fact that the ultimate battle has been joined. Their win-win goes something like this:<\/p>\n
Since they already have the goods on Trump\u2019s most blatant impeachable act ,\u2019 he sought to extort Ukraine for domestic campaign dirt against Joe Biden ,\u2019 anything they get from new documents and Trump witnesses would be gravy. And if the Trump regime stonewalls on delivering documents and witnesses, then presto, that\u2019s further grist for an article of impeachment detailing obstruction of justice. As suburban Philadelphia congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon, vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday, \u201cthe more obstruction there is, the more quickly this (inquiry) moves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump and his lawyers want to sucker the House Democrats into a long court fight over the documents and witnesses, hoping to run out the clock to 2020. But the Democrats don\u2019t need to play that game, so they won\u2019t. Trump wants to stiff the inquiry? Fine. Intelligence panel chairman Adam Schiff said that stonewalling would be \u201cyet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump is so anxious to hide the damning truth about his Biden dirt-digging (as the documents and witnesses would reveal) that he clearly prefers to take the hit on obstruction of justice. That\u2019s how badly he is cornered. And there\u2019s zero evidence that stonewalling the inquiry will win over the electorate. A national poll, released Tuesday, says that 58 percent of Americans support the House inquiry, and only 38 percent oppose it. This past spring, those percentages were virtually reversed.<\/p>\n
And another new poll, released Wednesday morning, is even more brutal for Trump: 50 percent of registered voters support Senate conviction and removal.<\/p>\n
Granted, it strains credulity at the moment to believe that the Republican Senate would throw him out, since they hail disproportionately from red states overfilled with bitter-end MAGA fans. But it\u2019s already highly plausible that a craven Senate exoneration would leave obstructionist Trump seriously or mortally wounded by the stink of his smoking gun.<\/p>\n
So, it\u2019s game on. As the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson penned, \u201cThings are in the saddle\/ And ride mankind.\u201d And for once, the Democrats are snapping the reins.<\/p>\n
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com<\/p>\n