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Congresswoman Maxine Waters embarrassed the Democratic Party in a press conference held on February 6th. Waters used the platform to advocate for the impeachment of Donald Trump. Her argument for impeachment was riddled with confusion and lies. Waters reinforced the Democratic Party's anti-Russia narrative by claiming Donald Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin was dangerous to the security of the United States. However, it was hard to take Waters seriously after she stumbled to remember Aleppo and accused Putin of invading Korea.

While her speech was both embarrassing and pathetic, Waters' comments are indicative of a dangerous development in US politics. The Obama Administration solidified the Democratic Party's commitment to war against Russia with NATO’s expansion along the Russian border and sanctions on the Russian Federation. Now the war drive has leaked into the party's opposition to Donald Trump. Both mainstream Republican and Democratic Party forces within the ruling class have turned the 2016 elections into a never-ending nightmare. It started when the Democratic Party organs of the corporate press promoted the "fake news" line which condemned all independent journalism as dupes of Putin and Russia. Then when Donald Trump won, WikiLeaks and Russia were accused of working together to influence the outcome of the election.

Anti-Russian dogma has been turned into aburgeoning campaign to oust Donald Trump from the White House. Waters' entire speech condemned Trump for his alleged connections to the Russian adversary. This led the Congresswoman to expose how little she knew about world affairs. Her words should be a warning to the left. The impeachment campaign being concocted by the Democrats is a dangerous effort to legitimize their particular form of imperialist rule.

There are many questions that must be asked when the prospect of impeachment is raised. Who benefits from Trump's impeachment? Can the impeachment of a US President bring a positive change to society? The answers to these questions provide left thinkers and activists all they need to know about whether or not they should support the impeachment of Donald Trump.

As for who benefits from the impeachment of Trump, it could be argued that both the Democratic Party and Republican party would find temporary solace knowing that the wildly unpopular and unpredictable billionaire is no longer President. Lindsay Graham and John McCain have each utilized the Democratic Party's anti-Russia narrative as their primary criticism of Donald Trump. Prior to Trump, the two- party consensus consolidated capital and managed the crisis of the economic system in a manner that kept protest at a minimum. Under Trump, protest has become a regular occurrence and both parties fear that their agendas will be crushed under the weight of their own illegitimacy. It was the unpopular character of both parties that allowed Trump to run for President in the first place.

None of this matters to the potential benefactors of Trump’s demise. The Democratic Party would score a much needed victory after numerous embarrassments in the infancy of the Trump era, Waters' remarks included. Trump's impeachment would also give the ruling class an opportunity to weaken the Administration of billionaires in favor of a more publicly favorable arrangement. The crisis of capitalism at the moment is too sensitive and acute for Trump's rule to stand. His departure would be a sigh of relief to many in the boardrooms of the Fortune 500, the Pentagon, and the intelligence agencies.

This doesn't mean that the ruling class isn't attempting to collaborate with Trump while it figures out a way to wipe the blemish of his Presidency off its resume. The left should oppose the Trump Administration's reactionary policies in all spheres of political life. However, as the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn exemplifies, the Trump Administration is under enormous pressure to conform to the will of the political establishment. The US political establishment sees their commitment to the ruling class as best fulfilled through a war with Russia. That means Trump's Administration must remain unstable so it cannot possibly pursue a reset of US-Russian relations.

US imperialism has no issue with Trump warming up to Wall Street or murdering civilians in Afghanistan. Such policies are part and parcel of what a US President is supposed to do. The left should organize opposition to these crimes, as it should have done during the Obama era. However, impeachment is an establishment-controlled process. The rules are written by the rulers themselves. The ruled have no say in the matter.

The impeachment of Donald Trump will not curb endless warfare, and it certainly won't check the existence of fascism. Impeachment does not provide any material benefit to workers or oppressed nations in the United States. One could argue that the Democratic Party and Republican Party elite arefiercer in their attacks on public education, the right to a decent wage, or the right to merely exist as a Black community without the threat of police violence. The ferocity of the assault merely takes a different form. This form is a more effective and politically calculated form of attack than anything Trump could ever muster.

So the question should never be whether or not to impeach the president of the United States. The real question is whether the system of US imperialism needs to be impeached for another. It is the search for this alternative system and how we organize ourselves to establish it that will determine the next stage in the course of history. When carried forward, these actions expose the effort to impeach Trump as nothing but an attempt to dress the empire with a new set of fashionable cloths.

*(US Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Image Credit: mark6mauno/ flickr).