Ever since the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially announced the formal start of an impeachment inquiry, the story behind impeachment has been unfolding piece by piece and creating an enormous buzz around the situation amongst the public. Is the turmoil worth it though? Democrats have been trying to take down President Trump since the start of his term, how is this time different? Will he actually get impeached or is this just another hot story that will die down in a week?



How Does Impeachment Work?

American politics vastly relies on the system of checks on balances within the three branches, to ensure that no government branch can become more powerful than one another because another branch has the power to “check them”, so to say. One example of checks and balances is the impeachment process, where the House of Representatives has the ability to impeach the president with a majority vote and the Senate has the right to remove the president with a supermajority (2/3rds).

According to the Constitution, the grounds for impeachment include “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Treason “shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Most officials agree to interpret bribery as giving someone money or gifts to influence their actions even though it’s not defined in the Constitution. High crimes and misdemeanors are the vaguest ground out of the three and this way allows the House more room for interpretation. For example, the “high crime” doesn’t even necessarily need to be a violation of ordinary criminal stature.

After the evidence is clearly laid out, the House of Representatives votes on the impeachment: if the turnout is a majority, the impeachment proceeds to the Senate. The tricky part is, impeachment does not equal removal. Even if the impeachment passes in the House, for the President to be removed, the Senate needs to vote supermajority (2/3rds) on it. In fact, an impeached president can run for a second term, as long as they weren’t removed by the Senate. All impeachment by the House does is leave a stain on the President’s legacy.

So is President Trump actually getting impeached? Probably, the House is majority Democrat and the majority of the American public supports impeachment too. The real question is: is Mr. Trump actually getting removed from his position?

So Is He?

Let’s draw some parallels:

The main crime the Democrats are going after President Trump for is asking the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig dirt on his political rival in the 2020 Presidential election, Joe Biden and his on. This action would go under high crimes and misdemeanors.

Former President Nixon was almost removed for similar actions: he was trying to investigate his political competitors at the Watergate Hotel and later bribe people involved. Nixon later resigned but arguably, he would’ve been removed either way.

The timelines are almost identical; can we make a decisive conclusion though? Probably not. The parallel would be crooked because of how different the current political climate is. Today’s hyper-partisanship actually plays a massive role in how things turn out in Congress. Hyper-partisanship is a term that is used to describe politicians’ tendency to vote on a particular issue not based on their own or their district’s/state’s views, but in accordance with their party’s views. This shift has made politics more predictable and difficult. Furthermore, with a more divided government, it’s much harder to get legislation past in a timely manner.

Due to this hyper-partisanship, President Trump is most likely not getting removed because of the Republican majority in the Senate.

What Are the Consequences of Impeachment?

Simply speaking, impeachment isn’t a good process for the country in general. As Mr. Hamilton once wrote in the Federalist Papers, impeachment “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”

Impeachment leaves an enormous stain on the President’s legacy and support ratings, Mr. Trump, however, might be an exception to this “rule”. His support rate is at its historic low but is also at its historic stable. It seems that the president’s supporters that have stayed throughout all of the scandals are there to stay and even the impeachment by the House will only strengthen their approval. In other words, President Trump will most likely enter the 2020 elections with a quite devoted group of voters.



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