"An impeachment proceeding must be bipartisan in the final analysis. ... It can't be seen as a purely political, vindictive, partisan exercise," says House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), who opposes Barr's resolution as "premature" until independent counsel Kenneth Starr comes up with hard evidence. "There's no need to leap before we know where we're jumping."
A few months later, Hyde was running the impeachment investigation.
The Democratic leadership is following the same playbook with Trump. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,
published an op-ed in the New York Times last weekend that made almost exactly the same points. By all accounts, very few Democratic candidates in the midterms are featuring impeachment as a prominent campaign issue. So far, the only people bringing up the "I word" are Republicans.
Nonetheless, Democrats would be foolish to try to pretend that Donald Trump's metastasizing scandals don't exist at all. They have voters too -- who are motivated and energized in opposition to everything Trump is and everything he does. They've taken to the streets in massive numbers. They've organized grassroots groups all over the country. They've run for office. They've and created and enlarged mass movements around progressive issues. Indeed, they've done everything citizens can do short of revolution to oppose this president. The Democrats will have to respond in some way to this demand that Trump be opposed rather than appeased.
But they don't need to run on impeachment. They can simply address the fact that the Republican leadership in Congress is refusing to exercise its constitutional duty of oversight, and promise that they will hold public hearings and get to the bottom of what happened in 2016. In other words, they should promise to do the job they are signing up for -- and promise to let the chips fall where they may.
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